Welcome back to Proximate Investing, a newsletter exploring the movement for participatory investing in the United States.

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This past month, the Trump administration's attempt to fire the entire staff of the CDFI Fund – despite bipartisan support – reverberated through community development and local economy spaces.

There are more than 1,400 Community Development Financial Institutions, or CDFIs in the US. They have deep historical roots in community finance – from the minority-owned banks that emerged after the Civil War, to early 20th century institutions like community development corporations and nonprofit loan funds. The CDFI Fund, established in 1994, recognized this kind of community-centric approach as key to intentional growth.

Like any institution, CDFIs aren’t perfect. But their accountability to place, and their mission-driven orientation, creates strong opportunities to build authentic relationships – to understand the actual economic needs in an area, and shape products and processes to meet those needs.

In this newsletter, we take a look at how other important, if imperfect, institutions are rethinking their approach to accountability – from foundations shifting how they invest endowments, to business schools questioning their role in society, to real estate developers and affordable housing advocates building partnerships.

Thank you to our supporter Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. And remember to reach out at hello@proximate.press with any story ideas, links we should see, or updates from the field.

Slowly But Surely, Foundations Are Changing How They Invest Their Endowments

Typically, we reserve headlines for when foundations give money away. Less light is shone on what happens with the capital that remains – in foundation endowments, real estate development funds, and institutional reserves. 

These pots of dollars sit even further away from community insight and input. And investment decisions are usually made through a highly specific finance lens. A lens that comes with technicalities, jargon, narrowly defined “experts”, and written/unwritten rules.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Movement organizations – as well as a growing number of investors – are experimenting with ways to loosen the grip of business as usual by changing who is in the room and who gets to have a say.

Proximate partnered with Next City's Oscar Perry Abello on a story exploring how the "Due Diligence 2.0" movement is faring ten years in – and how foundations are rethinking the unwritten rules of how they invest their endowments. Read it here.

How Two Communities Attracted Capital for Affordable Housing

When most people think of the Coachella Valley, they likely first think of the eponymous music festival. But the valley is also home to a population of half a million people, more than half of whom are considered rent-burdened.

Affordable housing has been challenging to build in the valley; at one point a decade ago, as few as dozens of new units were being built a year.

That's turned around in recent years, thanks in part to the application of the Capital Absorption Framework, a tool created by the Center for Community Investment to help communities align around shared priorities, and build a pipeline of deals to attract investors.

Proximate's Dmitriy Ioselevich has written two pieces on this framework – a conversation with the team at Center for Community Investment, and a look at how capital absorption has played out in the Coachella Valley and in Atlanta.

We'll be publishing original journalism about community-controlled capital through the rest of 2025. Pitch us if we should be writing about your work!

OK, let's get wonky. Here's what we're reading from around the Internet on the moment in community-controlled capital:

• How small business owners can think about community ownership. Transform Finance’s Social Entrepreneurship through Acquisition program explores how to bring an intentional impact and ownership lens to the mechanism of entrepreneurship-through-acquisition, or ETA, in which individuals or small teams purchase businesses with backing from investors.
  
  There is significant potential to approach these acquisitions in ways that increase community wealth and oversight. It's worth a read.

• Realizing the participatory potential of crypto. Pi browser, a platform that enables people to engage with decentralized Blockchain apps, announced that it is shifting from centralized oversight to community-led governance that will involve participatory decision-making and voting rights.
  
  Blockchain’s origins are rooted in collective governance, but actual implementation of those principles across the industry has been mixed. Users will utilize Community Company, a governance framework designed to reflect the collective will and governance of Pi Network’s global user base.

• Crowdfunding as more than a short-term fundraising tool. The East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative is engaging hundreds of community residents as investors in local housing and commercial real estate to fight gentrification and displacement.
  
  While crowdfunding is often seen as “small dollars” or logistically complex, EBPREC is demonstrating it’s strong value as a way to shift dollars into community control: the organization has now raised millions in investor-owner shares, and is paying out dividends to its investors.

• What are you seeing? We want to hear from you! We recently held a Story Lab session, where we heard from dozens of Proximate Investing readers about what they want to see us cover. You can fill out this Google Form to let us know: what stories would you like to see? What questions do you have that we should cover

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