Mission Driven Finance (quietly) celebrated our seventh birthday this spring. Based on our experiences with human children of this age, it’s sure to be an era of great energy and transformation. So far that seems to be the case!
A few highlights for you from this spring of growth:
World Education Services (WES) Mariam Assefa Fund announced their lead commitment in MDF Capital Partners.
MDF Capital Partners is a new vehicle designed to address several systemic sticking points we have seen repeatedly through our work with dozens of community-rooted capital initiatives. WES is no stranger to MDF as they helped us build the Community Finance Fellowship program in 2019. We’re deeply grateful for their vision and partnership.
The Care Access Real Estate (CARE) investment trust is live!
We’re thrilled to be making moves on the first properties for this landmark child care REIT. Initial markets include Clark County, NV; San Diego County, CA; Southeast MI; and nationally in partnership with Wildflower Schools. The State of Nevada and Children’s Cabinet contracted with MDF for $7.8 million to help CARE build the supply of family child care homes in Clark County, offsetting renovation costs to make homes ideal for child care and making rent more affordable for our provider tenants. The County of San Diego has also extended a $1 million Congressional earmark to MDF for similar use there.
To learn more about CARE, check out this Asset Funders Network webinar that I recently participated in with our CARE San Diego partner, Eileen Calderon of Child Development Associates, and other wonderful colleagues.
Our partnership with Everytable, a social enterprise with the mission of making nutritious meals affordable and accessible, is off to a strong start with $12 million secured for the Social Equity Franchise Fund.
This fund managed by Mission Driven Finance expands on Everytable’s mission and makes a more accessible onramp for entrepreneurs of color to become Social Equity Franchise owners and build generational wealth.
MDF was selected to ImpactAssets IA 50 list for the fourth year in a row.
This is our second year being selected to their Manager list, a category for experienced impact fund managers with a minimum three-year track record.
Welcome Stephen Nunes as vice president of capital initiatives!
We’ve had the joy of collaborating with Stephen over the past few years in our joint engagements with fellow B Corporation Next Street where he was most recently a partner. Stephen will be helping to accelerate client strategies as well as leading public-private partnerships.
MDF co-founder & CEO David Lynn and I often get asked about our purpose. It’s all of this ☝️.
We wrote this North Star into the company theory of change:
“Financial systems that perpetuate poverty are flipped to systems that eradicate it.”
Systems change sounds really cool, but admittedly can be hard to picture. It is thrilling to see it coming into clearer focus, hopefully for you too.
Stay well and take care of one another,
Lauren Grattan
Co-founder & Chief Community Officer
