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.
CDCs are leaders in tearing down walls, literally and figuratively, and creating communities where ALL people can live with dignity while participating in and benefiting from our economy. This is the ideal vision of what CDCs are striving to achieve. But most people don’t have the faintest clue who we are or what the acronym CDC means. The general public’s understanding of a CDC, if they have one at all, most likely is centered on affordable housing. We, as a field, aren’t very good at telling the public what we do. Why we do it.
I like stories and I find that the best stories, the ones worth reading again, connect with me on a deeper level. It’s not the hero’s adventure or the amazing experiences the protagonist has going up against their antagonist that catches and holds my attention as much as it is the emotional link that is created somehow between the story and me. Because we live in a world of commercials and crass advertisements of every kind, it’s hard not to be bitter, cynical and downright irritated at our blatantly overexposed, oversold world. It’s almost impossib
As a fundraiser, I want to tell my story as clearly and concisely as possible. This can be quite challenging, particularly because CDCs are diverse organizations with a number of programs addressing numerous causes in their community. One tool that I've used for years is maps, and with new data sources, the power of maps keeps growing.
“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?
MACDC is pleased to share this blog from Standford Fraser who is interning at NACEDA for the Spring 2012 Semester. He is currently a Junior History major and Community Development minor at Howard University.
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.
I greatly enjoyed Russ Douthat’s column in last week’s Sunday New York Times called “Our Reckless Meritocracy." Reflecting on former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine’s fall from grace, Douthat notes that many super smart and super successful leaders in business and politics have “led us off a cliff — mostly by being too smart for [their] own good.” Douthat continues,
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.
The Community Development Innovation Forum has helped to spur numerous efforts to expand and deepen collaboration with the goal of improving effectiveness and efficiency in the sector. With the help of new funding from Citi and Bank of America, MACDC is now leading a major planning effort to explore the efficacy and viability of a statewide partnership among CDCs and others who provide technical assistance to local entrepreneurs.
