Giving Compass' Take:

· CityLab covers the recent excitement surrounding the city of Stockton and how Mayor Michael Tubbs is attracting donors and philanthropists to invest in the city. 

· How is Mayor Tubbs pitching this investment idea to donors? Can philanthropy help Stockton? 

· Read and learn more about the city of Stockton.

The philanthropists came on air-conditioned buses from big cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco. They were driven past vacant lots overrun with weeds, auto-repair shops and fast-food restaurants and meat markets, and deposited at a construction site that had once held a liquor store that police had long tried to shut down because it was dominated by drug dealers. And there, they were asked for money: money to pair single mothers with case managers, money to provide low-income families with a “word pedometer” and bi-weekly coaching from trained home visitors, money for mental-health clinicians and anti-violence counselors and college coaches and green spaces and sustainable food hubs and a psychotherapy center. All together, the philanthropists were told, the opportunities to invest in Stockton totaled $28.6 million dollars. “I truly believe that in the next 20 years, Stockton will be a model city for urban transformation,” the mayor, Michael Tubbs, said to the crowd.

Tubbs, who is 27, became a Stockton city council member at the age of 22, and the city’s first black mayor at the age of 26. He inherited a municipality that had been ravaged by the housing crisis, was just emerging from bankruptcy, and was trying desperately to fight its image as America’s “most miserable,” as Forbes put it (twice). He came in with big plans, including a universal basic income project that has made national headlines. But this careful courting of philanthropists may be his biggest swing yet.

Read the full article about philanthropy by Alana Semuels at CityLab.