Inclusive Economy | January 10, 2018

Local impact investing: Progress, shifts and focus

ImpactAlpha
The team at

ImpactAlpha

Voices of leading community investing practitioners are on display in several articles featured in January’s “Community Impact Investing” issue of GreenMoney Journal, a sustainable-finance publication from Cliff Feigenbaum. For a movement that now spans the globe, the challenge for many is making it work at home.

Betsy Biemann and Keith Bisson of Coastal Enterprises, Inc. chart their organization’s growth from a small non-profit serving mid-coast Maine in the seventies to an enterprise with multiple subsidiaries that has extended its “rural expertise and mission impact to small cities and towns across the U.S.”

Deb Markley of LOCUS Impact Investing calls the uptick in impact investingat place-based foundations “a significant shift in how philanthropic assets are being used to build vibrant, prosperous communities.”

Laura Altomare of Homewise, a community-development finance institution that helps low-income New Mexican families achieve homeownership, says the fund’s ‘impact’ is in the “number of homeowners with decreased debt, increased credit and savings.”

You can also hear from Jamie Horwitz of Community Capital Management and Real Impact author Morgan Simon, in a Q&A with Feigenbaum.