Editor’s note: This piece is part of “First Movers,” a series from foundation leaders reflecting on moments when the charitable sector backed new and untested ideas, and the people behind them, before anyone else would, and asking where the sector should go first next. #FirstMovers #GenerosityBuilds

When Marygrove College announced in 2017 that it would close its doors after more than a century of educating Detroit’s next generation of social workers, teachers, and community members, the natural inclination was to mourn the final chapter of an institution that had become a treasured part of Northwest Detroit’s social and cultural fabric. But it was that very role that suggested – indeed compelled – the embrace of a very different set of possibilities, centered not on a loss to manage, but as an opportunity to reimagine.

Not to migrate from fundamental purpose, but to adapt and preserve it.

The reimagination took the form of a cradle-to-career educational continuum: from an early childhood center to a public K-12 school to postsecondary programs. It was forged through an extraordinary constellation of players, including the Detroit Public Schools Community District, the University of Michigan Marsal Family School of Education, Starfish Family Services (an early childhood development provider), and a newly-created Marygrove Conservancy.

After a decade of planning, physical redevelopment, curriculum reinvention, expansion of community programming, and cooperative institutional management, the campus now houses more than 900 children and young adults and is animated by a spectrum of educational, arts, cultural, and other forms of activity.

It is a magical place that has transformed fear of loss into continually evolving energy, creativity, and intergenerational connection.

Over the course of that decade, we have coupled our investments in the campus with multifaceted investments in the surrounding neighborhood. Creating a community development organization to advance resident engagement and to integrate housing and commercial development initiatives. Building a greenway to connect Marygrove to the University of Detroit Mercy campus to the east. Providing support to the neighborhood’s multiple childcare centers. Providing capital to small businesses. And a great deal more.

Those commitments helped make a very difficult question for our foundation far easier.

When we decided to relocate our headquarters from the suburbs to Detroit, it quickly became clear that the most compelling site would be on an undeveloped section of Marygrove. Moving to Northwest Detroit would cast in bright relief our abiding commitment to the city. Locating on the campus would reinforce the investments we had already made there. Creating a new anchoring presence would invite even deeper investments in, and engagement with, neighborhood life. Asking community residents to identify what uses and activities they would like to see in the building and the campus would create a civic asset far beyond a new site for a foundation’s office.

I can’t begin to describe how often I’m asked about Marygrove by other cities that are witnessing the closure of schools, colleges, hospitals, houses of worship, or other formerly anchoring institutions. Every situation is, of course, unique. But place-based philanthropy does have the ability to ask what might emerge instead.

We’ve seen this in Memphis, with an ambitious project to transform a former public school into a multi-use community center. We’ve seen it in Fresno with bold and creative plans to redevelop Chinatown. We’ve seen in in San Bernadino with the beginning of efforts to reimagine an abandoned shopping center as a multi-use gateway to the city. We’ve seen it in Cleveland with the breathtaking re-purposing of millions of square feet of abandoned industrial sites.

Our hope is that Marygrove can inspire other philanthropies to move into these very difficult spaces. We’ve learned in Detroit that going first is not about having all the answers. And we understand that philanthropy cannot substitute for public, private, and civic institutions that must carry these projects to completion.

But philanthropy can take a long view to help communities imagine futures not yet visible. It can engage community residents. It can bring to one table those who rarely share one. And it can invest risk capital before outcomes are certain.

In a word, it can help construct a path that may lead to shared aspirations and a sense of possibility.