As we wind down for our holiday break, we’re reminded how lucky we are to build an inclusive economy with partners and supporters like you. 2024 has been a real one!
💸 We facilitated investments into community across 14 funds, four of which were newly activated after much planning and capital raising in 2023.
🏡 Care Access Real Estate® (CARE) now owns 20 residential properties—13 tenanted with active child care providers.
🍟 It can seem like we’re doing everything and a side of fries—so we refined our work into three core investment strategies advancing an inclusive economy:
- “missing middle” small business financing
- social impact real estate, and
- supporting emerging managers
🖖 To do this work, our team has grown to 46 folks across 21 states. We also had three babies born to the team this year and many other personal milestones!
Mission Driven Finance is entering a new era—we are at an exciting inflection point on the path to mobilizing $1 billion of assets into community and cannot wait to fill you in with more details in the new year.
For now, I am happy to share that the Indigenous Futures Fund closed its first two deals supporting Native-owned businesses: Commercial Furniture Refinishers in partnership with the Cheyenne and Arapaho Community Development Corporation and GC Green in partnership with The Alliance CDFI (of the Yurok Tribe).
These loans help create impact at the business level through jobs and EV charging infrastructure, for the Indigenous entrepreneurs running these businesses, for our lending partners building their comfort and capacity, and for the Tribes putting the capital allocated to them by the U.S. Treasury to work in the community. It’s so fun working on these interlocking levels to build an inclusive economy together!
Be well and take care of one another,
Lauren Grattan
Co-founder & Chief Community Officer
