Experienced Leadership
The Community Foundation Mission Investments Company (TCF-MIC) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Community Foundation led by a board and and supported by a staff with decades of experience in finance, business, philanthropy and community involvement in Greater New Haven.
TCF-MIC Board of Directors
TCF-MIC Mission
The purpose of TCF-MIC is to create positive and sustainable social impact in Greater New Haven. TCF-MIC engages and supports the diversity of people, ideas, and opportunities in our 20 town regions by:
- Investing in smaller, existing and new/early stage for-profit business ventures, with priority for women-owned and minority-owned entrepreneurial ventures as a way of advancing inclusive growth.
- Helping organizations and persons to be bankable and build capacity to be economically independent, gain wealth, and reinvest back into community.
- Offering loans or loan guarantees to nonprofit organizations, either directly or through intermediaries.
- Expanding opportunities for co-investment with Foundation donors and other community partners.
- Engaging with intermediaries to listen to neighborhood and local community needs and provide connections MRI resources in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
- Facilitating the creation of complementary business services to entrepreneurs and small businesses.
- Working directly with organizations on the ground; with local banks to effect change to create an ecosystem of opportunity for impact (impact investment ecosystem).
A History of Impact
Impact investing has a long history of raising and deploying resources to meet the needs of the community.
1980s
The concept of using private investing for social good began in the 1980s, when the Council on Foundations’ report on Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) identified non-traditional ways to achieve programmatic purposes.
The development of the new Community Foundation Building in 1989 as an anchor for the Audubon Arts District was one if its first investments of this kind.
1990s Strategic Development
Board reviews and contemplates information from the Council on Foundations’ SRI study. Policy formalized in 1999, and a segregated mutual fund was established to and managed with a SRI strategy.
2000-2016 Impact Investing
The Foundation tested new ways to invest with impact. It created more equitable opportunities for people who would not have funding access and developed new ways to satisfy donor intent.
Investment Highlights:
2005 - Mutual Housing and Neighborhood Housing
2007 - Greater New Haven Community Loan Fund
2010 - The Greater Dwight Investment Corp., which worked with community organizations to develop a shopping plaza and bring a grocery store to a food desert
2012 - New Haven Teacher’s Home Ownership Program, in partnership with New Haven Investment Fund
2014-2016 - Multiple investments including: Neighborhood Music School, FreshBev, and Fitscript.
2017 - Present TCF-MIC
2017 - The Foundation created TCF-MIC as a wholly owned subsidiary to carry out its mission investing under a new strategic direction to diverse entrepreneurs, community groups and organizations that promote inclusive growth.
2020 - TCF-MIC launches Partnership Loan Program for Minority and Women Owned Businesses in Greater New Haven
2020 - TCF-MIC launches New Haven Equitable Entrepreneurship Ecosystem
