We promote collaborative, community-based efforts that build the power and influence of those with the least access to opportunity, and support communities to come together to expand mobility, eliminate systemic barriers, and create their own solutions to their most pressing challenges. Read more about our vision and values.
The Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions was launched in 2012 in response to the social challenges affecting people in need. A cross-sector leadership group convened by the White House Council on Community Solutions examined this situation, and released several seminal reports that served to launch the Forum for Community Solutions at the Aspen Institute. Read more about our history.
We support communities to come together to expand mobility, eliminate systemic barriers, and create their own solutions to their most pressing challenges.
Based on the White House Council’s findings, the Forum for Community Solutions launched its work, focusing on supporting collaborative community approaches to solving problems, and supporting communities to build greater community power.
We also created a specific focus on supporting young adults, based on the White House Council on Community Solutions report Community Solutions for Opportunity Youth, which called for innovative, place-based, collaborative solutions to reconnect the 6 million opportunity youth in the United States at that time. Learn more here about our work with opportunity youth.
The Forum for Community Solutions is led by a dynamic team of experienced social sector leaders, and is headquartered out of Washington, DC, with additional staff located in Seattle, Washington and across the United States.
The leadership team includes Melody Barnes, Forum for Community Solutions Chair and former Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council; Steve Patrick, Aspen Institute Vice President and Forum for Community Solutions Executive Director who formerly worked in large philanthropic institutions, and Monique Miles, Director of the Opportunity Youth Forum, formerly with the National Youth Employment Coalition and other direct youth services organizations. Read more about the complete Forum for Community Solutions team here.
Finally, how we do our work is as important to us as what we do. We endeavor to weave our organizational values throughout our work. We also couldn’t do our work without our many partners and the philanthropic organizations that make our, and our many partners’ work possible.
How to contact us.