Mergers are common in the business world, but relatively rare in the nonprofit sector. That’s why I am intrigued by the story of Blue Water Baltimore.

I recently attended a Living Cities Integration Initiative site visit to the Twin Cities for some cross-site learning, and saw how affective their collective impact approach is. Through the Corridors of Opportunity initiative, they are working to build and develop a world-class regional transit system focused on seven transit corridors at various stages of operation, construction and planning.

In spite of gains over the recent decades, inequities in income, employment, educational attainment, housing and business ownership rates persist between African-American and white communities at both the national and local levels.