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 supporting civic engagement in communities. Her expertise as a lawyer and civic organizer for communities of color nationwide aligns strongly with our work, which is why we are honored to have her as a board member.
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 where Barker found the first apartment that she called home.
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 growing by the day. These “returning citizens” face a shocking number of barriers upon re-entry that often prevent them from securing jobs, housing, education, business loans, and other keys to social and economic security.
Ron Kelly and Laurin Leonard talk opportunity for returning citizens in the Money + Meaning podcast.
This summer, Capital Impact Partners’ Director of Impact Strategy Ron Kelly joined Mission: Launch’s President & Executive Director Laurin Leonard to discuss the “unlikely” partnership between these two organizations to address this important issue.
In early 2018, the organizations hosted a convening on the role that financial institutions can play in improving the financial stability and prosperity of individuals living with criminal records, or returning citizens, in the Washington, D.C. area. It brought together banks, nonprofits, and government agencies to think through the barriers that returning citizens face, how those impact them financially, and what these various actors can do to create an environment in which returning citizens can thrive.
How did this partnership come about? Listen to the podcast and find out!
Episode 12: Unlikely Allies Interview: Capital Impact + Mission:Launch
In this podcast episode of Money + Meaning, Lindsay Smalling interviews Laurin Leonard and Ron Kelly of Capital Impact about this challenge and their efforts to create opportunities for returning citizens that could create pathways to financial stability for millions of Americans.
Mission:Launch is an organization dedicated to improving the financial health and social outcomes for Americans with arrest or conviction records. Capital Impact Partners is a Community Development Finance Institution (CDFI) that has been a leader in the impact investing space for decades. These two unlikely allies have partnered to find ways to move a third of our population out of — in the words of Mission:Launch Co-founder Laurin (Hodge) Leonard — “perpetual disenfranchisement and an invisible life sentence.” Together, they are working to raise awareness among CDFIs and traditional banks of how they can tear down barriers that are locking people with arrest and conviction records out of economic opportunities.
This blog post originally appeared on the Social Capital Market (SOCAP) website. For the original post, please visit this website.
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 our offsite in our backyard: Washington, D.C. Being a mission-driven organization, we also sought to live out our values and be “of” our Washington, D.C. communities by getting out from behind our desks and serving those who need the most support.
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 tackle; they require bold thinking and brave action in order to create transformative change for those underserved communities that experience these inequities.
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.
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.
A veteran of the Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) sector, Scott Sporte has helped shape Capital Impact Partners’ lending priorities and has envisioned innovative pathways for supporting our communities. Scott recently transitioned from his role as Chief Lending Officer to a new role within Capital Impact, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer.
In this interview, Scott discusses new focuses for CDFIs, outlines his vision for his role, and describes how championing equity and inclusion can transform the communities that Capital Impact serves.
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 is to develop tools for and with our communities that amplified their voices and created hope, shared prosperity, justice and inclusion.
Throughout our Annual Report, you will find personal stories of impact illustrating how we use financial innovation and programmatic development to unlock capital in support of social and racial justice efforts taking place across the country.
In Washington, D.C., you will meet Diana, a mother of three, who is furthering her own education at the same school as her youngest child thanks to Briya Public Charter School’s innovative “two generation” model. In addition, access to health care is only steps away at Mary’s Center, which co-locates space to serve the students, their families, and the community at large.
Across the country in Washington State, you will meet 75-year-old Rae, who joined a home care cooperative and now owns a stake in her future. Cooperatives like the one that Rae joined believe in democratic member control and member economic participation. As a result, Rae is now earning a living wage while also having a management share in the company.
We’ll also take you along with the doctors at Ole Health who are bringing their services to their local community to ensure equitable access to care for those who do not or cannot visit their health centers in Northern California.
And in Detroit, we will introduce you to Alisha, Chase, and Damian, three inspiring individuals who are part of a larger group participating in our first EDI cohort. Through training and mentorship, we are working with minority real estate developers in Detroit to help change the face of the development community and empower local developers to bring their unique perspectives while shaping the resurgence of the city.
In addition to these stories of impact, we also had a number of key accomplishments in 2017, including:
Surpassing $2.5 billion in community investments since our inception spurred by our 2017 volume that topped $220 million across 10 different states and the District of Columbia — the highest volume in our organization’s history. Our investments created health care access for 200,000 patients, created 15,000 school seats, and supported healthy food access for more than 45,000 customers.
Launching our $100 million S&P-rated Notes offering — the first offered by a Community Development Financial Institution on a continuous basis. Our Notes gave both retail and institutional investors the opportunity to invest in alignment with their values. Within just three months after our launch in the fall, we issued more than $44 million in Notes to support our mission.
Creating new capital-raising opportunities with Annaly Capital Management, a national leader in the Real Estate Investment Trust sector on an exciting new joint venture. This $25 million effort represents a unique opportunity to leverage these resources to invest $75 million in deserving communities.
We look forward to 2018 with great enthusiasm. We are well positioned to dive deep to further our impact, launch new social innovation programs, and create partnerships at community, regional, and national scales that empower communities and provide them with the resources they need to thrive.
The progress we have made would not have been possible without the support of our investors, funders, and our partners. We stand taller knowing that you are with us and we thank you for your unwavering support.
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 are a perfect way to describe Rosemary Mahoney and Paul Bradley, lifelong champions of cooperative development. This week, Rosemary and Paul join other cooperative heroes as they are inducted into the Cooperative Hall of Fame, commemorating decades as cooperative developers. Rosemary and Paul’s contributions to the cooperative industry are undeniable; both have shaped our cooperative framework through their work and insights. It is great to have two long-term innovators in the co-op space so closely connected with Capital Impact, and we are proud to see them join this illustrious group of cooperative visionaries. A brief look at each of their histories shows why they are truly Co-op Heroes.
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