This month, we’re celebrating the one year birthday of the Ours To Own campaign, our investment initiative with a vision to activate broad and diverse networks of local residents to drive significant investment in their own communities.
Last June, we launched the first two cities – the Twin Cities and Denver – and we have seen exciting early results. In the past year we have raised capital from hundreds of people in these two cities enabling us to invest more than $13.6 million through community-based developers and small business lenders. Our small business lending partners, Community Reinvestment Fund and Colorado Enterprise Fund, supported by Ours To Own and their other investors, have invested a total of $14.5 million into 178 businesses that have created or retained 2,700 jobs. Many of these businesses are minority, women, or veteran owned and are creating jobs and wealth in low-income communities. Our community development partner, Urban Land Conservancy, used Ours To Own funding to acquire two properties for a combined $7.4 million – one that is preserving nonprofit office space downtown for organizations who serve the immigrant and refugee populations, and one that is building a campus for affordable housing and community facilities in a neighborhood that will soon be getting a new public transit stop.
This post was originally published on CalvertFoundation.org
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