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…

By Ellis Carr, President and CEO This year has been a whirlwind for our country and for Capital Impact Partners. For all the headlines of stock market records and rising incomes, the reality is that too many of us across America are struggling. People of…

By Olivia Rebanal, Director, Loan Programs Community engagement is a critical component to our work at Capital Impact, particularly as supporters of innovative community-based work. As a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), we support community-driven solutions that address the economic, social and racial justice barriers…

By Nancy O. Andrews, Ellis Carr, Donald Hinkle-Brown and Joe Neri As leaders of four of the nation’s largest nonprofit community development financial institutions (CDFIs) with the mission of investing in low-income communities and entrepreneurs, we ask Congress to protect the desperately needed flow of…

By Ellis Carr, President and CEO The idea of “community” often conjures images of a geographic place, a shared space where people congregate. While true, communities can be so much more. Their true potential can manifest itself when they foster connections between individuals who share…

More than Money Podcast Interviews Ellis Carr, President & CEO of Capital Impact Expanding opportunities for residents in low-income communities is the focus of community development financial institutions (CDFIs). These mission-driven institutions prioritize social, economic and racial justice for underserved communities over and above profits,…

By Danielle Graceffa, Senior Director, Legal Services Real estate development has always been a risky proposition, fraught with numerous challenges that must always be carefully balanced against the promise of reward. Throw in the possibility of rehabbing historic properties and that risk-reward scenario is certainly…

By Emilie Linick, Senior Loan Officer, and Quanic Fullard, Impact Strategy Specialist Capital Impact Partners has long been driven by a mission to help people build communities of opportunity that break barriers to success. To that end, we continually look to expand our lending and incubate,…

By Kimberly Dorsett, Human Resources Director The concept of identity politics has had a lot of press of late. How do we, as professionals, as voters, as members of our community, as individuals, apply our own identity and personal narrative to our actions and convictions?…

By Ellis Carr, President and CEO and Scott Sporte, Chief Lending Officer Note: This Op-Ed originally appeared in the publication Capital Weekly. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s report The Supplemental Poverty Measure: 2015, nearly eight million people in California were living in poverty in…

Ellis Carr, President and CEO 2016 was marked by change—both for the U.S. and for Capital Impact. Our country witnessed a transition in leadership and with it words and actions that have divided our country. Part of this division included the voices of many who…

Natalie Gunn, Chief Financial Officer Capital Impact Partners ended 2016 in an extremely strong financial position with unrestricted net assets increasing by $2.4 million. As illustrated in our 2016 Annual Report, our loan portfolio grew by $26 million or 15%, and total assets grew by…