Community Development Innovation Forum

 

Rethinking Community Development – New Strategies for New Times 

 
As the community development field enters a new era, the Massachusetts Community Development Innovation Forum was formally launched in June 2008 as a partnership of MACDC and the Boston office of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) to provide robust and thoughtful process that advances innovative practices in the community development field.
 
The Forum traces its roots back to 2007, when Carl Nagy Koechlin, then Executive Director of the Fenway CDC convened a small group of MACDC members to solicit ideas about how to be effective in a community that had experienced significant gentrification and was largely built out.
Nagy Keochlin notes “When I convened some of my MACDC colleagues to discuss a few of the dilemmas we were facing in the Fenway (neighborhood of Boston), it not only shed light on our specific situation, it launched an extremely productive and inventive process to re-think community development.” 
 
The conversation grew to include more community development practitioners who came together to discuss that specific issue and the many other changes to the social, economic and political landscape impacting communities. As the conversation expanded, MACDC and LISC agreed to work with the ad-hoc group to formalize the process into what became the Innovation Forum. With funding from the Boston Foundation, the Hyams Foundation, and the Massachusetts Housing Partnership, the Forum brought in local and national experts to help us develop our thinking and learn about innovative work across the country.
 
The Forum intentionally includes all stakeholders in the field – CDCs, funders, lenders, policy makers, consultants, academics, and other partners – to ensure that our thinking is reflective of the entire field and our solutions have broad support. The Forum organized five separate working groups and hosted several public forums where critical issues were discussed, ideas were debated and consensus was developed on action steps that could strengthen the field. More than 125 people participated in the Forum during its first year.
 
The Forum recognizes that CDCs have an extraordinary track record and the significant community development infrastructure that we have established over the past 30 years positions us to tackle some of the most vexing problems facing our neighborhoods and communities. At the same time, we know that our past success does not guarantee future success as we confront new challenges and opportunities and seek to expand and deepen our impact. Models and strategies that worked in the 1980s, 1990s or even the past few years may not be the best models for the coming decades. CDCs and their partners must adapt and respond to the rapid changes facing our field – changes in real estate markets, demographics, public policy, philanthropy, nonprofit management and finances, financial markets, communications technology and a coming generational shift in the leadership of our field.
 
Over the course of the past year, the Innovation Forum has achieved important results:
 
  • Developed a consensus proposal for modernizing the 1977 CDC-enabling statute to reflect changes in the field over the past 30 years and legislation is now pending at the State House
  • Published a substantial report documenting the numerous ways that CDCs are now collaborating with each other and with other partners to increase their impact and efficiency;
  • Published a white paper outlining the importance of CDCs working for a broad community building agenda and detailing different approaches that CDCs are taking in this arena;
  • Developing a series of recommendations for how the real estate development finance system should be reformed to better enable community developers to sustain economically viable real estate development programs;
  • Mobilized a sector-wide response to the economic collapse that began in October 2008 and continues to threaten CDC financial health today;
  • Sparked a robust and open dialogue about mergers, consolidation and shared staffing models that can enhance the long term sustainability of the CDC sector
 
Phase 1 of the Innovation Forum was concluded in June 2009 with each of the working groups developing a set of recommendations and a final report.  Phase 2 began in July 2009 with a series of projects that are now underway and a schedule of four major Innovation Forum events planned during 2009/2010.  The Forum has begun to attract national attention as the community development sector nationwide struggles with many of the same challenges – and opportunities - that we face here. Most recently Shelterforce published an article highlighting the efforts and possible solutions The Forum is pursuing.
 
Nagy Keochlin says “the Community Development Innovation Forum is changing for the better how we all do our work. This never would have been possible without the network MACDC has built and the leadership it has provided.”