Joe Kriesberg

Was 2012 Really the Best Year for Massachusetts CDCs since 1982?

Last January I received a good bit of teasing for a blog post that I wrote entitled Could 2012 be the Best Year For Massachusetts CDCs Since 1982? Many of my colleagues thought that I was, at best, hopelessly optimistic or, at worst, strangely naive.  The truth is that I was shamelessly promoting both MACDC's 30th anniversary (we were created in 1982) and our campaign to pass the Community Development Partnership Act, which I suggested would be the most important piece of community dev

10 Reasons CDPA is Now Law

After an exciting two-year campaign, the Legislature has passed and the Governor has signed the Community Development Partnership Act into law. I believe this is the most significant community development legislation in Massachusetts since the late 1970's when Mel King led an effort to pass the original CDC enabling law, created CEDAC and CDFC (now merged into MGCC) and the CEED program. Over the past few days, many people have asked me how we did it.

Is there a better way to think about scale?

In recent years, scale has become one of the hottest topics in the non-profit sector. Not a day goes by when I don’t see a report or an email, or a blog post, or at least a tweet talking about the importance of scale. Much of the discussion is about how the nonprofit sector is not very good at growing organizations to scale. Many people are looking for ways to replicate private sector models of equity investing to help bring nonprofit organizations to scale.

Call me naive, but I still believe in Representative Democracy

In March 2012, I had a wonderful opportunity to travel to Israel with a group of affordable housing professionals to meet with our counterparts in that country who are working to address many of the same housing challenges we face in this country. It was a facinating week of tours, lectures, meetings, debates, and bus rides. We learned a great deal and I believe we were also able to help our colleagues.

While I expected to learn about housing policy, I did not expect to learn - or should I say re-learn - a lesson about the importance of representative democracy.

Why May 23, 2012 was a good day - not a great one.

May 23 was an exciting day for MACDC as the Massachusetts House of Representatives voted 150-0 to pass a new "Jobs Bill" that included the Community Development Partnership Act.  This was a major milestone in our campaign to pass this ground breaking and game changing bill that will bring the community development field to new levels of scale and impact. And it was a strong testament to the power of a well organized, grass roots advocacy campaign.

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - Joe Kriesberg