Need for Collaboration and Innovation in Austin

[vc_row][vc_column animate="false" effect="fade" margin_b="true" text_align="left" pl="0" pr="0" pt="0" pb="0" width="1/1"][vc_column_text pl="0" pr="0" pt="0" pb="0"]In the midst of enormous prosperity and economic opportunity, our community faces serious problems: high poverty rates, challenging access to quality education and affordable health care, transportation and affordability problems, and heartbreaking daily challenges to our most vulnerable: foster children, chronically homeless, children and adults with disabilities, and many others. We know this is not right, and we know that we must act to change this.Government, business and the social sector all play a role in addressing these challenges. We live in a time of strained public resources, and so we realize that solutions to our problems will come from the powerful combination of collaboration and innovation in Austin. When we collaborate, we recognize that we are much more powerful acting together than acting alone. When we innovate, we recognize that we must seek new ways to solve long entrenched problems. Mayor Adler has set a goal that Austin become a Social Innovation City, a leader among cities in using the power of innovation to address our community’s challenges. If we act together, and if we engage the full potential of the capital available to us, we can achieve this goal.The board and staff of Mission Capital are excited about our new name – a name that was thoughtfully chosen to both emphasize our continuing service to the community and also to engage a wide range of players who share our belief that big community problems can be solved. We are excited about opportunities to be part of key collaborations among government, business and social sector organizations – these partnerships are absolutely necessary to bring about lasting changes that benefit our citizens. Perhaps most exciting is the influx of new capital to our community – human, financial, social, intellectual, and political capital.In the long run we are judged by what we do, not by what we say or what we call ourselves. We must focus our actions on those things that actually change lives. We must continue to do the things that we know are effective, and we must be willing to embrace change in ways that will enable us to better serve the community.Dennis CavnerBoard Chair 2015Mission Capital[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]