Patrick Morrissy discusses his experience with HANDS, a small-scale community development corporation that's made a big impact in Orange, N.J. CDCs can stay relevant, he says, not if they go to scale, but if they take risks in a leadership role.
"If you think what’s wrong with CDCs today is their failure to “go to scale,” you are looking in the fundamentally wrong direction, asking the wrong questions.
While I do believe it’s essential for CDCs to be well capitalized and capable of transacting real estate business to be effective, I also believe that a CDC’s worth lies with: (1) its chosen role within its community, (2) the set of strategies chosen to achieve the desired impact, and (3) the methods it employs on behalf of those strategies. The bottom line is the impact that results from this practice."
FULL STORY: Scale, Schmale. What About Impact?
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