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The Kresge Foundation
Expanding opportunities in America’s cities
Mission, Money & Markets The Kresge Foundation's Social Investment Practice team — and its partners and colleagues — shares lessons learned and the newest thinking on impact investing each month.
Mission, Money & Markets: The best kept secrets of the CDFI sector
May 22, 2019
The default image of a CDFI is a nonprofit, unregulated loan fund. In fact, half of the 1,100 certified CDFIs are not nonprofit, unregulated loan funds. Almost 30% are credit unions and about 20% are for-profit banks, bank holding companies, or venture capital funds.
Mission, Money & Markets: Building a more diverse impact investing field
March 19, 2019

Editor's note: This blog is republished with permission and first ran on Net Impact's blog, which you can find here. 

By Kim Dempsey

Kresge’s Social Investment Practice typically makes multi-million-dollar investments that both further our goals to expand opportunity for low-income people in America’s cities and return capital to the foundation to be recycled for another social purpose.

Guest Commentary: Opportunity Zone Incubator plays critical role in developing funds that will truly benefit communities
March 5, 2019

By Beth Bafford, Calvert Impact Capital
MISSION, MONEY & MARKETS: Transforming communities through Creative Placemaking in diverse New Jersey cities
January 30, 2019

By Kim Dempsey, Wayne Meyer and Regina Smith

Creative Placemaking is the integration of arts, culture and community-engaged design into community development. It capitalizes on the unique attributes of a community, realizes residents’ and merchants’ vision, welcomes newcomers and supports social and economic mobility for all. Kresge’s Arts & Culture Program has funded Creative Placemaking efforts since 2013.
Mission, Money & Markets: Our favorite investment highlights of 2018
December 17, 2018

By Kimberlee Cornett, Managing Director

On any given day, as we hustle to negotiate investments, get term sheets signed, and converse with partners inside our organization and out, it can be easy to lose sight of whether our work is making a difference. Are communities experiencing new levels of opportunity? Are individual lives improving through better access to housing, health centers, or financing for small businesses?
Mission, Money & Markets: Back office lessons from the impact investing front lines
November 20, 2018

By Amy Robinson

A foundation doesn’t decide to begin using its dollars in new ways lightly. That includes the decision to try impact investing alongside a grant making strategy.
Mission, Money & Markets: 6 takeaways from Opportunity Zones LOIs
October 1, 2018

By Rip Rapson
Mission, Money & Markets: Kresge supports the efforts of Native Hawaiians to topple barriers to home ownership
September 5, 2018
The path to home ownership in Hawaii is riddled with obstacles that many families just can’t overcome. Some Native Hawaiians will resort to building shacks of corrugated steel, for instance, on their parents’ or grandparents’ property, as they wait to receive the land the government has declared should be their birthright.