Grant Highlights
Community Development
Chicago’s leading nonprofit housing-counseling agency has demonstrated leadership in combating the foreclosure crisis through its Home Ownership Preservation Initiative, a strategic partnership that has helped prevent 3,045 foreclosures citywide since 2003. With grant assistance, the organization is launching the Neighborhood Recovery Project as a model to address post-foreclosure issues in low-income neighborhoods.
The four-year, liberal-arts college and conservatory of music, founded in 1833, is the lead anchor institution for the Oberlin Project, a planned green redesign of the city of Oberlin that serves as a working model of environmental sustainability and economic development. This grant supports the redevelopment of a 13-acre block in the city center as a LEED-platinum Green Arts District and the launch of America’s first carbon-neutral community.
The national research and action institute is focused on advancing economic and social equity. This grant helped to fund program development and implementation at the fourth national equity summit, “Equity Summit 2011: Healthy Communities, Strong Regions, A Prosperous America,” which was held in Detroit in November 2011.
Established after Hurricane Katrina, the resident-led corporation and its development partners are engaged in a neighborhood planning process to reconstruct 556 affordable, “beyond green” homes in the Pontchartrain Park community, a multigenerational African American enclave. This two-year grant accelerates home construction and allows the corporation to meet its design-build aspirations for affordability and energy efficiency.
A leading innovator in the financing of neighborhood revitalization, the fund manages a capital base of $567 million, which it deploys as loans, equity, and alternative financing for housing, community facilities, and commercial real estate projects. This grant for general operations helps the organization create opportunity for low-wealth populations and further innovation in the community development sector.
Founded in New York City after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the restaurant-workers organization, with 8,000 members in eight locations, seeks to improve the pay and job conditions of the nation’s 10 million low-wage restaurant workers. This two-year grant supports the expansion of COLORS, a worker-owned cooperative restaurant that provides employment, job training, and a source of affordable local food to new sites in New Orleans and Washington and a second location in New York.
Seedco provides affordable financing and technical assistance to small businesses, nonprofit organizations, and for-profit developers providing services, housing, employment, or economic opportunities to residents of various communities. Funding for general operations enables the financial institution to keep capital flowing to viable projects and sustainable businesses.
Serving 12 southern states, the public foundation provides financial resources, technical assistance, and training to rural communities and nonprofit organizations seeking social, economic, and environmental justice. Grant funding strengthens general operations, allowing the foundation to diversify its funding and improve the capacity of its member partners to help low-income communities affected by Hurricane Katrina.
The organization is dedicated to achieving environmental justice through innovative and economically sustainable projects. This three-year grant supports the launch of the Fabrication Laboratory in South Bronx as a program to teach residents how to digitally design and fabricate products while fostering green innovation and entrepreneurship.
Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program focuses attention on the vital role cities play as engines of economic growth and global competitiveness. This grant supports a national summit to examine the future of the nation’s automotive communities and discuss innovative public-private partnerships for jump-starting economic transformation in these areas.