Community Ownership for Community Power Fund Reaches Milestone for Investment Readiness 

The Community Ownership for Community Power’s Integrated Capital Fund (ICF) is entering an exciting new phase as we work to shift ownership of land and housing from the speculative market to transformational community ownership organizations across California committed to permanent affordability. Community ownership groups representing low-income communities of color are often locked out of access to capital to acquire, govern, and sustain land and housing. The ICF ensures that flexible, mission-aligned integrated capital of grants and loans flows to those who need it most and in forms they can actually use by centering community needs, timelines, and solutions. 

After more than two years of codesign conversations, field engagement, strategic research and fund development, a vision, structure, and operational plan for the Integrated Capital Fund has been developed. We are happy to share that several key milestones have been achieved in recent months that position us for investment readiness, including: 

• Governing Board:  While community governance and codesign has been part of this project since the beginning, a community-led Governing Board and a community-led Credit Committee were selected in September by our longstanding codesign partners to guide and steward the fund once it is fully operational. The Governing Board will set high-level policies for the fund and monitor strategic alignment and execution, whereas the community-led Credit Committee will make the final decisions on which projects are selected to receive funding.

• Trusted Partners Supporting the Fund: Genesis LA and Community Vision, two values-aligned CDFI partners, have been advising the design and structuring of the fund, and are expected to serve as trusted underwriters once the fund is operational. These two organizations each have over 25 years of experience lending to community based organizations and community ownership partners. Furthermore, Common Counsel Foundation will continue to serve as the backbone organization staffing and hosting the fund’s LLC structure. This scaffolding is designed to nurture and incubate the fund as it launches and grows. 

• Financial Products: In close coordination with our community partners and the Community Vision and Genesis LA teams, we have finalized an initial set of financial products expected to be offered by the fund. The products are intended to maximize the impact of the low-cost, patient capital we seek to raise and will be deployed to meet the unique project needs and timelines faced by community ownership groups.

• Capacity: We hired a Deputy Director of Program Strategy and Deputy Director of Investment Strategy to guide the program strategy, partnerships and financial aspects of the fund.  

We want to take this opportunity to honor the 14 partner organizations involved in designing the fund over the last two and a half years to get the ICF to this stage. Co-design partners have played an active role in shaping the Fund’s vision, priorities, governance structures, partner institutions, capital parameters, and investment tools. This community-led process ensured that BIPOC communities’ capital access needs and their desire to build new values-aligned financial infrastructure were centered in the fund design and we think this direct participation by those most impacted will lead to transformational outcomes for communities across California. 

We are working to raise $20-25M of funding (both grants and investments) for a pilot round of disbursement. For more information on COCP’s Integrated Capital Fund, please contact Emily Duma at [email protected].