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.
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.
With so much information available to us all the time, most of us could use some help sorting through the noise to find interesting and helpful information on the internet. While there are countless websites related to community development and affordable housing, here are five (well, O.K., six) that should be on your list:
The New England Housing Network held its annual conference in Needham, MA yesterday and the speakers and workshops provided a tremendous amount of information and insight into the current state of affairs in Washington, DC.
60 Minutes did a very powerful piece on family homelessness recently. I can't say anything that would add to what the kids in this segment have to say about their lives, their parents and their dreams. I simply ask that you watch it:
In many ways, the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston and the suburban town of Arlington, Massachusetts are very different. Roxbury is a low income urban neighborhood with per capita income of about $16,000 and 86 percent of the population comprised of people of color. By contrast, Arlington has a per capita income of $44,000 and 86 percent of the population is white. And, of course, they sit on opposite sides of the Charles River.
On Thursday, I had an opportunity to see 21 MACDC members in the course of 14 hours. It was a long day, but extraordinarily exciting and reinvigorating as my travels and meetings reminded me why I love this job.
Last Sunday, while Hurricane Irene roared through Boston, I had extra time to read the Sunday New York Times and found my way deep into the Business Section where I found a very interesting interview with Andy Lansing, the chief executive of Levy Restaurants in Chicago. Mr Lansing is asked about how he hires good employees and he gave an answer that I thought was fascinating. He says, "I have a pretty nontraditional approach to hiring. I hire for two traits — I hire for nice and
The first advocacy campaign of my life did not involve housing, community development, civil rights, the environment or even Vietnam. Instead, it was a years-long effort to get my mother to quit smoking! Every day, for years, I would interrogate her after school about how many cigarettes she had smoked that day. I was relentless, using every tool I had – facts, nagging, shame, and most of all guilt (“you are going to die!”) Eventually, my mom finally acquiesced and quit smoking when I was about 11 years old.
