What happens when a community decides that good ideas are not enough?
Five years ago, Malin Burnham and Tad Seth Parzen founded the Burnham Center for Community Advancement with a clear purpose: bring people together, identify opportunities and turn ideas into action.
In a recent commentary for the San Diego Business Journal, Parzen reflects on that journey — and on what it takes to build a stronger future for the San Diego region.
His reflection comes at an important moment for San Diego. The region has tremendous strengths, but it also faces challenges that cross traditional boundaries. Building a stronger future requires people and organizations to work together across sectors, communities and perspectives.
That belief has shaped BCCA from the beginning.
No single organization, sector or individual can solve the region’s most complex challenges alone. Progress depends on bringing the right people together, creating space for meaningful dialogue and building practical paths forward.
Over the past five years, BCCA has worked across sectors to advance regional conversations and move ideas toward action.
That work has included efforts focused on:
- Strengthening the future of Balboa Park
- Advancing cross-border collaboration
- Supporting workforce development
- Exploring solutions to housing and homelessness
- Building stronger community connections
- Creating opportunities for civic dialogue and collaboration
BCCA’s approach is intentionally focused on more than ideas alone. Research, dialogue and convening are important starting points. The goal is to use them to build relationships, identify common ground and create action.
That work continues through OneSD, BCCA’s initiative to strengthen the social fabric of the San Diego region.
More than 100 organizations now participate in OneSD, creating a growing network committed to connection, collaboration and constructive dialogue.
OneSD reflects the same principle that has guided BCCA for five years: meaningful regional progress depends on people coming together around shared challenges and opportunities.
It also builds on Malin Burnham’s longstanding vision for San Diego — a region that works across boundaries and invests in its future by bringing people together.
For BCCA, the work is not simply about asking what San Diego should do next.
It is about asking who needs to be at the table to make progress possible.
The first five years established a foundation. The next five will build on it.
BCCA will continue to bring people together around shared challenges, elevate ideas that can move the region forward and help turn those ideas into action.
Parzen’s reflection in the San Diego Business Journal offers an opportunity to look back at what BCCA has accomplished while keeping the focus firmly on what comes next.
The future of San Diego will not be built by one organization. It will require people, organizations and sectors willing to come together, listen, solve problems and act.
That has been the work of the Burnham Center for Community Advancement for the past five years.
And it is the work ahead.
Read Tad Seth Parzen’s full commentary in the San Diego Business Journal →