Like most major cities across the country, Philadelphia experienced an unprecedented rise in community violence and deaths by gun violence during the pandemic era. In a powerful response, the city’s philanthropic, corporate, faith, and nonprofit leadership united in 2022 to launch The Civic Coalition to Save Lives. This cross-sector and coordinated effort, embedded at The Philadelphia Foundation, works to leverage resources and effective practices in gun violence intervention from other metropolitan regions and apply them to meet the urgent needs of disproportionately impacted Philadelphians and their communities.
The Coalition works in close coordination with the City of Philadelphia Office of Public Safety, hospitals, and grassroots community organizations to identify and fill resource gaps in promising interventions, pilot and assess new strategies, and address the social determinants of health that too commonly lead to death or murder by a gun. This approach is focused on both reducing and sustaining reductions in gun violence deaths, focusing primarily on the adult population that data shows is at highest risk.
The Coalition engaged Fairmount to help identify and pursue new funding resources to support promising interventions launched by the City and by its nonprofit provider grantees and partners, with a focus on state and federal grant programs. This work leverages our deep history of providing competitive grantwriting and program planning support to municipal and County-level public offices and departments – Housing, Human Services, Parks and Recreation, Public Safety, and others.
Our coordinated, ongoing support for the Civic Coalition and the Office of Public Safety has identified where additional catalytic funding investment would help scale and sustain promising priority initiatives, then provided ongoing forecasting, tracking, and vetting of strategic opportunities. In pursuing specific grants, Fairmount’s team has worked with The Coalition as project managers, grant coordinators, positioning strategists, and writers and editors, collaborating with expert teams to develop comprehensive and compelling proposals.
Working in thought partnership with civic leadership, our team is expanding opportunities to frame gun violence interventions to funders in the context of health, housing, employment, and mental health needs. Our impact includes adding $500,000 in new resources to support juvenile diversion from the city’s justice system. Of even greater impact, the coordinated work of the City, the Civic Coalition, and their partners has influenced a significant drop in gun violence deaths citywide, after a 5-year spike, with the singular goal of sustaining this momentum.