by Chris Winters, YES! Magazine Traditionally, support for small businesses comes from organizations like Community Development Financial Institutions, or CDFIs, which have long been seen as a way to invest in historically excluded communities. But CDFIs, many of which are federally chartered, are still part of the mainstream banking economy, which means they need to meet…
Read MoreJessica launched The Runway Project with Self-Help Credit Union and enlisted leaders in the Common Future network to support. As a result, the Runway Project has grown into a thriving project in Oakland, California. It demonstrated something Jessica has always known: that the underlying problem is not so much related to the entrepreneurs as it…
Read MoreToday, the Boston Ujima Project is one of the best-known examples of democratizing control of capital in the United States. Ujima has created an impact investing fund where the community has decision-making power over investments to uplift local, people of color owned enterprises and grow community wealth. The fund is governed by voting members, all…
Read MoreMarch’s connections through the Common Future network enabled her to host workshops on succession planning for businesses in the area with Common Future Fellow Tomás Durán, and to connect with people in her region developing new models of economic change like Fellow Matt Stinchcomb of the Good Work Institute. Cohort learning with other place-based foundations…
Read MoreSeed Commons is a national network of locally-rooted, non-extractive loan funds that brings the power of big finance under community control. Seed Commons takes in investment as a single fund, then shares that capital for local deployment into cooperative enterprises by and for communities, lowering risk while increasing impact. Since their first national convening in…
Read MoreIt’s been three years since Darren Walker confronted the origins of modern philanthropy in his well-known essay: “Toward a new gospel of wealth.” In questioning the inherent tensions “between philanthropic efforts to address inequality and the structural economic realities that make it possible for foundations to exist at all,” Walker’s essay sent shock waves throughout…
Read MoreA common refrain in the impact world is “those who are closest to the problem are closest to the solution.” At BALLE, we remind ourselves that those most directly impacted by injustice have the greatest insight into opportunities for change. The leaders who we’ve been privileged to work with through the BALLE Fellowship live in and…
Read More