Cross-Sectoral

SUPPORT ORGANIZATIONS

African American Forum on Race & Regionalism
www.aafrr.org
The African American Forum on Race & Regionalism was initiated in 2002 and represents a joint effort of PolicyLink, the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, the Clark-Atlanta University Environmental Justice Resource Center, and the Sustainable Community Development Group. AAFRR aims to provide a place for interdisciplinary dialogue on regional equity, community wealth building, and sustainable development and to ensure that the voice and views of African Americans are included in these discussions.

Annie E. Casey Foundation, Making Connections Initiative
www.aecf.org/MajorInitiatives/MakingConnections.aspx
Started in 1999, the Making Connections Initiative is a 10-year project designed to promote and support local efforts to rebuild neighborhoods in 22 cities. The coalitions built include residents, community leaders, businesses, government officials, schools, faith-based groups, community development corporations, and other community-based organizations.

The Aspen Institute, Roundtable on Community Change
www.aspeninstitute.org
The Roundtable on Community Change was established in 1992 as a forum in which foundation sponsors, directors, technical assistance providers, evaluators, and public sector officials could meet to discuss the lessons that are being learned by comprehensive community initiatives across the country and to work on common problems they are facing. The web site includes a number of reports on the issues and obstacles that such efforts face.

Calvert Foundation
www.calvertfoundation.org
The Calvert Foundation invests in community development financial institutions and other community development non-profits working in urban and rural communities throughout the world. In addition to information about its social investment programs, Calvert also maintains on its website profiles of over 100 community-development corporations and financial institutions.

Ford Foundation, Asset Building and Community Development Program
www.fordfound.org/programs/assets
The Ford Foundation’s Asset Building and Community Development program helps strengthen and increase the effectiveness of people and organizations working to find solutions to problems of poverty and injustice. Foundation grants and program-related investments supports a wide variety of organizations pursuing community development objectives, including community development corporations, cooperatives, and community development financial institutions.

Innovation Network for Communities
www.in4c.net
Founded in early 2007 with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Innovation Network for Communities seeks to spur community wealth building by identifying and working with partner organizations to help develop and scale up innovations. The group’s current areas of focus include workforce development, urban sustainability strategies, urban low-income minority student learning strategies, and urban market-driven economic development strategies.

Knight Foundation National Venture Fund
www.knightfdn.org/default.asp?story=ventures/index.asp
The long-term goal of the National Venture Fund is to deepen the Knight Foundation’s impact by providing models, leveraging resources and influencing decisions that create systemic change across the foundation’s areas of funding interest, at the community level and ultimately across the nation. The foundation focuses its funding in 26 communities across the United States.

National Community Building Network
www.ncbn.org
Founded in 1993, the Network connects community builders involved in foundation-supported, comprehensive community initiative projects in cities across the United States to people and information to help them advocate for social and economic justice and support comprehensive community building in low-income communities.

National Vacant Properties Coalition
www.vacantproperties.org
A joint project of Smart Growth America (SGA), Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), and the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, the National Vacant Properties Campaign aims to help communities prevent abandonment, reclaim vacant properties, and once again become vital places to live. The Coalition aims to achieve these goals by developing a national network of vacant property practitioners and experts, research dissemination, advocacy, and local capacity building through technical assistance and training work.

PolicyLink
www.policylink.org
PolicyLink is a national nonprofit research, communications, capacity building, and advocacy organization working to advance policies to achieve economic and social equity. PolicyLink collaborates with a broad range of partners to implement strategies to ensure that everyone—including those from low-income communities of color—can contribute to and benefit from economic growth and prosperity. PolicyLink advocates for equitable public investment, the fair distribution of affordable housing, and community strategies to improve health.

The Praxis Project
www.thepraxisproject.org
The Praxis Project is a national, nonprofit organization that builds partnerships with local groups to influence policymaking to address the underlying, systemic causes of community problems.

Project for Public Spaces
www.pps.org
Founded in 1975, Project for Public Spaces has helped over 1,000 communities in 44 states and 12 countries improve their parks, markets, streets, transit stations, libraries, and other public spaces. The process used is a participatory one, based on surveying community members to develop projects, beginning with small-scale efforts, to meet their needs. One of the group’s projects involves the promotion of public markets, in which public markets are employed to spur local community wealth building. Examples range from an effort centered around local vendors in Athens, Ohio, to a transit-linked development project involving a local community development corporation in the Fruitvale neighborhood in Oakland, California.

Social Compact
www.socialcompact.org
Social Compact is a coalition of business leaders who seek to promote business investment in lower-income communities for the benefit of current residents. Social Compact aims to counter negative stereotypes – reinforced by poverty and a lack of dependable business-oriented market information—that lead to underinvestment in inner city markets. In particular, Social Compact addresses these issues by conducting its own highly detailed inner-city neighborhood market analysis (which it calls a “DrillDown” analysis) and through extensive municipal and community trainings and consulting work.

United Neighborhood Centers of America
www.unca.org
United Neighborhood Centers of America is a national association representing neighborhood-based community centers throughout the United States. Formerly known as the National Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers, it was founded in 1911 by Jane Addams and other pioneers of the settlement movement. Many of these settlement houses have expanded to become large community centers, whose programs include youth groups, senior services, neighborhood development projects, and services for immigrant and migrant workers.