Community-Building Effort Gets a Boost
An organization that funnels private capital and training to the nation’s nonprofit community development organizations has received a $360,000 grant to recruit new talent to the poverty-fighting field in California.
The grant to the California offices of the Local Initiatives Support Corp. comes as part of an $8-million national initiative to pump new talent into the community development field and offer training to existing workers.
Once focused almost exclusively on building low-income housing, community development corporations have increasingly branched out into small-business lending, entrepreneurial and job training and venture capital--areas that require greater sophistication.
The Human Capital Development Initiative was developed by the Washington-based National Congress for Community Economic Development, a Washington-based trade association. It is funded by the Ford Foundation and the National Community Development Initiative--a consortium of foundations, corporations and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The goal is to attract 1,000 new staff members and volunteers to the community development field nationwide.
The California initiative is headed by LISC in Los Angeles, San Diego and the Bay Area. It creates a leadership institute for community development executives to share ideas, offers continued education to community development workers, promotes the field to college students--especially minorities--and facilitates internships, said Elizabeth Macias, the program’s statewide coordinator.
