LISC and the Walton Family Foundation have announced the first recipients of the Spark Opportunity Grant Program, a $2 million initiative to provide planning grants to support the creation of affordable facilities for schools in Opportunity Zones and other under-resourced communities. Twenty-six high-performing schools will receive the initial round of funding, and a second round is already open to applicants.

Fifth Third Bank hosted an event at LISC’s national headquarters this week to announce $100 million in Opportunity Zone investments and tap LISC”s National Equity Fund (NEF) affiliate as one of its four investment partners. NEF will focus $25 million of Fifth Third’s capital to support housing developments for working families, building on its more than 30 years of investments in affordable housing.

Ensuring that Opportunity Zones investments benefit the people who live and work there was the crux of a recent roundtable led by LISC and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. An article on Medium.com by LISC’s George Ashton III and the Fed’s Adrian Franco describes the insights—and important takeaways—from community and economic development leaders on the front lines of helping stakeholders shape Opportunity Zone activity in their areas.

LISC and the Walton Family Foundation have launched a new grant program to help charter school operators open facilities in Opportunity Zones and other under-capitalized communities. Applications are available beginning October 1.

The Rockefeller Foundation today announced an innovative collaboration with LISC to implement the foundation's $5.5 million Opportunity Zone Capacity Building Initiative in Washington, D.C., Oakland, Newark, Atlanta, St. Louis and Dallas. LISC will work with city and community leaders to build pipelines of responsible development projects and business investments that attract private capital to Opportunity Zones with nearly 500,000 residents.

If Opportunity Zones are to empower residents, then directing OZ funds to education must be part of the investment equation. That’s the message of an in depth article in Education Next (published by Harvard’s Kennedy School) which cites LISC’s work in the Opportunity Zones—and our OZ playbook for community partners—as vital to helping residents reap the promised benefits of the tax legislation.