By Michelle Betton, Writer “The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.” -President Lyndon B. Johnson when he signed the Voting Rights Act…

By Scott Berman, Director, Policy and Development The civil rights movement sought to end legalized racial discrimination against Black-American individuals and communities. For generations, Black Americans were systematically denied opportunities that their White counterparts experienced, from the ability to buy homes to accessing quality education…

By Michelle Betton, Writer Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy is one of challenging the systems that keep people from benefitting from the democracy that this country is supposed to provide to all of its citizens. The people for whom he fought were often people of…

By Ellis Carr, President & CEO Throughout the year, I have thought a lot about what equity means to me and the work we do at Capital Impact. At its most basic, dictionary.com defines “equity” as “the quality of being fair or impartial; fairness; impartiality.”…

By Jason Anderson, Senior Director, Communications As 2018 came to a close and many of us were focused on the holiday season, a headline came across the news wires that stopped us in our tracks. It had been reported that a seven-year-old Guatemalan girl who…

This blog originally appeared on the SOCAP19 blog. Click here to visit the original post. By Alison Powers, Manager, Cooperative and Community Initiatives Communities of color have experienced historical and structural disinvestment, which has led to an unprecedented racial wealth gap, historically low home ownership,…

By Ian Wiesner, Director, Business Development Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) have been bringing investment to Detroit for more than two decades. The mission-driven approach and unique tools that CDFIs bring to the market have played a critical role in the development of new housing…

By Candace Robinson, Director, Strategy for Aging in Community, Capital Impact Partners, and Amy Herr, Director, Health Policy, West Health Policy Center This blog originally appeared as a Fast Fact on the Build Healthy Places blog. Read the original blog here.​​ Fact: On average, only 35…

By Elizabeth Luther, Detroit Program Manager Between 2000 and 2013, Detroit lost one-quarter of its population—more than 244,000 residents. When the city filed for bankruptcy in July 2013, the exodus continued, with residents leaving the city in record numbers. Vacant homes and shuttered businesses meant…

By Ellis Carr, President and CEO, and Dan Varner, Board Chair Looking back at our journey through 2018, both as an organization and as a country, it is no surprise to us that Merriam-Webster’s “word of the year” was justice. The meaning and implications of…

Alaina Beverly has spent her career championing and empowering underserved communities and working with stakeholders to work toward justice and opportunity for all. She started her career as a litigator for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and later worked in the Obama Administration…

By Ashlee Cunningham, Detroit Housing & Community Development Specialist Long before Midtown Detroit—or Cass Corridor, as 39-year-old Wayne State University graduate and artist Rachel Barker prefers to call it—was booming with aesthetically pleasing coffee shops, hip art galleries and expensive retail stores, it was the neighborhood…

By Lauren Counts, Senior Director, Strategy, Innovation, and Impact Management Innovation is an important tool for mission-driven organizations as they work within their communities to address issues of social, racial, and economic justice. Traditional thinking will not solve the problems that communities across the country experience…

By Olivia Rebanal, Director, Inclusive Food Systems Despite positive headlines about the American economy, financial vulnerability is a reality for many people. This was brought into sharp focus during the government shutdown Communities rallied around their members and organizations provided support, but it became clear that…

By Michelle Betton, Writer With thousands in communities across the country, community health centers (CHCs) seem like a long-standing part of the national health care system. However, the origins of CHCs are relatively recent, born out of civil rights struggles that started 10,000 miles away.…

This blog post originally appeared on the SOCAP website. For the original post, please visit this website. The challenges of mass incarceration and poverty are all too often intertwined in the U.S. Seventy million Americans currently have an arrest or conviction record and that number is…

By Ellis Carr, President and CEO This has been a year of reflection and introspection for me. In 2017, Capital Impact Partners, a national Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), had its best year since our founding in the early 1980s. We implemented new programs and…

Each year at Capital Impact Partners, we host an offsite, where all staff comes together to discuss successes and challenges in our work, and strategizes how we can continue to commit to the communities that we serve for greater social impact. This year, we held…

By Lauren Counts, Senior Director, Strategy, Innovation, and Impact Management Mission-driven organizations face down some of the world’s biggest challenges – systemic poverty, inequality, and racial inequity, to name a few – as a matter of business practice. Certainly these are not easy issues to…

By Candace Robinson, Director, Strategy for Aging in Community, Capital Impact Partners, and Amy Herr, Director, Health Policy, West Health Policy Center This blog originally appeared as a Fast Fact on the Build Healthy Places blog. Read the original blog here.​​ Fact Currently, more than half (51…

By Candace Robinson, Director, Strategy for Aging in Community, Capital Impact Partners, and Amy Herr, Director, Health Policy, West Health Policy Center This blog originally appeared as a Fast Fact on the Build Healthy Places blog. Read the original blog here. Fact For the first time…

​By Ellis Carr, President and CEO, and Rosemary Mahoney, Board Chair ​We believe everyone deserves a voice and economic pathways that allow them to shape their own futures. We believe that a community’s voice and economic opportunities can be strengthened with the right tools. Our objective…

By Alison Powers, Program Officer, Strategy, Innovation & Impact So many qualities define the life of a Cooperative Hall of Fame hero. Conviction and focus. Vision and persistence. Innovation and leadership. All contributing to a life dedicated to cooperative development and shared prosperity. These characteristics…

By Ronald Kelly, Director, Impact Strategies “3. 7. 8. 2. 4. 0. 3. 7. The first thing that happens when you go to prison, they take away your name, and from that moment forward, you’re that number: Hodge, 37824037. It’s the beginning of the dehumanizing…

Diane Borradaile recently joined Capital Impact as its new Chief Lending Officer. She leads her team to support Capital Impact’s mission to empower communities to break barriers to success by facilitating loan transactions for health care centers, charter schools, affordable housing, healthy food projects, and…

By Nicole Boone, Business Development Officer​ Boyle Heights is a bustling Latino neighborhood just east of downtown Los Angeles with a history dating back before the Mexican-American War. However, it’s the pressures of the present day that weigh heavily here. Approximately 66 percent of the…

By Virginie Arnaud LePape, Senior Director, Lending In 1982, Capital Impact was created with a single focus – support the development of cooperatives in underserved communities. Charter schools create opportunities for innovation that drive academic success for students in underserved communities.…

By ​Will Robison, Senior Loan Officer ​As wildfires burned through California’s Napa and Sonoma Counties in late 2017, Sandy Cesario was forced to evacuate her home and all she knew. Like many of the 5,000 residents of her small Calistoga town, she took refuge at one…

By Emilie Linick, Senior Loan Officer Equitable access to education provides all children with the chance to live up to their full potential and lead choice-filled lives. With racial and socio-economic inequity growing across the nation, high-quality education is crucial to giving students from low-income…

By Michelle Betton, Writer ​Across the country, unemployment numbers are down and the news talks of economic recovery and the booming stock market. Outside of that news, however, are many people who are still struggling to achieve equal opportunity and prosperity with the rest of…