Solutions to “kitchen table” challenges like high housing costs, lending for small businesses and upgrading community infrastructure are not that different for “blue” urban areas and “red” rural regions.
ImpactAlpha is assembling a playbook for shared prosperity, a roster of what works in making less wealthy people more wealthy. The goal: Share the wealth.
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An earlier post highlighted playbook suggestions such as: Rebuild whole blocks of devastated urban neighborhoods to restore once-thriving Black neighborhoods without displacement. Organize owners of manufactured homes into co-ops to buy the mobile home parks where they live. And with shared equity, help business owners buy the commercial properties in which they operate.
Among the new contributions from Agents of Impact: community-owned fishing cooperatives, community investment funds to build local wealth and home ownership strategies that turn risk into opportunity.
Build fishing cooperatives to build power, create stability and keep income local
Community-based permit banks are emerging as a way to keep fishing permits, quotas or “catch shares” in the hands of local fishing communities. Without them, industrial fishing fleets, with more access to capital, can purchase the bulk of the shares, leaving few shares available to smaller-scale, local fishermen.
Catch Together, incubated at the San Francisco accelerator Multiplier, has launched the Catch Together Fisheries Fund to provide loans to community-based permit banks to purchase permits or catch shares. The mission, says Catch Together’s Rebecca Kern: “build community-owned fishing cooperatives that give power back to the people doing the work and living in the communities they care about.”
Catch Together helps fishermen and fishing communities create community-based permit banks with the buying power to acquire fishing quota and catch shares and ensure fishermen access to local fisheries. The permit banks, in service of sustainable fishing practices, generate cash flows that can support local stewardship and fund fishery improvements.
Democratize access to community investment funds to build local wealth
In many US neighborhoods, low-income residents are opting into community investment funds and vehicles, gaining access to local wealth-building assets, such as real estate and businesses, for rates as low as $100 a month (see for example, “This strip mall in Portland is helping neighborhood families build wealth and community ownership’).
Forming these community investment strategies require savvy mission-aligned lawyers, says Brian Beckon of PathLight Law (formerly Cutting Edge Counsel). The Oakland-based law firm works with social enterprises, cooperatives and community-based nonprofits on inclusive wealth-building initiatives.
“What we’re trying to create is opportunities for everybody to benefit from the economy,” Beckon told ImpactAlpha. Conventional fund structures, especially in alternative investments, often carry features that cater more to wealthier and accredited investors. “If you’re a worker, you’re creating wealth, you don’t keep it. If you’re a consumer, you’re transferring wealth.”
PathLight has provided legal services to create employee-owned businesses through employee stock ownership plans, employee ownership trusts and worker-owned cooperatives. That includes clients such as Kachuwa Impact Fund, a Boulder, Colo.-based investment cooperative and evergreen fund that raises capital from non-accredited investors via private stock offerings (see, “Kachuwa Impact Fund scores $3.2 million to bring cooperatives to impact investing”).
Other PathLight clients include Baltimore-based worker-owned conglomerate Obran Cooperative and Black Farmer Fund, a community-led collaborative fund that supports Black farmers, caterers, restaurant owners and food distribution businesses in the northeastern US.
“This isn’t what they teach in law school, and I assume, it’s not what they teach in business school,” “What they teach are the traditional ways of doing things so as to benefit the wealthy investors.”
Bridge capital gaps to create and preserve housing and homeownership
A typical homebuyer now needs an annual income of at least $114,000 to be able to afford a home priced at the national median average of $430,000, according to new data released by Realtor.com.
Impact Charitable is looking to mobilize some of the $230 billion sitting in donor-advised funds to create and preserve homeownership access in communities that are deemed “too risky” by traditional investors. The Denver-based nonprofit, since it launched a decade ago, has deployed over $13 million in philanthropic and investment capital in the past decade in stabilizing, preserving and expanding home ownership.
“Our housing investments span urgent direct cash programs that prevent displacement, to catalytic capital that supports cooperative housing, shared equity, and tenant-to-owner transitions,” says Impact Charitable’s Cindy Willard.
Impact Charitable has supported the Dearfield Fund for Black Wealth, which offers up to $40,000 in down-payment assistance for first-time homebuyers who have faced systemic barriers to owning a home. In its 2024 impact report, the nonprofit said it partnered with six foundations to mobilize $6 million through a blend of grants, investments and risk-absorbing capital on behalf of Dearfield, which has helped create access to homeownership for nearly 200 years.
Impact Charitable’s economic mobility program is helping aging homeowners of color maintain their aging properties and remain in their homes as they age. In a previous play: Miami-based Keepingly’s online platform helps first-time homeowners digitalize homeownership management to grow and preserve housing wealth. Maintaining a record of important documents helps owners pass the home down to future generations.
