Mayor’s Innovation Fund: new $100K fund will back innovative projects

The City of Philadelphia now has a $100,000 fund to back innovative public-private projects that aim to improve the city.

It’s called the Mayor’s Innovation Fund and the funds come from The Mayor’s Fund for Philadelphia, the city’s grantmaking arm that backs programs like Mural Arts and PhillyRising. Public and private donors fund The Mayor’s Fund.

The fund was inspired by the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ challenge that eventually created FastFWD, the city’s social enterprise accelerator, said Andrew Buss, the city’s director of innovation management.

FastFWD was just one idea suggested by public and private partners to submit to the Bloomberg challenge, Buss said. The Innovation Fund is one way to implement those other good ideas. Buss said it was too soon to offer a preview of the possible projects the fund would back.

The Mayor’s Innovation Fund is part of the Nutter administration’s overall innovation strategy, which includes sending its employees to innovation school and launching an incubator and lab space in the Municipal Services Building for collaboration, Buss said.