Enterprises featured in the Building Resiliency Through Green Infrastructure report are creating a blueprint for other cities to follow as they work to protect their communities from the effects of climate change.
One goal for a lot of social entrepreneurs is for business ownership to be held by as many people as possible.
But that’s tricky for many reasons. Take the matter of financing. Funding inclusive models, as they’re called, is different from financing the usual suspects, that is, companies owned by the few that aim to maximize financial returns only.
“It’s not necessarily harder, but it seems harder, because it’s different,” says Majorie Kelly, executive vice president and senior fellow at The Democracy Collaborative. In other words, funders need a greater comfort level with these models before they dole out the money.
With that in mind, Democracy Collaborative recently published a report examining a variety of ownership models and ways to finance them. Here’s a look at a few, along with some innovative financing approaches...
In this blog for the Stanford Social Innovation Review, our Executive Vice President and Senior Fellow Marjorie Kelly delves into some of the groundbreaking models for inclusive ownership that are increasingly making an impact on the lives of workers and community members. Kelly offers these strategies as concrete and evolving ways to help equitably distribute wealth in the US and beyond, creating a sustainable and fair economic system:
The Stanford Social Innovation Review features our new report, Cities Building Community Wealth, emphasizing that the innovative collaborative approaches to economic development highlighted by author Marjorie Kelly are truly seeing results.
YES! Magazine talks to Marjorie Kelly about the seven drivers cities can use to develop economies that build community wealth detailed in our report, Cities Building Community Wealth.
Following the release of our report, Cities Building Community Wealth, journalist Anne Fields emphasizes the growing need for local governments to pass policies that benefit communities. Field draws examples from Marjorie Kelly and Sarah McKinley (co-authors of the report) that discuss the 20 cities highlighted in the report.
Next City reporter Oscar Perry Abello highlights the innovation inherent in the Democracy Collaborative report, Cities Building Community Wealth. Abello describes authors Marjorie Kelly and Sarah McKinley as important voices in exposing the Community Wealth Building movement, "a movement that has been brewing beneath the radar for at least 40 years."
Steve Dubb writes for the Stanford Social Innovation Review on the importance of having access to tools that educate and empower low-income communities to shape their economic future.
Empowering communities to take control of economic development is slow, patient work—and people funding or supporting it need to take this into account when assessing success. Long-term, place-based commitments are critical; parachuting in and out does little to build local capacity. And the metrics we use need to take into account the often intangible relationship-building that weaves together a truly empowered community; shortcuts and quick fixes can cause real damage.
In Next City, Oscar Perry Abello looks at how our new report Educate and Empowerhighlights key strategies for building stronger community wealth building initiatives.
“People know that there are door-knocking campaigns and community organizers do it all the time, but have they thought of this consciously as a tool for economic development,” explains Keane Bhatt, senior associate for policy and strategy at the Democracy Collaborative, based in Takoma Park, Maryland. Bhatt is co-author of Educate and Empower: Tools for Building Community Wealth, a report released today that features profiles of 11 organizations includingPUSH Buffalo.
“What we’ve done is go around to 11 different community-wealth building institutions to try to seek out from a broad diversity of initiatives some kind of underlying themes that are crosscutting in nature,” Bhatt says...
Goal is to Create Jobs with Innovative, Community-Based Economic Development
Mayor Alvin Brown today announced the members of a newly-formed task force to guide a Community Wealth Building Initiative that will focus on new strategies to create jobs and business opportunities in Northwest Jacksonville.
A Community Land Trust Bibliography, selected and compiled by John Emmeus Davis and published by the Center for Community Land Trust Innovation. This selection of books, articles, and films about community land trusts is updated four times a year.
