For more than a decade, Detroit’s neighborhoods have been shaped by the quiet, persistent work of community development organizations. They are the groups keeping a block club active, turning a vacant lot into a community garden, building affordable housing on a long-neglected street, and helping residents access the services that make daily life possible. Now, 37 of those organizations are coming together in the largest collaborative effort of its kind in the city.

Enterprise Community Partners has launched Phase III of its Community Development Organization Fund, a $27 million, three-year investment that brings every cohort from the fund’s previous phases into a single, unified group. The Kresge Foundation is among the philanthropic partners backing this round, joining the Ford Foundation, Gilbert Family Foundation, Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation, Hudson-Webber Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Ballmer Group in supporting what has become a national model for scaling community development.

The numbers from Phase II make the case for why this investment matters. Over the last three years, CDOs supported by the fund served 100,000 Detroit residents with everything from healthcare to youth programming to employment services.

They created or preserved more than 1,400 affordable homes and developed over 30,000 square feet of commercial space. Ninety-seven percent of grantees diversified their revenue sources, and nearly all expanded their programming, staffing or real estate activity.

Behind those figures is a simple but powerful idea: when community-rooted organizations receive flexible, multi-year operating support paired with hands-on technical assistance, they don’t just survive, they grow. They become the kind of civic infrastructure that holds neighborhoods together when conditions change.

“In neighborhoods across the country, and especially in Detroit, community development organizations serve as essential civic infrastructure,” said Ayonna Blue Donald, vice president and interim Detroit market leader at Enterprise. “The CDO Fund’s flexible, multi-year operating support has provided game-changing security and support for CDOs to scale their impact.”

Phase III marks a turning point in how the fund operates. In earlier phases, grantees were organized into three separate cohorts based on size, capacity and focus. This time, all 37 organizations will work together as one. Community Development Advocates of Detroit, known as CDAD, will serve as lead facilitator, connecting CDOs to specialized technical assistance and shared services based on what each organization needs most.

“The CDO Fund has been instrumental to the organizations keeping Detroit’s neighborhoods whole and thriving,” said Madhavi Reddy, executive director of CDAD. “Each of them does monumental work in their communities, including providing services to residents, creating leadership opportunities for youth, developing deeply affordable housing and helping to shape the future of Detroit.”

For Kresge, the CDO Fund reflects a long-held belief that the people closest to Detroit’s neighborhoods are also the ones best positioned to lead their transformation. Strengthening the organizations they build and lead is one of the most direct ways to expand opportunity, preserve culture and ensure that the city’s growth includes the residents who have invested in it for generations.

Since the fund’s launch in 2020, it has grown from approximately $12.2 million in Phase I to more than $23.7 million in Phase II, and now to $27 million planned for Phase III. The trajectory tells a story of mounting confidence in a model that works, and of philanthropy meeting community leadership where it already lives.

Read more about Phase III of the CDO Fund on Enterprise Community Partners’ website.