Beyond
As you are considering building a CIF, it is important to consider the reality you are working towards: a fund that your friends and neighbors can invest in and will, in turn, invest in community-determined initiatives. The structure of the fund will enable this, but your community will breathe life into it. To realize the benefits of community capital, building the fund is essential, but that is also only where the work begins. Once the fund is in place, it will only engage and empower your community with investors and projects to deploy capital into.
Note: A comprehensive resource on CIFs can be found in our CIFs Handbook.
Community Engagement
From the very beginning of building a CIF, you will want to engage your community. The more people who know about and feel a part of what you are doing, the more investors you will have ready once the CIF is built. Have open sessions to brainstorm what type of fund your community needs. Utilize existing and successful community events for inviting people to learn about local investing and to get involved. Engage with prevalent groups within your community, and as many of them as possible—the more voices at the table, the more mouthpieces you will have spreading the word for you throughout your whole community.
Selling the Investment
Similar to engaging your community, you want to consider who your potential investors are from the start of building your community’s CIF. Ensuring those investors will find the CIF you build compelling will ensure that the CIF is able to raise funds. Perhaps you can consult a local foundation or local angel investment group for feedback.
Establishing a Pipeline
A final consideration that you might try to have in mind from the start is establishing a pipeline of local investment opportunities for the CIF to deploy capital to. Organizing a regular business showcase where local entrepreneurs can share their ideas might help support an entrepreneurial ecosystem in your community. Additionally, forming partnerships with local entrepreneurial support organizations might yield fruitful events and collaborations. Finally, identifying and organizing around the most prevalent groups within your community and the most prevalent issues your community faces will likely give way to many potential investment opportunities.
If you have come up against a challenge in your work building a CIF, consider exploring our Advocacy work and helping us push for policy that can make this work easier.
Next - Building
How do you build a community investment fund?
Instead of relying on Wall Street, venture capitalists, or big banks, community capital is money raised from everyday people—neighbors, local investors, and stakeholders—who want to invest in what they believe in: their own community.