LISC Impact Notes to Help Bridge Racial Gaps with Project 10X

1.19.2021 - LISC Stories

Beginning today, LISC is initiating an important and heightened effort to close the racial, health, wealth, and opportunity gaps with Project 10X, our $1 billion commitment to addressing the health, wealth and opportunity gaps facing people of color throughout the country. Impact Notes will help support Project 10X for investors who want to align their values and investment strategy.

Project 10X—named for the tenfold difference in wealth between Black and White Americans—is a deepening of LISC’s efforts to catalyze opportunity for people who have not been able to fully participate in the nation’s prosperity, especially in communities scarred by decade after decade of racial discrimination.

Going forward, we will earmark $10 million of the proceeds from the sale of our Impact Notes to support this important initiative. The capital will help LISC take on the systemic underpinnings of racial inequality by financing community organizations, businesses and developers that can scale up proven solutions. The Project 10X goal is to move beyond incremental change with bold strategies that:

• Generate lasting equity and wealth through homeownership and small business ownership.
• Build credit and savings and strengthen financial institutions led by Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC)
• Invest in community health, digital access, education, arts, and justice
• Support quality jobs with good wages and benefits

All of that contributes to building the “beloved community” envisioned by Martin Luther King so many years ago and celebrated this week as part of his legacy. In fact, we see it in the progress LISC has supported over the last 40 years.

Our ongoing work to invest in economic development and living-wage jobs, for example, is a key part of our strategy for racial justice.

You can see that in west Philadelphia, where we provided acquisition financing to JASTECH Development Services to expand its green storm water infrastructure (GSI), lead safety, and urban agriculture fee-for-service workforce training programs and community engagement programs.

Founded in 1998, JASTECH is a minority-operated nonprofit that primarily serves persons of color through their literacy, arts and workforce development training programs. Their programs provide training to independent contractors, employees of utility companies and high school students to prepare them to earn living wage jobs, while contributing to the conservation of the built and natural environments and improving public health. JASTECH truly is a life-changing place of opportunity, especially as it continues helping clients navigate the dual pandemic of Covid-19 and systemic racism, both exacerbated by social determinants of health.

LISC has likewise provided a cumulative $9.9 million in loans to IMPACCT Brooklyn, an organization serving five neighborhoods in New York’s most populous borough, most recently a $500,000 predevelopment loan for new construction of a mixed-use supportive housing facility. IMPACCT is intensely engaged in the diverse communities it serves with financing for small businesses, counseling for homeowners, social services for at-risk and homeless residents, real estate development that fuels good housing and strong commercial corridors, and a range of education, job training and advocacy programs.

I mention IMPACCT because it is illustrative of LISC’s approach to comprehensive community development. While we provide financing for various development efforts and services programs, we also prioritize capacity-building that expands on-the-ground impact.

For IMPACCT that includes the efforts of Zachary Clark, a recent Morehouse graduate who served with the organization last summer as part of LISC’s COVID Relief Corps. Since then, Zachary has started a full-time LISC AmeriCorps service term with IMPACCT, where he is now stress-testing the organization’s housing portfolio to assess issues related to rent relief in the pandemic.

This reflects LISC’s comprehensive approach to investing, investing in ways that not only take on intersecting challenges, all in the same place at the same time, but that fuel locally driven solutions that build their impact over time. What’s more, in a week when we have seen so many images of community service, inspired by Dr. King’s words and example, I think it is worth noting that LISC AmeriCorps members are engaged in these kinds of efforts every day, working to make our communities stronger.

These examples are just a fraction of the more than $1 billion in grants, loans and equity that LISC invests each year, but I think they offer some important context to the goals of Project 10X. Millions of people face barriers to opportunity based on race. Our goal, whether through creative placemaking in Indianapolis or transit-oriented development in Phoenix or expanding digital access in rural areas, is to break down those barriers so families and communities can flourish.

It requires, as Dr. King said so many years ago, the “fierce urgency of now.” As individuals, we now can invest our dollars through the Impact Notes program to help catalyze opportunity and make justice a reality for all.

For more information on LISC’s Impact Notes and opportunities related to Project 10X, visit lisc.org/invest.

Anna Smukowski, Senior Director of Capital Programs, Enterprise Community Loan Fund
Anna Smukowski serves as ECLF’s senior director of capital programs, assisting ECLF’s capital and lending teams with capital raising and fund structuring. Prior to this position, she led LISC’s $200 million retail note offering, coordinated LISC investor relations and positioned LISC’s capital raising within ESG, impact and social bond frameworks. Anna also managed $50 million in LISC’s Paycheck Protection Program deployment and has structured and managed affordable-housing and economic-development funds as well as pay-for-success work through a Social Innovation Fund grant award. Anna is passionate about values-aligned investing from the individual to the institutional level and has worked on updating and implementing missionaligned investment policy statements at LISC and ECLF. Anna started her career as a strategy and operations consultant at Deloitte. Anna holds a bachelor of science degree from New York University Stern School of Business and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Disclaimer: This is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Such an offer is made only by means of a current Prospectus (including any applicable Pricing Supplement) for each of the respective notes. Such offers may be directed only to investors in jurisdictions in which the notes are eligible for sale. Investors are urged to review the current Prospectus before making any investment decision. No state or federal securities regulators have passed on or endorsed the merits of the offering of notes. Any representation to the contrary is unlawful. The notes will not be insured or guaranteed by the FDIC, SIPC or other governmental agency. 

Impact Notes currently are not offered to residents of Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington.