Ten years ago, Capital Impact Partners received an invitation from the Kresge Foundation to join in an effort to support Detroit as the city was reeling in the turbulence of the great recession. It was a seminal moment in our organization’s history, resulting in key shifts to our strategy and how we thought about investing — not only in buildings — but in communities.
After a decade of working side-by-side with Detroiters, I felt it was a good time to reflect both on our accomplishments, but also on what we have learned about building resilient communities.
That first effort, as part of the Living Cities “Integration Initiative,” sought to drive reinvestment along the Woodward Corridor and generate benefits for area residents. Kresge, the Skillman Foundation, Midtown Detroit Inc, Invest Detroit, Vanguard CDC, and the City of Detroit served as local partners.
The Auburn brought affordable housing, retail options, and jobs to its community, and proved the need for developments of its kind.
One key project was the Auburn, a mixed-use property providing much-needed retail and affordable residential space. It proved the demand existed and illustrated how to co-locate much-needed services, create jobs, and draw in surrounding investments.
We also joined with Kresge, Southwest Solutions, and Vanguard CDC to support the Restore North End program. That program was designed to support existing homeowners in their effort to rehabilitate their residences and create neighborhood vitality, stability, and increase market values — key drivers of long-term wealth building.
As a result of what we learned, a light bulb went off, marking a strategic shift for Capital Impact’s traditional national lending approach.
It taught us the importance of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with communities, listening to their challenges, building trust, and understanding the vision residents have for their own neighborhoods to help them create those solutions.
This shift required us to focus all of our efforts — financing, capacity building, policy engagement, local partnership development — in one place to accelerate the change residents were leading. We pivoted from investing in buildings to investing in people, and working to address root challenges that have created obstacles to success.
Through the Detroit Neighborhoods Fund, we were able to finance 11 high-impact developments, including Ranier Court.
While we were proud of the impact of these projects, analysis revealed much of our lending, while achieving positive outcomes, was not serving real estate developers who lack access to traditional banking solutions.
This realization required us to better address the needs of these developers. With local guidance, our EDI program was created in 2018 to provide these individuals with training, mentorship, and connections to secure financing. We’ve trained 86 developers, many who have gone on to create their own organizations, build local projects, and develop peer-to-peer networking circles.
Graduates of our EDI program have the opportunity to re-envision and revitalize their communities while building generational wealth.
Ultimately, program graduates began teaching us. They pointed out that while they learned important skills, we were not actually financing their projects. Like many traditional lenders, our underwriting standards remained a barrier. Here again we needed to revisit our credit guidelines to serve those developers. With EDI graduates’ input, we created the DiD – Detroit Loan Fund in 2020 to expand our lending criteria in a way that met their needs. We received over $100 million in applications and look forward to announcing the projects we will be supporting.
As we look to the next decade, our efforts to champion economic prosperity continue. With CDC Small Business Finance, the nation’s leading mission-based small business lender, we created an ambitious new enterprise to innovate how capital and investments flow into communities to support economic mobility and wealth creation.
I am proud of what our $300 million in investments have meant in terms of greater access to affordable housing, quality healthcare and education, healthy foods, and small business entrepreneurship.
I’m equally proud of our ability to recognize our need to understand the city better and create local strategies that deliver the results Detroiters need. For that, I want to extend gratitude to our local partners and guides. We are taking these lessons learned to other cities to create the change that is so desperately needed.
At the same time, it has to be acknowledged that we have work ahead of us. Development in Midtown and Downtown is still coming at the expense of residents living with low incomes who are experiencing rising rents and housing insecurity. The expanding wealth gap also underscores long-standing issues we must face head on.
As we look forward to the next 10 years of working in the city, we must continue to be vigilant that our work centers Detroiters.
Ellis Carr is now the president and CEO of Capital Impact Partners and CDC Small Business Finance. Kurt Chilcott, formerly president and CEO of CDC Small Business Finance, has transitioned to Board Chair of the combined organization. We invite you to learn more about our new enterprise at www.investedincommunities.org
CDC Small Business Finance and Capital Impact Partners recently announced a new alliance between the two companies.
We recognized that we had a special opportunity to create greater change together than we could individually in the communities we serve and beyond. This is an exciting journey we are embarking on and we want to share how the idea of creating an alliance came about and our vision for the future.
Tune in to the last video of our “CEO Conversations” series, “Moving Beyond the Status Quo.” Listen to CDC Small Business Finance’s CEO, Kurt Chilcott and Capital Impact Partners CEO, Ellis Carr discuss how the alliance will disrupt and to call to question the current operating practices to bring change to communities.
Ellis Carr is now the president and CEO of Capital Impact Partners and CDC Small Business Finance. Kurt Chilcott, formerly president and CEO of CDC Small Business Finance, has transitioned to Board Chair of the combined organization. We invite you to learn more about our new enterprise at www.investedincommunities.org
CDC Small Business Finance and Capital Impact Partners recently announced a new alliance between the two companies.
We recognized that we had a special opportunity to create greater change together than we could individually in the communities we serve and beyond. This is an exciting journey we are embarking on and we want to share how the idea of creating an alliance came about and our vision for the future.
Check out our 5th episode of our “CEO Conversations” series, “Disrupting the Distribution Channels.” Listen to CDC Small Business Finance’s CEO, Kurt Chilcott and Capital Impact Partners CEO, Ellis Carr discuss the opportunity ahead to disrupt the current distribution channels in order to get more capital to underserved communities.
Ellis Carr is now the president and CEO of Capital Impact Partners and CDC Small Business Finance. Kurt Chilcott, formerly president and CEO of CDC Small Business Finance, has transitioned to Board Chair of the combined organization. We invite you to learn more about our new enterprise at www.investedincommunities.org
CDC Small Business Finance and Capital Impact Partners recently announced a new alliance between the two companies.
We recognized that we had a special opportunity to create greater change together than we could individually in the communities we serve and beyond. This is an exciting journey we are embarking on and we want to share how the idea of creating an alliance came about and our vision for the future.
Check out our fourth episode of our “CEO Conversations” series, “Redefining the Paradigm.” Listen to CDC Small Business Finance’s CEO, Kurt Chilcott and Capital Impact Partners CEO, Ellis Carr discuss the alliance’s goal to use new mechanisms to unlock impact capital so it can be effectively utilized in underserved communities.
Ellis Carr is now the president and CEO of Capital Impact Partners and CDC Small Business Finance. Kurt Chilcott, formerly president and CEO of CDC Small Business Finance, has transitioned to Board Chair of the combined organization. We invite you to learn more about our new enterprise at www.investedincommunities.org
CDC Small Business Finance and Capital Impact Partners recently announced a new alliance between the two companies.
We recognized that we had a special opportunity to create greater change together than we could individually in the communities we serve and beyond. This is an exciting journey we are embarking on and we want to share how the idea of creating an alliance came about and our vision for the future.
Welcome to the second video of our new series, “CEO Conversations,” where CDC Small Business Finance’s CEO Kurt Chilcott and Capital Impact Partners CEO, Ellis Carr discuss the new alliance.
Ellis Carr is now the president and CEO of Capital Impact Partners and CDC Small Business Finance. Kurt Chilcott, formerly president and CEO of CDC Small Business Finance, has transitioned to Board Chair of the combined organization. We invite you to learn more about our new enterprise at www.investedincommunities.org
CDC Small Business Finance and Capital Impact Partners recently announced a new alliance between the two companies.
We recognized that we had a special opportunity to create greater change together than we could individually in the communities we serve and beyond. This is an exciting journey we are embarking on and we want to share how the idea of creating an alliance came about and our vision for the future.
As of July 1, 2021, Ellis Carr is now the president and CEO of Capital Impact Partners and CDC Small Business Finance. Kurt Chilcott, formerly president and CEO of CDC Small Business Finance, is transitioning to Board Chair of both organizations.
In 2020, Kurt Chilcott and Ellis Carr sat down for a video series of conversations about our alliance. You can also watch the whole video series here.
By Ellis Carr, President and CEO
Since 1982, Capital Impact Partners has helped people build communities of opportunity that break barriers to success. We have done that through learning and evolving with a range of investors, donors, community partners, and other Community Development Financial Institutions.
As we looked to the future, we saw a tremendous opportunity to do more, give more, and make a bigger difference. With that in mind, more than a year ago, we began conversations with CDC Small Business Finance. Together, we recognized how our similar visions and complementary expertise, services and financing products could create a change that neither of us could accomplish independently.
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.
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.
Despite the challenges, positive outcomes are achievable. Capital Impact aims to fund schools willing to rise to the challenge and create and maintain diverse by design school campuses.
Our extensive research yielded examples of several best practices for schools pursuing the diverse by design model, including:
Locating schools in naturally diverse neighborhoods or on the border of racially or socio-economically diverse communities;
Instituting a weighted lottery system for student recruitment that takes into account socio-economic status, parental education levels, and/or census tract;
Training teachers and staff on equitable and culturally responsive pedagogical practices and recruiting diverse personnel; and
Promoting the benefits of integration to students, families, and communities.
Montessori for All students help break ground on their “diverse by design” school building.
Capital Impact has presented these findings, in partnership with thought partners and schools at the National Charter School Conference, the Central Valley Leadership Program, and a gathering hosted by the Diverse Charter Schools Coalition.
These schools are promoting academic excellence for all by creating inclusive and nurturing environments in which all students have equitable opportunities to succeed, and we look forward to collaborating to continue this progress.
For more about how Capital Impact is working to support the “diverse by design” model, we invite you to learn more about our overall education work and strategy behind why we finance charter schools.
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