Equity Investments
The work of rebuilding neighborhoods—creating affordable housing, renovating a retail corridor or constructing a new school, recreation center or office building—doesn’t happen without financing. And just as with for-profit ventures, nonprofit development requires significant capital. But community development projects in disinvested neighborhoods have a much harder time attracting capital investment.
To help get funding into the places that need it most, LISC works with several investment companies—including our affiliates National Equity Fund, the New Markets Support Company and our new SBA lender immito—that bridge the gap between investors and projects in under-invested communities. We also provided initial capitalization to the Community Development Trust, the first real estate investment trust fund specializing in affordable housing.
Project Highlight: Fearless Fund
The Fearless Fund is a fund managed by women of color that invests in companies led by women of color. The Fearless Fund’s mission is to bridge the gap in venture capital funding for women of color founders building scalable, growth aggressive companies. LISC worked with Fearless to create institutional grade due diligence materials, which increased the fund size from a $2M target to $20M. LISC invested 500K of capital and enabled Fifth Third Bank to invest $250K through a donation to LISC.
