If you’re thinking, What a year, you’re not alone.
Through a rapidly shifting market, we doubled down on what matters most: deploying capital where it creates opportunity and strengthening the plumbing to sustain that flow for years to come.
A year of impact and momentum
We’re grateful for a year of meaningful growth: more capital flowing to community-rooted businesses, new funds built to meet real needs, and a stronger team and governance model to carry our mission forward. Some highlights:
- We deployed over $250M across 257 small businesses, social enterprises, nonprofits, and fund managers. We now manage 28 community investment vehicles—our own and those we designed with client-partners—with strategies at every stage of the fund lifecycle.
- Our client work supports other impact fund managers with strategic design, management, and administrative services. As part of our effort to fill common capital potholes for emerging managers, we invested MDF Capital Partners and launched Bold Line Capital.
- We continued to scale impactful strategies: Care Access Real Estate (CARE) owns 23 child care homes across three states, and is now pursuing commercial centers as well. The Indigenous Futures Fund led a landmark $9 million loan, weaving many Native finance partners together to construct a new regenerative flour mill. Working with local partners, we made our first small business loans in New Mexico as well.
- Our original homegrown fund for small businesses, Advance San Diego, started repaying investors, including full repayment to Living Cities, the first institutional investor to believe in our vision as an early manager in 2021. While this fund winds down, critical lessons live on in every fund we run.
- We added seven new members to the team! Meet Dave Anderson, Cornelia Cheng, Christopher Cote, Evren Ozargun, Lindsay Smalling, Jeannine Wolf-Omerza, and Laura Zillmer.
- Our reimagined employee ownership vehicle for Mission Driven Finance is designed to offer meaningful economic participation and governance rights to our team, making this work possible.
It’s a lot to accomplish in any one year, but I’m so deeply proud of this team and our partners for achieving these thoughtful wins in a wildly chaotic time. We also celebrate our team’s many personal developments this year, including promotions, an engagement, and new babies and grandbabies!
Going into 2026, I’m energized by the prospect of more meaningful deals, deeper partnerships, and a company owned by the people doing the work.
Be well and take care of one another,
Lauren Grattan
Co-founder & Chief Community Officer
