How to Develop a CEOs for Cities City Cluster

Thank you very much for your interest in forming a City Cluster in your city. We consider you to be a City Champion because of your willingness to help lead the development of a City Cluster. While there is no one formulaic way to go about this, the following are some recommended steps.

Identify City Champions

The best City Champions are mayors, community foundations, university presidents, and business or economic growth organization leaders because of their unique ability to bring leaders from all sectors together. However, passion often trumps titles and positions, so a respected leader from any sector with passion can make an effective Champion.

Empower the City Champions

CEOs for Cities will provide the Champions all the tools they need to communicate the value of CEOs for Cities and a City Cluster. CEOs for Cities will offer the opportunity for the Champions to speak with one or more current City Cluster leaders in other cities.

Schedule a two-day CEOs for Cities visit to your city

First day- schedule a meeting in your city with the CEOs for Cities Team (Lee Fisher and/or a Senior Staff Member of CEOs for Cities) with the Champions to review the benefits of City Cluster membership. The Champions schedule individual meetings for the CEOs for Cities Team with several key leaders. Examples: the Mayor; the community foundation president; a college or university president; the CEO of the business chamber; an established business leader; and an emerging business or nonprofit leader. Second day - schedule a larger group meeting of cross-sector, cross-generational leaders where CEOs for Cities has an opportunity to make a presentation about CEOs for Cities and the value of City Clusters. At that meeting, the City Champions also speak about the value of forming a Cluster. Schedule a wrap-up meeting with the City Champions to outline next steps.

Forming the Cluster

The goal should be to form the Cluster within 30 days of the CEOs for Cities visit. If you are not able to form the cluster before the next CEOs national or regional meeting, CEOs will comp (waive the registration fee) for one or more people from the city to the next CEOs for Cities national meeting as a further incentive to form the Cluster. One way to increase the likelihood that your city will form a Cluster is to find someone (often a local foundation or business) to cover most or all the travel costs of at least 2-3 people to attend a CEOs meeting. Raising the minimum $25,000 is necessary before forming the Cluster. The fundraising is done by the Champions. Before the CEOs for Cities city visit, the Champions should create a list of potential members of the City Cluster, and next to each name, identify whether they are a potential contributor and, if so, how much they will be asked to contribute. Also identify who will do the follow up and when follow up will be done with each person. The ideal model is when an entity pays the entire $25,000 minimum (e.g. Miami Foundation, Indianapolis Foundation, and Hudson-Webber Foundation in Detroit). The next best model is having just a few entities raise the $25,000, so that as many slots as possible are still open for those who cannot afford to any dues. Even though CEOs for Cities prefers that the giving guidelines are adhered to (individuals- $1,000; small businesses, nonprofits, and community colleges- $2,500; large companies and universities and community foundations- $5,000 or more), CEOs for Cities is flexible about how the $25,000 is raised. CEOs for Cities will send an invoice for dues within 30 days of each commitment to pay dues. In addition to the $25,000 in annual dues, every City Cluster is encouraged to raise additional funds to provide scholarships for the purpose of subsidizing the travel expenses of Cluster members who otherwise would not be able to afford to attend a CEO regional or national convening. These scholarship funds are not paid to CEOs for Cities; rather, they are maintained in a local account for the Clusters use. Once the $25,000 in annual dues has been raised, the Cluster should determine the leader(s) of the Cluster and communicate that information to CEOs for Cities.

Cluster Engagement
Within 30 days of forming the Cluster, CEOs for Cities will send a welcome packet to every Cluster member (electronically and/or by snail mail). Within 30 days of sending the welcome packets, a Cluster engagement plan should be written by the Cluster leads and CEOs for Cities to make sure we all agree what will be done over the following year to bring value to the Cluster and to keep the Cluster engaged with CEOs for Cities.