Cross-Sectoral

Coalition for a Livable Future

Through research, policy advocacy, and public education, the Coalition for a Livable Future (CLF) works to create and preserve affordable housing; ensure clean water; protect open space, wildlife habitat and farmland; create living wage jobs; provide real transportation choices; and end hunger. CLF work emphasizes a cross-sectoral approach that stresses the interconnections between these issues. Read more about Coalition for a Livable Future...

Chicago Manufacturing Renaissance Council

Founded in July 2005, CMRC works to bring together regional labor, business, government, education and community leaders to develop “high road” economic development based on the developing of a high-value added manufacturing economy. The group's work has included the development of a public high school, Austin Polytech, which specializes in training its largely African-American student body that will enable students to graduate with industry-recognized credentials that are in demand by area manufacturers. Read more about Chicago Manufacturing Renaissance Council...

Center on Wisconsin Strategy

The Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS) is a research and policy center dedicated to improving economic performance and living standards in the state of Wisconsin and nationally. Based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with an office in Milwaukee, COWS promotes “high-road” strategies that support living wages, environmental sustainability, and innovative local polices that support community wealth building objectives. Read more about Center on Wisconsin Strategy...

Appalachian Center for Economic Networks

This organization, founded in 1985, has followed a local development strategy that includes owning and operating a community kitchen business incubator to support local food production and marketing, a community technology center subsidiary that acts as a business incubator and provides local business with high speed data services, and a community development loan and near equity venture fund. The group has also been a leading advocate of state support for community wealth-building efforts. Read more about Appalachian Center for Economic Networks...

Structured Employment Economic Development Corporation (Seedco)

Headquartered in New York and operating in 16 states across the county, Seedco strives to create better access to good paying jobs for low-income individuals in order to enable them to achieve financial stability and mobility. Since 2005, Seedco has helped more than 51,000 working individuals and families to access $71 million in work supports and government benefits and has provide counseling services for over 14,000 families threatened by foreclosure. Read more about Structured Employment Economic Development Corporation (Seedco)...

The Data Center (formerly named the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center)

Formed in 1997, the Data Center (formerly called the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center) aims to build prosperous, inclusive, and sustainable communities by making informed decisions possible.  To do so, it compiles, monitors, and analyzes data about New Orleans and the Greater Southeast Louisiana area on a daily basis, and creates numerous publications and tools to ensure its data reaches local and national stakeholders.  One of its publications, the New Orleans Index, which is produced biennially in collaboration with the Brookings Institution, is the most widely used means of trac Read more about The Data Center (formerly named the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center)...

Lower 9th Ward Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association (NENA)

Lower 9th Ward Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association (NENA) works to redevelop the Lower 9th Ward through projects and programs in affordable housing, economic development, and community education. Read more about Lower 9th Ward Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association (NENA)...

Mid-South Peace and Justice Center

The Peace and Justice Center was formed on MLK’s birthday in 1982. Their current programs and campaigns include JustPeace Memphis, Grassroots Organizers Training for Power (G.O.T. Power), GrowMemphis Urban Gardens, Alternatives to the Military Project, the Gandhi-King Conference on Peacemaking, Food Not Bombs, and the Peace Committee. They produce a quarterly newsletter called JustPeace and host Issues First, an anti-blight campaign that holds officials and lenders accountable. Read more about Mid-South Peace and Justice Center...

Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles

Focusing primarily on community organizing in South Central Los Angeles, Concerned Citizens is also involved with developing affordable housing, youth, and community sustainable programs. Having organized 57 block clubs to date, the organization’s strength comes from its ability to organize the local community to address local issues, such as improving the safety and appearance of neighborhood streets and alleys. Read more about Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles...

The Alliance for Multicultural Community Services

Originally established in 1986 as an alliance of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Loatian, and Ethiopian community organizations in Harris County, the Alliance for Multicultural Community Services has grown from an organization focused on refugee resettlement to one that benefits members of all nationalities across a multitude of sectors. Its Asset Building Department maintains two Individual Development Account programs (one with 1:1 match rate and other with a 2:1) and a micro-lending program. Read more about The Alliance for Multicultural Community Services...

City Connect Detroit

City Connect Detroit helps Detroit-area nonprofits and governments work together to solve local problems and mobilize funding to support their work.  To do so, the nonprofit provides four core services:  a) collaborative facilitation; b) incubation of innovation initiatives; c) fiscal and project management, accountability, and sub-granting support to grantmakers and other funding organizations; and d) training and technical assistance, especially around relationship building, collaboration, and fund development activities.  Since its establishment in 2001, City Connect Detroit has organized more than 40 community problem-solving initiatives and has helped raise more than $115 million.

Center for Community-Based Enterprise

Launched in 2006, the Center for Community-Based Enterprise (C2BE) seeks to build a network of mutually supportive cooperatives or worker-owned companies in Detroit, especially among members of historically underserved communities.  Focused on creating living-wage jobs through worker-ownership, the nonprofit provides legal help, technical assistance, and education to individuals interested in developing worker-owned cooperatives and other community-based enterprises. Most recently, its work has been credited with helping an Ann Arbor-based company, Arbor Assays, transition its ownership to its employees—becoming the first U.S. life sciences company to be 100 percent employee-owned.

Urban Land Conservancy

Founded in 2003, the Urban Land Conservancy (ULC) acquires, develops, and preserves community land and assets in urban areas for schools, affordable housing, community centers, and office space for non-profits. Securing land at today’s prices allows ULC to ensure that the space will remain affordable and accessible for future community endeavors. ULC also provides capital, resources, and coordination to other organizations for community development projects.  As of 2015, ULC had invested nearly $68 million in community real estate, leveraging $115 million for the development of affordable housing and nonprofit facilities.

Cross-Sectoral

Gilded Giving

Institute for Policy Studies

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. 

Making the Case for Linking Community Development and Health

Edmonds et al

This report, published in partnership by the Center on Social Disparities in Health, the Build Healthy Places Network, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is a "resource for those working to improve low-income communities and the lives of the people living in them." Despite growing recognition that social and economic conditions are the primary drivers of health, the fields of community development and public health remain siloed. This new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Build Healthy Places Network outlines specific opportunities to integrate the two fields and overcome barriers to collaboration. It also includes recommendations on how to measure the impact of cross-sector collaborations and refine programs accordingly.  

Community Tool Box

The Community Tool Box, a project of the Kansas University Work Group for Community Health and Development, is the world's largest resource for building capacity for community health and development. Their website provides guidance in developing community-building skills, models for taking action, and success stories in community development. Users of the site can access toolkits for various steps in the community work process, information on how a community-focused organization can develop necessary skills, troubleshooting guidance, databases of best practices, and experts ready to answer questions.

Big Ideas for Jobs

An initiative of the University of California, Berkeley with the support of the Annie E. Casey Foundation and W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Big Ideas for Jobs is an effort to tackle unemployment in the short-term. Bringing together more than a dozen experts from a variety of fields, the project tasked them with coming up with job creation ideas that require limited investment and are practical, tested and available to low-skilled workers. In addition to listing the many reports and ideas for this initiative, the website also allows for visitors to submit their own short-term employment ideas to be considered for inclusion in the next Big Jobs report.

Center for Community Capital, University of North Carolina

The Center for Community Capital conducts research on the role of CDCs and CDFIs, with a focus in three areas; 1) Exploring ways to leverage electronic banking technology to create new markets for financial services and savings accumulation opportunities for residents of underserved communities; 2) Supporting community wealth-building through home ownership; and 3) Documenting the business potential of America's urban and rural emerging markets.

COMM-ORG

Founded in 1995 and hosted at the University of Toledo, COMM-ORG has evolved into a community of scholars, community organizers, community development workers, and others that looks at a broad array of community wealth building strategies. The website includes a wide range of scholarly articles and links to many other related sites of interest.

Demos

Founded in 1999, Demos is a multi-faceted research and advocacy organization that focuses on issues of democracy, the health of the public sector, and the creation of a public realm of debate and ideas. It also has an economic opportunity program that focuses on promoting new ideas in the areas of higher education, income and asset-based policy as means of building wealth among people of low and moderate incomes.

Innovation@cfed

innovation@cefd is a new resource site launched by CFED, a leading asset-building organization, which hopes to facilitate the next generation of effective strategies to build economic opportunity. The Innovators-in-Residence program will help identify individuals with promising ideas who would benefit from additional monetary and technical support.

Insight Center for Community Economic Development

Formerly known as the National Economic Development and Law Center, the Insight Center has restated its mission as “Helping people and communities become, and remain, economically secure.” The group works across sectors and has had a perspective of race to its work, including a project to expand the impact of experts of color in the savings and asset building field, as well as innovative research that will help strengthen minority- and women-owned businesses.

Institute for Comprehensive Community Development

A project of LISC Chicago, the Institute for Comprehensive Community Development works to build the capacity of community development practitioners by providing technical assistance to community development initiatives across the nation, highlighting and developing best practices and supporting public policy that effectively links government programs to community development.  The Institute focuses on a holistic approach that looks beyond single issue, project-based strategies and instead incorporates a broad vision of how local agencies, organizations and institutions can partner to improve a community's quality of life.

Institute for Local Self-Reliance

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance takes a comprehensive approach to community building. Its “Rules Library” provides a wealth of practical examples of local legislation that has supported local community wealth-building efforts and can be used as templates for similar efforts in other communities. The ILSR web site also contains many publications on efforts to develop environmentally sustainable businesses as part of a community wealth-building strategy.

Institute for New Economic Thinking

Founded in October 2009, the Institute for New Economic Thinking is a nonprofit that seeks to promote changes to our current economic system and support new paradigms in the understanding of economic processes through conferences, grants and education initiatives.  George Soros has pledged $50 million over ten years to fund this Institute; the majority of the funds will finance grants.

Our Native Circle

Our Native Circle serves as an online community and resource where Native and non-Native community economic development practitioners can come together in force to share, inform, learn and connect. Site members include Native CDFIs (Community Development Financial Institutions), tribes, Native organizations, individuals, foundations, social entrepreneurs, investors, consultants, trainers and others working in and supporting Native community development.

Poverty & Race Research Action Council

Founded in 1990, the Poverty & Race Research Action Council aims to generate, gather and disseminate research on the relationship between race and poverty, and to promote policies and practices that alleviate conditions caused by the interaction of race and poverty.

Pratt Center for Community Development (PCCD)

PCCD helps advance public policy that supports sustainable, equitable, community-led development. PCCD's research and advocacy efforts have included the promotion of inclusionary zoning, support for mutual housing associations, publishing oral histories of community development corporations, and participation in the successful effort to establish an affordable housing trust fund in New York State.

Stablecommunities.org

Providing community-based solutions to the foreclosure crisis, Stablecommunities.org is a new resource site for community development practitioners. Sponsored by NeighborWorks, the site features sections on how to address the increase in vacant property, on gathering support from various programs and partnerships, and on advocating for policy changes on the state, local and national level.

Sustainable Communities Resource Center, HUD

The Sustainable Communities Resource Center compiles research, reports, and new ideas that support local and regional strategies for sustainable housing and planning.  In partnership with federal agencies and local communities, the mission of this office is to promote sustainable communities by fostering local innovation, job creation, and building a clean energy economy. Their Sustainable Communities Initiative facilitates a comprehensive regional plan to direct state, metropolitan, and local investments into land, transportation, and housing development.

Vital Communities Toolbox

Maintained by the Planning Department of Tompkins County (Ithaca and environs) in upstate New York, this website contains an "A-Z" listing of different community wealth-building tools, ranging from business incubators to community land trusts to transit-oriented development, to name just a few of the topics.

Yellow Wood Associates

Yellow Wood Associates is a women-owned, small business, consulting firm focused on rural community economic development. Working with federal, state, and local governments, non-profit organizations, community groups and foundations, Yellow Wood strives to allow communities and their economies to reach material sufficiency, not maximization, and to promote responsible stewardship of shared natural resources. Yellow Wood provides capacity building, a green community technology service, feasibility studies and economic and fiscal impact analyses for clients.

Vital Communities Toolbox

Maintained by the Planning Department of Tompkins County (Ithaca and environs) in upstate New York, this website contains an "A-Z" listing of different community wealth-building tools, ranging from business incubators to community land trusts to transit-oriented development, to name just a few of the topics.

Yellow Wood Associates

Yellow Wood Associates is a women-owned, small business, consulting firm focused on rural community economic development. Working with federal, state, and local governments, non-profit organizations, community groups and foundations, Yellow Wood strives to allow communities and their economies to reach material sufficiency, not maximization, and to promote responsible stewardship of shared natural resources. Yellow Wood provides capacity building, a green community technology service, feasibility studies and economic and fiscal impact analyses for clients.

Sustainable Communities Resource Center, HUD

The Sustainable Communities Resource Center compiles research, reports, and new ideas that support local and regional strategies for sustainable housing and planning.  In partnership with federal agencies and local communities, the mission of this office is to promote sustainable communities by fostering local innovation, job creation, and building a clean energy economy. Their Sustainable Communities Initiative facilitates a comprehensive regional plan to direct state, metropolitan, and local investments into land, transportation, and housing development.

Stablecommunities.org

Providing community-based solutions to the foreclosure crisis, Stablecommunities.org is a new resource site for community development practitioners. Sponsored by NeighborWorks, the site features sections on how to address the increase in vacant property, on gathering support from various programs and partnerships, and on advocating for policy changes on the state, local and national level.

Pratt Center for Community Development (PCCD)

PCCD helps advance public policy that supports sustainable, equitable, community-led development. PCCD's research and advocacy efforts have included the promotion of inclusionary zoning, support for mutual housing associations, publishing oral histories of community development corporations, and participation in the successful effort to establish an affordable housing trust fund in New York State.

Poverty & Race Research Action Council

Founded in 1990, the Poverty & Race Research Action Council aims to generate, gather and disseminate research on the relationship between race and poverty, and to promote policies and practices that alleviate conditions caused by the interaction of race and poverty.