Hi! If you're getting this, you must have subscribed to my newsletter, where I talk about progress on the Neighborhood. We’re part of a movement that aims to recapture the magic of a university campus, but for all generations. We're composed of third spaces (community centers), coliving (8BR+ rented houses), cohousing (adjacent owned houses), villages (near-adjacent owned houses), and good vibes (I bump into friends once every 40 minutes). For past updates, and to subscribe, see jasonbenn.com.

One of the lessons of the last two years is that the ROI on The Commons (1) is nigh unbeatable. Consider the facts:

1. The Commons was essentially started with $150K.
2. Now, they're profitable.
3. They'll pay back their philanthropic loan in 2.5 years.
4. It's been sufficiently life-changing that dozens of their members have moved within 10 blocks (testimonials usually have the flavor "I finally found my people" or "it's the best thing about SF").
5. There are more than 100x as many residents of the Neighborhood square mile as there are Commons members, so the TAM is large.

The obvious next move is to double down on what’s clearly working. So we're doing that! Patricia, Adi, myself, and Thomas Schulz (of Solaris Society) are joining forces to co-found City Campus.

➡️ We’re launching City Campus with a party on May 11 and you're welcome to come!

All of us have had the dream of "multigenerational campus" built into our respective organization's missions since we founded them 2-3 years ago, and we've all settled into complementary niches. So now we're sublimating the overlapping parts of our visions into a shared nonprofit. That's City Campus.

The idea is to repeatedly and sustainably catalyze third spaces (or equivalent community infrastructure). If each of them only cost $150K to kickstart and we can recoup those costs within 4 years, then it’d only take $1.5M of philanthropic capital to start a project on the level of The Commons every 6 months indefinitely.

We’ll focus on the square mile centering on Hayes / Alamo / Lower Haight / NoPa. If we can recapture the magic of a university campus here, for all generations, then we'll inspire others to adapt our model to their hometowns. We're looking to fund for-profit projects with evidence of community momentum and that are run by good-hearted founders.

Hat tip to our advisor Erik Torenberg for the idea last November. Since then, we've:

• Hosted a brainstorm with 20 local community leaders
• With the help of 50 volunteers, distributed 500 flyers in the area
• Posted a lot of cryptic tweets to build buzz
• Begun learning how to Talk to Media and have a non-disastrous first result with someone that clearly wanted to write the "techie" angle
• Are planning outreach to local neighborhood associations and the SF government - surely there are folks with aligned missions?
• Are planning the aforementioned launch party on May 11
• Will commence fundraising after that!