I hope you’re enjoying the warmth (not too much 🤞) and longer, luxurious days of summer. Our summer has been a little different as we welcomed a whopping 10 new teammates in the first half of the year, bringing us to 42 people across 21 states and five time zones. Naturally, we’ve had a heavier internal emphasis on integrating new folks and revamping processes to reflect the expanded team. Yet, we still built incredible momentum for community impact across the country last quarter!
Care Access Real Estate® (CARE) closed on its 16th property and already boasts nine child care provider tenants—four of whom are now fully licensed for large family child care operations. That equates to 48 seats of new licensed child care capacity through CARE.
We are thrilled to announce equity investments from the Annie E. Casey Foundation ($3M) and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation ($1.5M), two leaders in supporting early childhood, just in time to celebrate the one-year anniversary of acquiring our first property.
Laura Kohn, VP of Care and Education, was in Washington, DC for the inaugural National Childcare Innovation Summit. CARE got a special shoutout from Lisa Hamilton, President and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation!
In June, we joined with friends across the Initiative for Inclusive Entrepreneurship—a collaborative approach to support the $10B State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI)—at The White House and the U.S. Department of the Treasury, following our earlier visit in February. Stephen Nunes, VP of Capital Initiatives, and our partners from Change Labs and Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians Economic Development Corporation (ATNI-EDC) discussed funding for Native entrepreneurs and Tribal enterprises with public sector officials and funders.
On that track, Senior Director of Indigenous Futures Ted Piccolo and I spent time on the Santa Ana Pueblo in New Mexico speaking at the Oweesta Corporation’s 9th Annual Native CDFI Capital Access Convening and the 2024 SSBCI Tribal Government Summit.
While in New Mexico, Senior Director of Business Development and Partnerships Marquise Jackson and I connected with area business owners, partners, and our new colleague Bernina Gray who met us through the first wave of the Rematriating Economies Apprenticeship. Bernina will be our eyes and ears on the ground as we expand inclusive lending across the state through Advance New Mexico.
To learn more about this emerging loan program, catch a recording of the information session.
In a similar vein, we’ve grown our lending with Advance California from our roots in San Diego to now support small businesses and nonprofits statewide. In just a few months, we’ve lent nearly $4M—and through our partnership with Community Reinvestment Fund, USA, we can make larger loans available.
The ʻĀina Aloha Economy Fund, in partnership with Hawaiʻi Investment Ready (HIR), approved its first investment and also got spotlighted in a cool new publication about bioregional financing facilities. We co-hosted an info session for their alumni in June and look forward to flowing more capital to support a just and abundant island economy.
We’re excited to be using finance as a tool for change across these vehicles—and it’s an honor to continue building the field of impact investing as we’re playing on it. Our team has had the privilege of presenting at roughly 20 convenings this year on topics as varied as public-private investment, access to capital for small businesses, investing in Indigenous economic development, innovative legal structures to activate philanthropic capital, financing community climate infrastructure, and the future of the care economy. This is what co-creating an inclusive economy looks like!
However, in the spirit of summer, I am grateful for a break from public speaking in August. (That’s not an invitation to get me to another conference, by the way. Ten straight months with work travel is a lot, y’all.) If you haven’t taken a break for a summer picnic or other time outside yet, I encourage you to do so—we need everyone at their best to build the future together.
Be well and take care of one another,
Lauren Grattan
Co-founder & Chief Community Officer
