Learn how community development organizations help create places of opportunity where ALL people live with dignity while participating in and benefiting from our Commonwealth's economy.
MACDC advocates on behalf of our members and the communities they serve to create the public and private sector policies that will promote community development throughout Massachusetts.
MACDC’s programs and services are designed to support our members in specific areas of community development and to strengthen the effectiveness of the broader community development system.
The Community Investment Tax Credit provides a 50% state refundable tax credit for donations to selected Community Development Corporations in Massachusetts.
MACDC provides a variety of online resources from job listings at member organizations to community development reports and research. This information is updated frequently.
Tibbetts Optical is a 17 year old retail optical shop owned and operated by Brenda Tibbetts, a sole proprietor, for the past two and a half years. She's grown the business from gross sales of $101,055 in 2011 to $130,714 in 2012. It is now a very attractive retail storefront business in downtown Monson. Brenda is an active participant in the downtown merchants group.
“Let’s invest in what works,” is a common and recurring slogan that has gained currency in recent years and why shouldn’t it? Who is going to advocate that we invest in what’s broken?
Starting in the mid 1970s, Mel King and other visionary leaders of the community development movement worked systematically to build a support infrastructure for CDCs in Massachusetts. They understood that such a system could grow what was then a nascent movement of community based development organizations, largely in Boston, and transform it into a robust, statewide field that could achieve impact at scale. So they created CEDAC, CDFC, the CDC Enabling Act, Chapter 40F, the CEED program, LISC and ultimately, in 1982, the Massachusetts Association of CDCs.
While the Tea Party’s manufactured crisis over the debt ceiling sucks up all the oxygen in Washington, the White House quietly released an important new report in July entitled Building Neighborhoods of Opportunity that outlines best practices in neighborhood revitalization around the country. The report highlights the work of CDCs, community based groups, schools and local governments and discusses how the federal government could more effectively support such efforts.
On June 1, 2011, the Joint Committee on Small Business and Community Development held a hearing at the Massachusetts State House on the Community Development Partnership Act.
The first meeting I ever attended on behalf of MACDC – way back in 1993 – was at the Bowdoin Street Community Health Center. The purpose of the meeting was to strategize ways to reduce childhood lead poisoning by building a coalition of community development, housing, environmental and public health advocates to fight for changes in policy and practice that would better protect our children.
Last month I travelled to Indianapolis to attend a meeting of the Institute for Comprehensive Community Development's National Advisory Committee and to tour some of Indianapolis’ hardest hit neighborhoods. It was inspiring to see how local CDCs and CBOs are working together and with LISC and other partners to undertake long term and comprehensive community development initiatives. Indianapolis has had a strong CDC sector for many years, thanks in part to support from LISC, the City, the Eli Lilly Foundation and other supporters.
