Integrating Funders Into a Multisector Transit-Equity Collaborative: Lessons From the Field

This article examines the efforts of Mile High Connects, a collaborative working to ensure that the Denver region’s $7.8 billion transit project benefits low-income communities and communities of color by connecting them to affordable housing, healthy environments, quality education, and good-paying jobs. The collaborative, which includes local and national funders that have coalesced around the central issue of transit equity, has adopted a collective-impact model that has at its core two tools to measure and track its work and to show the social-impact outcomes achieved through its initiatives. This article describes the collaborative’s approach to evaluation, reflects on its initial impacts, offers an assessment of its overall success, and shares with the philanthropic sector lessons learned in working effectively in a cross-sector collaborative.