The Anchor Partnership hired the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) to complete a full analysis of spending by 10 Anchor institutions in order to develop a data-driven strategy to focus more spending in Central Corridor neighborhoods.
The Partnership is eager to develop a data-driven strategy to spending more procurement dollars in Central Corridor neighborhoods. ICIC’s analysis is expected to be complete August 6.
With key support from the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative, the partnership turned to ICIC for help. ICIC is a nonprofit research and strategy organization founded by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter and is focused on inner city economies.
ICIC is analyzing procurement data from Augsburg College, Bethel University, Fairview Health, Hennepin County Medical Center, HealthPartners, Metropolitan State University, Minneapolis Community & Technical College, St. Paul College, University of Minnesota, and University of St. Thomas.
The study analyzes Anchor Partnership spend data and local supplier capacity to better define the size and nature of Anchor Partnership procurement opportunities. With a clearer understanding of the overlay of demand and supply in Anchor Partners’ priority spending categories, there may be opportunities to grow locally owned businesses or attract new businesses to supply Anchor Partners’ demand.
A key outcome of the study is for the Anchor Partnership to achieve greater scale in its procurement work, building on the Partnership’s efforts to increase Anchor Partners’ local purchasing in 15 zip codes. The ICIC study marks the first rigorous demand analysis to identify priority procurement opportunities.
"The University of Minnesota fully supports sharing our procurement data to help further the mission of the Anchor Partnership,” said Tim Bray, Director of Purchasing at the University of Minnesota. “We are looking forward to seeing the completed analysis."
Especially important to the Anchor Partnership is identifying spending leaving the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area, and leaving Minnesota. The Anchor Partnership plans to focus future joint procurement work on categories of spending that are currently focused out of region or out of state.