The Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation enriches the quality of life in our region through its knowledgeable leadership, engaged grant making, and creative partnerships with donors to make philanthropic investments and build endowment
A family foundation, rooted in Catholic social values, Better Way Foundation invests in systemic, holistic and evidence-based approaches that support the positive development of all children
BrightEdge is the innovation, impact investment and venture capital arm of the American Cancer Society. Today, our ACS Impact Venture Fund (AIVF) invests in for-profit, early-stage companies developing cutting-edge, cancer-focused therapeutics, diagnostics, devices, and technologies to fuel and accelerate ACS’s mission of ending cancer as we know it, for everyone.
CFNE’s mission is to work for economic, social, and racial justice by advancing community based, cooperative, and democratically owned or managed enterprises with a preference to assisting cooperatives in low-income communities by:
● Providing financial products at reasonable rates;
● Developing business skills; and
● Offering an investment opportunity that promotes socially conscious enterprises
Our vision is of economic justice for all through thriving cooperative enterprises.
CFNE was founded in 1975 by cooperative developers to address the need for debt products suited to the shared ownership model of food co-ops. Food co-ops were thriving, as communities across the northeast embraced a community-owned model for healthy food access. However, the shared ownership structure that provided so many benefits to workers and communities also posed barriers to accessing capital from conventional sources, a dynamic that remains true today.
Over the decades since we launched, CFNE has grown to a staff of 15, located in 6 states across the northeast. In 2021 we changed our name from the Cooperative Fund of New England to Cooperative Fund of the Northeast, reflecting our staff expansion into New York state. Our borrower portfolio expanded to include co-ops beyond the food sector, such as housing, resident-owned communities (ROCs), worker co-ops, consumer and producer co-ops, and a small number of nonprofits and land trusts. And we have increasingly incorporated a racial justice lens into our work, resulting in Racial Justice becoming the North Star (key strategic goal) of our strategic plan in 2020.
DRK Foundation is a global venture philanthropy firm supporting early stage, high impact social enterprises. We believe that with early funding and rigorous support, exceptional leaders, tackling some of society’s most complex problems, can make the world a better place. We find, fund and support exceptional leaders with innovative and highly impactful ideas that have the potential to scale. We provide unrestricted capital, and, most importantly, we provide rigorous, ongoing support by joining the board of directors and partnering with the leader to help build capacity in the organization and scale their impact. Since we started in 2002 we have invested in over 200 organizations, which have impact a combined 220 million lives. With the support of 50 donor partners, we are currently deploying our fourth fund: ~$85 million dedicated to supporting the next generation of 100 social entrepreneurs who will change the world.
Approx 16 years of assisting clients align their portfolios to their values. In addition, we have our own proprietary impact investing products, notably Women-in-Leadership and Responsible ESG funds, as well we are expending our private investment capabilities.
The Foundation’s local impact investing program allows the Foundation to:
• Develop a new tool that can promote community development;
• Broaden the community’s existing perception of the Foundation – as a community leader and grant maker – to include its new role as investor;
• Activate more existing assets and develop opportunities for residents and partners to leverage capital in support of local projects.
