Community Stories
Powerful Partnerships + Transformative Finance
Community Stories
Powerful Partnerships + Transformative Finance
Community Vision’s work to advance racial and economic equity is powered by partnership. Whether it is with community-centered organizations or philanthropic partners, we recognize that deep collaboration is essential for driving community empowerment.
Through powerful partnerships and transformative finance, we seek to disrupt cycles of systemic discrimination and create a restorative economy that centers Black Liberation and BIPOC communities. We do this through providing flexible financing, real estate guidance and financial management advising, innovative programs and grantmaking.
We leverage our expertise to advance community ownership of community assets: supporting community acquisition, development and preservation of real estate that meets local needs and builds community wealth and power. This year, we partnered with nonprofits and small businesses on a range of projects including affordable housing, youth centers, arts and culture spaces, educational facilities, health centers and more.
We take a holistic and restorative approach to community development by bringing together multiple forms of capital, including financial, navigational and social capital. Navigational capital is our ability to help clients access and navigate systems, institutions, and geographic regions that hold resources and power. Social capital is our ability to connect clients with someone that can best meet their needs.
Change happens when we invest in not just a project, but in neighborhoods and communities over time. Here are just a few of the stories of how we are partnering to advance community ownership of community assets.
Visionary Home Builders
As Community Vision partners with communities to create flourishing neighborhoods and build economic power, one of the most important needs to address is housing. Access to quality and affordable living spaces is a key pillar for healthier and safer neighborhoods, and opening the door to housing can unlock more economic opportunities for residents.
Arts and Culture Initiatives at Community Vision
Community Vision is dedicated to community ownership of community assets that are critical to help build justice, power and wealth within BIPOC communities.
Among those assets are long-term and permanent homes for community-rooted arts and culture organizations.
Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth
Physical spaces are an important part of holistic healing—especially in communities that experience high rates of violence, poverty and displacement. For the nonprofit Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY), ensuring that their physical headquarters is a welcoming environment that centers BIPOC communities is a key part of their work to increase mental health and wellness.
Bay Area Racial Equity Fund
Centuries of racial discrimination in America have created an unfair and inaccurate race-based perception of risk within lending institutions that prevents BIPOC borrowers from accessing the capital needed to build multi-generational wealth. Additionally, during the pandemic BIPOC-led organizations launched many new programs to protect their communities that stressed their own budgets and depleted hard-won reserves.