Session Three of Connecting for the Common Good
In the third session of Connecting for the Common Good: A Masterclass with Peter Block and Friends, we examine how philanthropy and corporate community engagement can move beyond transactional giving toward transformational partnership. This means shifting from “doing good for” to investing in relationships, trust, and shared power.
Co-hosted by Peter Block and Derek Peebles, this session explores how the economic tools for ending the wealth disparity are available to us. We will discuss our local project to make this happen. Through the lens of Neww Street — an innovative initiative in Cincinnati — we’ll see how the arts and capital, when aligned with community values, can interrupt economic isolation and create spaces of belonging.
We’ll also look at ways corporate and philanthropic generosity can engage residents not as recipients who need services but as active co-creators of change. The leadership for local change will come from connectors — uncredentialed local people who have an instinct to bring strangers together. We want to validate this kind of leadership. We will also explore what genuine reciprocity between institutions and neighborhoods looks like.
This conversation will offer new ways of thinking for philanthropists and business leaders who are ready to reimagine how wealth, resources, and creativity can serve the common good in more sustainable ways.
