I was honored to join The Brookings Institution for a panel discussion on the state of Black businesses in America in partnership with the Path to 15|55 initiative. The panel amplified a new Brookings report taking a regional lens on Black business ecosystems.
Meet the ten regional community champions ensuring the flow of Advance Strategy capital to underserved and overlooked communities.
The Advance Advisory Committee collaborates with Mission Driven Finance to flow capital more equitably to small businesses and nonprofits.
The successful exit of the pre-development loan means construction has started! The first phase is scheduled to be completed in 2022.
Earlier this year we shared some exciting and bittersweet team changes. Now that we are heading into the final quarter of the year, we want to share more about how our team is growing.
This year, we opened the fellowship application to candidates nationwide. We received applications from 13 states, Washington, DC, and even one from another country!
How can investors and local business and nonprofit leaders address housing — and in particular attainable homeownership — through public-private partnerships? Our Chief Investment Officer Louie Nguyen looks at various approaches.
Tynesia Boyea-Robinson of CapEQ writes about Mission Driven Finance and portfolio company Carter Transportation Group in ImpactAlpha as part of its Impact Voices.
As Mission Driven Finance celebrates its fifth year flowing capital to community, we have seen our company grow and change many times, especially given our focus on being a deliberately developmental organization. This season feels like one of great change even with that mindset, and we want to make sure you learn about the latest team changes at Mission Driven Finance.
Hear from peer funders and investors on lessons learned in providing entrepreneurship funding and technical assistance for small businesses. Leave with practical strategies that you can explore and implement in your post-COVID resiliency funding.
We are proud to announce that the first cohort of the Community Finance Fellowship—Louise Jordan, Benson Ochira, Andrew Moncada, Essence Rodriguez, and Crystal Sevilla—is graduating.
Marking two major milestones, we are celebrating our fifth anniversary this month as well as having disbursed $11 million in assets to the small businesses and nonprofits dedicated to social change in the region.
One of the youngest people to support Mission Driven Finance portfolio companies, Rachel Lozano Castro leaned into her passion and know-how to organize a shared donor-advised fund (DAF) with her family that supports our flagship place-based strategy Advance.
Hear directly from the 2020 cohort fellows— Andrew Moncada, Essence Rodriguez, Louise Jordan, Crystal Sevilla, and Benson Ochira—about their career goals and their experiences thus far changing the face and flow of finance.
WES Mariam Assefa Fund, one of the visionary supporters of the Community Finance Fellowship, spotlights Mission Driven Finance.
The COVID-19 crisis has forced small businesses and nonprofits around the world, including our Advance borrowers, to forget business as usual and respond in creative ways to best serve their community and survive—quickly. From delivering essential household goods and locally sourced food to staying connected with families by livestreaming nature walks, these businesses and organizations demonstrate the flexibility, resilience, and heart that make small businesses critical for communities to thrive.
The Way Back uses trauma-informed care in its client activities—clinical groups, education groups, mindfulness meditation, relapse prevention groups, codependency groups, anger management, emotional regulation, and individual psychotherapy. “We are training men to be better fathers, better husbands, better employees, to stay out of prison, to work, to communicate,” says The Way Back Executive Director Chris Thomas, a licensed therapist who has been sober for 25 years. “Men are an important part of family structure, and addiction is a family disease.”
In our quest to increase economic opportunity for underestimated groups, we knew we’d want to emphasize supporting women and girls. With a diverse and largely female team, empowering more women has always felt natural to us. We’ve long wanted to connect the resources and needs of our community in new intentional ways that make a real impact on gender inequality.
