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!
Diversity is a strength, a great reducer of blindspots, and our industry has been woefully not diverse. This lack of diversity in finance perpetuates unequal access to capital and opportunity.
A year ago, we were certified as a B Corporation. This month we were named as one of the Best For The World for our incredible customers—the changemaking companies we support. We rank in the top 10% of all 3,000+ B Corps around the world for the positive impact we make together with our customers!
Cutting Edge Capital spoke with Mission Driven Finance Co-founders Lauren Grattan and David Lynn to talk about our mission, and how our community-first perspective guides us to find investment opportunities.
As lead investors in our Homebuilding Investment Fund, Kara Ballester and her husband Andy were instrumental in jumpstarting our efforts to accelerate affordable housing with San Diego Habitat for Humanity. We wanted to know—what motivated Kara to invest in affordable homeownership, and what has her experience with impact investing been like?
Our flexible, personalized financing approach allowed us to provide Friends of Willow Tree a $100,000 bridge loan that they used for expenses at the start of the school year, keeping the program affordable and accessible for their majority low-income students.
The idea for Advance came from speaking with people who wanted to invest in their communities and the issues that they cared about but didn’t know how.
When we first met Kris Schlesser, founder of LuckyBolt, he was six years into a quest to make the perfect breakfast burrito easily accessible to professionals on the go, and had been financing the business with high-interest credit cards and microloans.
Mission Driven Finance Co-founder Lauren Grattan reflects on building an inclusive, expansive economy after attending SOCAP’s SPECTRUM conference.
We expected to learn strategies to better communicate with the public, but we walked away with so much more than that.
David and Lauren spent National Small Business Week on the road in New York; Columbus, Ohio; and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They spoke with stakeholders from different walks of life who all recognize the transformative power of small business from varied angles.
We had the honor of hanging out with inspiring women leading change during our Women Build the Future breakfast with San Diego Habitat for Humanity.
“I have managed to invest…but one of the proudest things I have been able to do is pay for all of the school fees for my 7 children.”
—Seraphine, artisan
Charitable & private investors have contributed more than $1 million to a revolutionary fund supporting affordable housing for low-income families.
Our COO and resident social determinants of health nerd Shreya Sasaki discussed her work with local nonprofit MAAC to create pathways for healthier San Diego families.
Our conversation with NPR about discrepancies in access to capital for lower-income communities and how we can level the playing field.
Here are David’s generalized takeaways from the Milken Institute convenings in Oakland, centering around affordable housing, Opportunity Zones, and how local and statewide policies in California can be structured to influence positive outcomes.
While Opportunity Zones have the potential for the biggest wave of gentrification and displacement we’ve ever seen, we’re optimistic about San Diego.
Mission Driven Finance, Civic San Diego, and a local foundation unlock $12MM for nonprofit Access Youth Academy’s facility in Southeast San Diego.
