Using Integrated Capital to Build Community Wealth and Power

About

Note: This program is a Live Webinar and Q&A that is accessible from any web-enabled computer or mobile device. Premium members of Impact Entrepreneur get complimentary admission to all live and archived webinars. To RSVP for your spot as a Premium Member, visit the calendar.

Using Integrated Capital to Build Community Wealth and Power

If we wish to address the growing wealth gap and ecological challenges of our times, we need to create the opportunity for communities to own and control their future. That means circulating investment dollars locally, transforming the governance structures that allocate capital so people most affected have the most say, and designing investment approaches that make wise use of blended capital — integrating debt, equity and grantmaking. This requires a whole systems approach to place-based change, engaging all the stakeholders – entrepreneurs, investors, philanthropy, anchor institutions, policymakers, professional service providers and community members–in building sustainable, resilient, and inclusive local economies.

It also requires a willingness on the part of investors and philanthropists to challenge their current understanding of risk and return. In conventional finance, investors try to transmute risk into return. Practitioners of solidarity finance redefine risk and transmute it into impact and power.

In this live fireside chat and audience Q&A, Impact Entrepreneur’s Laurie Lane-Zucker welcomes Deborah Frieze, founder and president of Boston Impact Initiative and a Professor of the Practice at Tufts University’s Department of Urban Environmental Policy and Planning, for a discussion of how to deploy integrated capital to build community wealth and power.​

Featured Guest

Deborah Frieze is a professor, author, entrepreneur and activist. She teaches impact investing at Tufts University’s Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning. In 2013, she founded the Boston Impact Initiative, an impact investing fund working to close the racial wealth divide in Eastern Massachusetts. The fund takes an integrated capital approach, combining investing, lending and giving to build a resilient and inclusive local economy. Deborah is co-author (with Margaret Wheatley) of Walk Out Walk On, an award-winning book that profiles pioneering leaders who walked out of organizations failing to contribute to the common good—and walked on to build resilient communities. She is also founder of the Old Oak Dojo, an urban learning center in Boston, MA.