Housing and Wealth Building
FairCityChallenge:closingPhiladelphia'sracialwealthgap
Designed and ran the Fair City Challenge end to end, a citywide competition surfacing bold ideas to close Philadelphia's racial wealth gap and reinvest in historically disinvested neighborhoods.
Case study overview
Designed and ran the Fair City Challenge end to end, a citywide competition surfacing bold ideas to close Philadelphia's racial wealth gap and reinvest in historically disinvested neighborhoods.
The Economy League of Greater Philadelphia hired us to design and run the Fair City Challenge, a citywide search for bold ideas to build household and neighborhood wealth in historically disinvested communities. We led the program end to end, shaping the strategy, running the open call, facilitating workshops and mentorship, producing the pitch competition, and delivering the Community Showcase at Independence Blue Cross where The WEALTH Collective took home the $50,000 grand prize.
The Challenge
Undervalued homes, denied generational wealth.
Research from ELGP and Drexel's Lindy Institute shows that properties in non-white-majority Philadelphia neighborhoods are dramatically undervalued, denying families billions in home equity and stalling generational wealth building. ELGP needed a partner who could turn that research into a citywide program that surfaced real solutions, supported the people behind them, and produced a moment Philadelphia would notice.
Black Homeowner Gap
$24B in housing wealth lost since 1950 in Black neighborhoods.
Latino Homeowner Gap
$33.4B in housing wealth lost in Latino neighborhoods.
Displacement Risk
Rising values too often push out the residents who built the neighborhood.
Our Partnership Model
Hired to design and run the program, start to finish.
ELGP brought us in as the lead program partner. We owned the strategy, the operations, and the delivery, working alongside ELGP staff and sponsors to make the Fair City Challenge a citywide moment.
Program Design
Built the model end to end: tracks, criteria, timeline, evaluation, and finalist experience.
Program Delivery
Ran the open call, finalist selection, workshops, mentorship pairings, and accelerator sessions.
Pitch and Showcase
Produced the Community Showcase at Independence Blue Cross where finalists pitched and the grand prize was awarded.
Support Provided
What we delivered for finalists and partners.
Program Strategy
Designed the three track structure across the home, the neighborhood, and the city.
Operations and Logistics
Managed applications, scoring, communications, scheduling, and finalist support throughout the program.
Workshops and Curriculum
Facilitated working sessions on business model, customer discovery, pitch, and implementation planning.
Mentorship
Matched finalists with operators, civic leaders, and subject matter experts for 1:1 coaching.
Pitch Competition Production
Produced the live pitch night and Community Showcase at Independence Blue Cross.
Capital Deployment
Coordinated the $10,000 finalist awards and the $50,000 grand prize investment.
The Outcomes
A citywide moment, a clear winner, and momentum that carries forward.
On October 8, the Fair City Challenge Community Showcase brought together civic leaders, sponsors, residents, and past Impact Lab winners. The WEALTH Collective earned the $50,000 grand prize for a tech-enabled platform built to dismantle appraisal bias in Black and Brown communities.
Grand prize deployed
Awarded to The WEALTH Collective, a team of Black women in real estate, banking, and finance building a tech-enabled platform to eliminate racial appraisal bias in Philadelphia and beyond.
The Fair City Challenge program, end to end
Designed
Workshops, mentorship, and accelerator sessions for finalist teams
Facilitated
The Community Showcase at Independence Blue Cross
Produced
$10,000 in each finalist team
Invested
$50,000 grand prize to The WEALTH Collective to scale anti-appraisal-bias technology
Awarded
"When our partners are planning equity-focused community challenges and they wonder who might help them run it, I recommended Launch Point without hesitation."
Jeff Hornstein
Executive Director, Economy League of Greater Philadelphia
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