Giving Compass' Take:

• Nonprofit Quarterly reports on the practice of community wealth building gaining traction in New York and Virginia through local offices specifically assigned to the task.

• How can we better serve low-income areas in a sustainable way? Following the models in these two areas could help inform anti-poverty efforts elsewhere in the U.S.

• When it comes to community development, let's also not forget to give youth a seat at the table.

As Aaron Ross Coleman details in Next City, community wealth building, “an approach to community and economic development that creates an inclusive economy built on thriving neighborhoods and broad-based ownership,” as Christine Gianakis, press secretary for New York City’s Department of Consumer Affairs describes it, is gaining ground, both in New York and Virginia.

In New York City, a program for community wealth building is housed within the city’s office of financial empowerment — part of its Department of Consumer Affairs — and includes, as Coleman points out, efforts to “improve city neighborhoods through entities like credit unions and consumer cooperatives.”

Other cities have chosen to create a separate office to break down silos dividing anti-poverty agencies. The nation’s first Office of Community Wealth Building was created in Richmond, Virginia in 2014. Earlier this year, the city of Rochester, New York also established its own office.

Richmond launched its community wealth building office in response to the recommendations of a community-based anti-poverty commission named after Maggie L. Walker, a Black woman who chartered a bank in Richmond in 1903 to help finance Black business development and wealth building in the Jim Crow South. This fiscal year, the office has a total budget of $4 million, including $1.9 million in state funds.

Read the full article about community wealth building policies by Steve Dubb at nonprofitquarterly.org.