Report

Mapping the Journey to Impact Investing

The Surdna Foundation

Earlier this year, the Surdna Foundation announced the creation of a $100 million impact investment fund (roughly 10 percent of their portfolio) in order to align their investment practices with their grant making activities. This new guide distills the lessons learned in establishing the fund, including their research on the spectrum of mission investment tools available to philanthropy, detailed information on their internal processes and timeline, and discussion of key milestones and challenges.

Closing the Women's Wealth Gap: What It Is, Why It Matters, and What Can Be Done About It

Heather McCulloch

While the pay gap between men and women is widely discussed, the wealth gap is even more pronounced: single women own 32 cents for every dollar owned by men, with women of color owning pennies to the dollar. This new report from the Closing the Women’s Wealth Gap Initiative discusses the systems and dynamics that generate this gap, including disparate access to business equity and home ownership opportunities. The author recommends tax reforms that make wealth building subsidies more accessible to women of color in particular, as well as strategies like cooperative ownership and more flexible savings account options.

Advancing the Anchor Mission of Healthcare

Nancy Martin, on behalf of the Healthcare Anchor Network

In December 2016, leaders from 40 health systems gathered in Washington, DC to explore the potential to more fully harness their economic power to inclusively and sustainably benefit the long-term well-being of American communities. Together, they discussed best practices and strategies to advance the Anchor Mission of healthcare.

At the conclusion of the convening, the Healthcare Anchor Network was formed to support health systems collaborating nationally to accelerate learning and local implementation of economic inclusion strategies.

This report summarizes the events of that convening and next steps, inviting your hospital or health system to join the Network and help advance the Anchor Mission of healthcare in your institution, in your community, and nationally.

Reducing Income Inequality: How CDFIs Promote Job Quality

This report from the Opportunity Finance Network details how community development financial institutions (CDFIs) can support quality job creation as a way to reduce income inequality. Noting that this approach is currently underutilized in the field, the report draws on five case studies of CDFIs that are using tools such as debt and equity products, interest rate reductions, and technical assistance to not only grow small businesses, but ensure access to quality jobs for low-income communities. The report makes recommendations for how to scale this approach in the CDFI field.

Jacksonville’s Community Wealth Building Roundtable: Local Government Convenes to Seed a New Idea for Community Development

Michelle Barth

A detailed look at how a municipal government can plan and carry out a successful community wealth building roundtable, from the perspective of the Mayor's Deputy Chief of Staff in Jacksonville, Florida.

Can Hospitals Heal America's Communities?

Ted Howard and Tyler Norris

The Democracy Collaborative

Healthcare’s role in creating healthy communities through increasing access to quality care, research, and grantmaking is being complemented by a higher impact approach; hospitals and integrated health systems are increasingly stepping outside of their walls to address the social, economic, and environmental conditions that contribute to poor health outcomes, shortened lives, and higher costs in the first place.

Equitable Investments in the Next Generation: Designing Policies to Close the Racial Wealth Gap

Laura Sullivan, Tatjana Meschede, Thomas Shapiro, Dedrick Asante-Muhammed and Emanuel Nieves

Median Latino and Black households have over $100,000 less in wealth than median White households, a disparity that persists despite reductions in income inequality. This new report from the Institute on Assets and Social Policy and CFED puts forward a “racial wealth audit” framework, assessing how specific policies either lessen or inadvertently perpetuate the racial wealth gap. The authors call for “targeted universalism” noting that policies such as Children’s Savings Account and eliminating student debt will only successfully address the racial wealth gap if they focus in particular on low income households.

Working Together: A Report on the First Year of the Worker Cooperative Business Development Initiative (WCBDI)

Gregg Bishop and Lisette Camilo

This report outlines the activities and accomplishments of the ten partner organizations that participated in the first year of the WCBDI. We look forward to continuing to assist the development of worker cooperatives in New York City through the WCBDI.

Financing Equitable TOD in Denver, San Francisco, and the Rest of the Nation

Marcie Elizabeth Parkhurst

Measuring the "Impact" in Impact Investing

Ivy So and Alina Staskevicius

The aim of this study was to deepen the understanding of the specific practices and methodologies that established impact investors are using to measure the social impact generated by their investments, and to analyze the conditions under which each measurement method is most relevant. The intended audience for our analysis is impact investors themselves, as well as social sector organizations, traditional funders, and evaluators.

Beyond Beauty: The Opportunities and Challenges of Cosmetically Imperfect Produce

JoAnne Berkenkamp

Report No. 3: Fresh-cut Processing and Foodservice Distribution

CRA Performance Context: Why it is Important for Community Development and How to Improve it

Josh Silver

This white paper explains performance context analysis and explains why it is important from a community perspective. It first discusses the definition of performance context referencing CRA regulatory documents. Second, it reviews current thinking regarding the implementation of performance context analysis. While the thinking has evolved, the federal agency implementation is still centered too much on the banks and not enough on the community perspective. Third, the paper will review examples of both poor and good performance context analysis in CRA exams. Fourth, the paper will offer some examples of data analysis and community group input that provides a foundation for improved performance context analysis.

Findings of the 2015 National Food Hub Survey

Jill Hardy, Dr. Michael Hamm, Rich Pirog, Dr. John Fisk, Jeff Farbman and Micaela Fischer

Food hubs—businesses that actively manage the aggregation and distribution of source-identified food products—are receiving continued, growing attention from diverse stakeholders who see food hubs as vectors for economic growth and social and environmental change. As consumer desire for local and regional foods continues to grow and evolve, food hubs are increasing in number and adapting to shifting demand from intermediated local and regional food markets. The 2015 National Food Hub Survey and its predecessor, the 2013 National Food Hub Survey, represent a broad effort to aggregate national-level data on the characteristics and impact of food hubs. Together, these surveys represent the beginning of a longitudinal database from a large, broad national sample of food hubs.

Using the STAR Community Rating System to Integrate Sustainability into Community Planning Efforts

Lacey Shaver and David Abell

One of the top reasons that U.S. cities and counties come to STAR Communities is because they are looking for ways to strengthen and support local planning efforts. This document is designed for local government staff and planners and provides guidance on how to use the STAR Community Rating System to integrate sustainability into comprehensive, strategic, and sustainability plans.

Origins and Evolution of the Community Land Trust in the United States

John Emmeus Davis

The story told here of the CLT’s origins and evolution will sort the model’s distinguishing characteristics into three clusters – ownership, organization, and operation – and then say how each of them came to be added to the definition and structure of the CLT over time. The reality was much messier, of course, with ideas and influences often leapfrogging the narrative boundaries between eras. History seldom unfolds as neatly in the living as it does in the telling.

Pay for Success: The First Generation

Dana Archer-Rosenthal

Pay for Success: The First Generation provides a look at the ten Pay for Success projects that have launched in the United States–projects that have finalized contracts and financing, and initiated service delivery as of March 2016. It offers detailed comparison of U.S. PFS projects and synthesizes observations on the market’s development to date. It is informed by Nonprofit Finance Fund’s unique and central vantage point in the U.S. Pay for Success arena. This report pulls from PFS contracts and other publically available documents, interviews with stakeholders, and incorporates information and observations gleaned by NFF through its more than five years of experience as a field builder, funding intermediary for PFS project development, and investor. It examines project goals and project design; the partners and stakeholders involved; the underlying data, evidence, and evaluation plans; the governance and investment structures, including repayment terms and investor profiles; and project costs. The report also provides key definitions for some terms, in an effort to further a common language for the PFS eld.

Healthy Communities of Opportunity: An Equity Blueprint to Address America’s Housing Challenges

Kalima Rose and Teddy Kỳ-Nam Miller

This paper offers a roadmap to face challenges in the housing sector and secure the nation’s future. The Obama Administration’s new Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, Affordable Care Act investments in health promotion, the recent Supreme Court victory for advocates challenging exclusionary housing policies, the deepening engagement of philanthropy, the growing demand for investments that improve sustainability and climate resiliency, and robust organizing by communities—all this adds up to the best opportunity in years to transform the nation’s housing infrastructure into an engine of health, opportunity, and prosperity for all.

Economic Impact Guidelines

Zoë Ambargis, Charles Ian Mead, Stanislaw J. Rzeznik, David Swenson and Janet Weisenberger

CDFI Futures: An Industry at a Crossroads

Jeremy Nowak

Opportunity Finance Network

This report examines growth obstacles and opportunities within the community development financial institutions (CDFI) industry. The report was motivated by a view among many practitioners and investors that the CDFI industry is at a pivotal time of change in response to new capitalization options, ongoing operating challenges, and shifts in the external environment.

In Pursuit of Deeper Impact: Mobilizing Capital for Social Equity

Katherine Pease

KP Advisors

This new paper from KP Advisors puts forth a vision of “impact investing for social equity.” Noting that conventional impact investment strategies still tend to prioritize the needs of investors over the needs of communities, the paper draws on interviews with leaders in the field who are using investments to address the root causes of social and economic inequality. The authors call on investors to shift their expectations with regards to levels of risk, return, and time frame, and to better involve local communities in the decision-making process:

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