Smart Growth America — Greater Greater Washington Education Project

The Open Philanthropy Project made a grant of $275,000 to support Smart Growth America's Greater Greater Washington Education Project. Greater Greater Washington (GGW) is a group blog that covers local policy issues, such as housing, education, and transportation, in the greater Washington, D.C. metro area. The GGW Education Project is a fiscally sponsored project of Smart Growth America, a 501(c)(3) organization. We encountered its work as part of our exploration of land use reform (which is a priority cause for us because we see few groups that are organizing people in support of reducing constraints on the housing supply in key metropolitan areas).

GGW requested funding to support the hiring and activities of three staff members, who will focus on increasing the capacity and influence of the blog as well as expanding the scope of the organization’s activities to include more organizing around housing supply issues. We do not have a strong sense of the likely impact of providing funds for these activities, but we see this grant as a good opportunity to support a promising group that is attempting to generate support for land use reform in Washington, D.C., one of the most important housing supply-constrained metro areas in the U.S. We believe that GGW would not have been able to undertake these activities without additional funding.

The Open Philanthropy Project provided funding to Smart Growth America for the purpose of supporting the charitable activities of its fiscally sponsored project Greater Greater Washington Education Project; Open Philanthropy funds will not be used to support any lobbying activities.

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