October 17, 2025

by Nyia Hawkins

Ahmad Free-Cohen, employee of Rise & Root Farm, pulling a cart of plant starts

The last weekend in September, I drove from Washington, D.C. to upstate New York for Black Farmer Fund’s annual Abundance in Autumn Festival, a special event for BFF’s community of farmers, funders, and investors. Held at queer and BIPOC-owned Rise & Root Farm, it was a day of planting, listening, eating, and remembering that investment is never just about money. It’s about people, and the networks of care that keep them going.

The festival offered simple but profound activities for funders and farmers to do together: including watercolor painting, a meditation walk, and “weeding”, which turned into planting rows of parsley and lettuce. I chose the dirt. No gloves, just soil under my french manicure and sun on my face.

One of the farmers guiding me—Ahmad Free-Cohen—laughed kindly when my rows turned out curved and a little tilted but not enough that he thought he’d need to redo them. Farming isn’t his only role. In the spring through fall, he works full-time at the farm along with growing and selling fruit-flavored sea moss gel. I got to learn from Ahmad about the rich, black soil at the farm. Here’s a clip of what he had to share.

In the winter, he works as an educator and counselor for children with special needs, and this year, he plans to launch a Black men’s mental health support group. That reality struck me: farming alone doesn’t pay enough. Ahmad was just one of several farmers I met in similar situations. Farmers who often live communally, work extra jobs, and stretch their lives across seasons of both land and labor. Yet their commitment to food, soil, and community remains unwavering.

Like Ahmad, who balances farming with other work, Wilfred “Farmer Wil” Moss’ story shows how legacy sustains farming even when the margins are thin. “Farmer Wil”, whose family story is one of legacy and resilience. He is a real estate investor who along with his sister runs Moss Fresh Fruits and Vegetables, a second-generation Black-owned farm in Western New York. Their parents immigrated from the Bahamas in the 1950s, bringing with them values of farming, self-sufficiency, and service to community. Those values remain alive today, shaping the Moss family’s work on the land and in their markets.

Farmer Wil was one of the original pilot participants of Black Farmer Fund, helping to shape the early decision-making process, and today he sits on the investment committee. His farm received a $10,000 grant for a tractor, which he says allowed their farm to expand production “exponentially.” It’s not an abstract impact—it’s the difference between sustaining and scaling, between barely holding on and building abundance.

Participants at the Abundance in Autumn Festival, listening to a speaker

Another voice that stood out was board member Rhyston Mays (they/them), who farms at Sweet Freedom Farm in Germantown, NY. Rhyston spoke candidly about the challenges of navigating government funding agreements that fell through. Their farm had already spent money on compost and straw based on commitments of reimbursement from federal programs. But when the administration shifted, climate-related reimbursements were quietly rescinded, leaving them holding the costs.

Thankfully, BFF’s Rapid Response Fund was there to cover part of the gap. As Rhyston put it, that wasn’t just financial support—it was community care that kept their farm moving forward. They highlighted the vulnerability of Black farmers who often find themselves on the edge of collapse when institutional systems fail to deliver.

Karen “Mama K” Washington, Black Farmer Fund Co-Founder and Farmer/Co-Owner of Rise & Root Farm

Toward the end of the day, Karen “Mama K” Washington, BFF’s co-founder and one of the owners of Rise & Root Farm, brought David and Veronica Houghton of Trinity Farm to stand next to her at the microphone. They didn’t speak—they just waved as Karen told their story:

The Houghtons are known in their community for giving more than they ever ask. They show up when other farmers need hands on the land, and when local families need support, they’re there. But recently, their house burned down and they have been living in a hotel for a month, waiting for the long process of rebuilding.

When Karen put the word out through farmer networks, another farmer—who was building a tiny home—offered to donate it to the Houghtons. Alongside that gift, BFF and community members launched a GoFundMe to help them rebuild and sustain themselves during this crisis.

Right (L-to-R): Veronica and David Houghton of Trinity Farm, Karen Washington

This isn’t a “direct investment” in the traditional sense. It’s not a loan or an equity stake. It’s sustaining community. It’s farmers making sure one of their own doesn’t fall through the cracks. And BFF’s role is to keep those networks resourced and resilient.

The practical side of capital isn’t the numbers, it’s the context; in this case, the people who are impacted and the relationships that are nourished. At the one-day mini market, tables lined with jars, vegetables, and syrups introduced funders and neighbors to the products of these farms. I bought collard greens and tomatoes—organic, fresh, and grown with care. It wasn’t charity; it was groceries, the same way I’d shop at my local cop-op or farmer’s market. But this time, I carried home not just food but the warmth of the relationships and resilience behind every bite.

(L-to-R): Olivia Watkins, Co-Founder and President, Black Farmer Fund, Muna Sbouh, Impact Management Officer, SK2 Fund, Olamide Goke-Pariola, Development & Investor Relations, Black Farmer Fund, Nyia Hawkins, Investment and Portfolio Coordinator, Chordata Capital.

At its core, Black Farmer Fund isn’t simply investing in agriculture. It is investing in people—farmers like Wilfred Moss, Rhyston Mays, Ahmad Free-Cohen, and David and Veronica Houghton. Each story reflects a different facet of the struggle to sustain farming lives under systems that rarely provide enough stability.  Supporting them is about more than yield per acre. It’s about ensuring Black farmers continue to have a role in American agriculture, despite centuries of cultural, racial, and financial exclusion.

Next year, I hope more of our client investors and partner advisors can experience the abundance of the Black Farmer Fund’s autumn festival.

Right (L-to-R): Unnamed, Nyia Hawkins and Ahmad Free-Cohen, employee of Rise & Root Farm

August 7, 2025

By Kate Poole and Tiffany Brown

In early June, Kate attended the Movement Finance Forum along with a group of Chordata’s investors. Movement Finance Forum (MFF) was a 4-day convening conceived and organized by Center for Economic Democracy (CED). In 2022 CED published a paper on Social Movement Investing, positing that in order to truly build power, the work we’re doing in movement-aligned finance must be in deep coordinated relationship with organizing and movements for justice. As they sought to put this theory into action, CED was faced with the question: “How do we deepen coordination between movements fighting for justice and people in finance who have access to capital and technical expertise?” They call this capital strategies work, and use the framework of divest, contest, invest to describe different key levers that we need to coordinate. 

The Movement Finance Forum grew out of that vision. CED convened nine different networks, bringing together a multiracial, cross-class, and multi-sector group of 140 people. The goal was to build relationships and strategize together in order to develop a shared approach to capital strategies that reflects movement values of wealth redistribution, repair, and power-building.

a session during the Forum – image by Anj Photographer

Let’s be real: It’s a hard time to think expansively about capital strategies, given escalating violence, federal funding being cut, and foundations pulling back. Despite these challenges, the Forum’s leadership brought deep clarity that we need to push much harder to leverage private capital in support of organizing. It was powerful to be invited into this call to action, and to grapple with it together.

There are two major themes we’re reflecting on coming out of the Forum.

The first is the role of “contest” in the divest, contest, invest strategies: How can we contest for power through shareholder activism, and what might Chordata’s role be in that?

Secondly, we’re reflecting on how to show up well as funders and investors to cross-class organizing spaces like the MFF. 

the fabulous Chordata crew at the Forum!!!

Lessons about Contesting for Power through Shareholder Activism

Chordata has long been involved in solidarity economy investing, but we haven’t previously engaged in shareholder advocacy or divestment efforts targeting specific corporations. In the past, we have seen shareholder advocacy as largely something advisors did to keep making money off of investing in corporations while paying lip service to racial and economic justice. We’ve generally held the belief that there aren’t “good corporations” and “bad corporations”, but that all corporations are structurally harmful to communities and the environment. So, rather than engaging corporations directly, we’ve focused on divesting from the stock market and reinvesting in community-controlled projects that align with racial and economic justice values. That’s our bread and butter. 

flipchart notes on lessons from Palestine Divestment – image by Anj Photographer

However, over the past two years our thinking has begun to evolve, particularly because of the divestment organizing we are seeing in solidarity with Palestine. The BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) has opened our eyes to the potential of shareholder advocacy when it is truly movement-led. The organizations and firms that have worked to follow BDS calls and implement AFSC’s screens are responding directly to calls from solidarity movements, and are taking real risks that could impact their businesses and careers. We haven’t seen a movement-led divestment campaign making real material impact since the Standing Rock divestment organizing and divestment from private prisons.

Chordata may have a role to play: Though we divest our clients fully from the stock market, many of our clients have other points of leverage inside the system. Some of our clients hold only a portion of their assets with us, are part of family trusts or foundations, or are tied to institutions where divestment isn’t straightforward. In those situations, we’re excited about the potential of incorporating shareholder advocacy as a meaningful addition to the work we do with our clients. Shareholder advocacy can take individual processes around divestment and make them more collective, and do so in direct support of movements. It can also provide our community of investors with more tools to be active allies to movement leaders. 

a workshop session at the Forum – image by Anj Photographer

Shareholder advocacy can powerfully flank worker-led campaigns inside of corporations. The Forum brought us into contact with movement leaders who are deliberately choosing to resource shareholder advocacy work, and with campaigns that are using those tools in exciting ways! One inspiring example is a Palestine-solidarity campaign targeting Microsoft. The campaign is promising: it originated with worker-led organizing from within the company, and focuses on holding Microsoft accountable for how its technology is being used in ways that violate human rights. It is a potentially winnable campaign! The workers have been able to connect with established shareholder activist groups who can then flank their work. 

Shareholder advocacy campaigns can lay the groundwork for future legal fights against corporations. We learned about campaigns targeting Amazon run by groups like Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) and Majority Action. These groups have been in the game for a long time, and they are now in conversation with newer, movement-led efforts, including Amazon worker organizing. These shareholder advocacy groups aren’t likely to succeed against places like Amazon where Jeff Bezos owns the overwhelming majority of shares. However, shareholder proposals play an important role in laying the groundwork for future lawsuits against these corporations, because documentation of attempts to engage them around workers rights or human rights can be critical in these court battles. Even if the shareholder advocacy campaigns don’t win, they can set people up for these legal battles ahead.

We think Chordata’s investors are going to be seeing more shareholder activism opportunities from us in the future! 

a brainstorm about contest strategies via post-it note – image by Anj Photographer

Lessons for funders and investors about cross-class organizing

The Forum brought movement leaders together with leaders in movement-aligned finance for the sake of deepening strategy and growing our capacity for coordination. As a group, we were working across class and navigating big differentials in access to capital. Afterwards, we (Tiffany, Kate, and the Chordata investor participants) debriefed the convening through the lens of cross-class organizing, and reflected on our ongoing learnings about how to show up well in cross-class spaces as movement-aligned investors.

Inside the networks present at the Forum, we all bring different gifts and resources to the table, and what unites us is a radical spirit. When coming together across class and power, it is hard to remove the polarizing relationship that is stoked by profound inequality in our country and world. We are asking ourselves: what is needed from committed, movement-aligned funders and donors in order to set a table together where we can count on everyone bringing what we have to help build the Solidarity Economy? Here are some of our reflections and questions: 

a workshop session – image by Anj Photographer

It takes time to build relationships and trust. As anyone who’s ever participated in a coalition knows, it’s impossible to bring together diverse stakeholders and get things done without some basis of trust. And so, at the beginning stages of a huge cross-class effort like the Movement Finance Forum, building relationships and establishing trust is a primary goal. There was good groundwork laid in this area, and many relationships were created as a result of the convening.  

Many of us attending the forum have known each other for a long time, and have built significant trust prior to the convening. At the same time, the Forum was intentionally broadening the conversation to include more people from our organizations and networks. This meant a lot of new relationships. We left wondering: Is there a way to build together that can assume a certain level of inherent trust in each network who has been invited? What pre-work could we and others could have done to build that trust before we got into the room together? 

eating together – image by Anj Photographer

Redistributing wealth early in working together can help build trust. One of the key lessons we learned in founding Chordata is that in order to share power across class we need to share resources. If you’re a person or an institution with access to capital attempting to build trust across class, it’s crucial to engage in wealth redistribution or resource sharing. That resource sharing can be a foundation upon which you can build trust with each other. This is part of the DNA of our business, and a core value we hold dear.  

We have been in the practice of wealth redistribution from our inception – between us as cross-class business partners, inside of our cohorts and with the practitioners who’ve helped shape those programs, and we are now looking to the Forum to help us think bigger about what this looks like as a true expression of what’s possible across class, race and power. Doing this across 9 networks and 140 people is considerably more complex than inside Chordata’s business model, and we want to meet this challenge and figure out what doing this well looks like along with the rest of the Forum participants. 

It’s important to make pre-existing resource flows and collaborations visible. The Forum brought together a diverse set of networks, and people didn’t always know what others were already working on or how resources were moving currently. At times this led to assumptions and mistrust. For the sake of building a stronger foundation of trust, it may have been useful to map how resources were flowing and who is already in relationship around the work– because there were a lot of pre-existing relationships, and a lot of money moving already in powerful ways. This may have helped people relate to each other more as organizers and fellow members of the ecosystem, and serve as an example of the kind of financial activism on the investor side which could inform a shared strategy. How might we support this to happen in future convenings?

Kate studies post it notes during a session – image by Anj Photographer

As investors and funders, we need to build our muscle to sit with awkward and uncomfortable experiences. As a society, we are rarely in deep cross-class collaboration, and so there are going to be things that feel awkward or challenging. As people and/or institutions with power and privilege, we need to build the muscle of relating to others as people, while also holding the very real power differential that shapes our material realities. As investors, it’s important to stay present and notice what’s being activated in ourselves and in our bodies. We need to stay grounded in the fact that often, whatever is happening in a cross-class group is not personal, but rather a result of the larger political reality that we exist in. And, we need to take the appropriate level of accountability when we have created or contributed to dynamics that diminish or break trust. Engaging in our own ongoing healing work is critical so that we are all well positioned to build trust across class, race, and power. Affinity spaces like Resource Generation and Solidaire can help us build that muscle, as well as somatic and spiritual practices to keep ourselves grounded and self-aware. 

Here are some resources we have found helpful for doing this inner work:

• Be Present
• Resource Generation
• Solidaire  
• generative somatics
• SOM: Somatics of money

forum participants – image by Anj Photographer

Opportunities for action!

The Chordata crew that attended the Forum is exploring how we can support our larger community in understanding how divest, contest and invest levers work, possibly through mobilizing resources and organizing together. 

We want to lift up some of the amazing and powerful projects and campaigns that we connected with at the Forum! We hope you’ll take a moment to learn more and consider supporting their work:

• There are several shareholder advocacy campaigns people can plug into, such as the ICCR-led Amazon shareholder advocacy work targeting Amazon, and Racial Justice Investing’s campaign to organize one hundred Microsoft shareholders to file a resolution demanding transparency from Microsoft about the use of its products in Israel’s illegal apartheid regime and war in Gaza. Or Stop Land Grabs, which is targeting TIAA. TIAA has pivoted into land as an investing strategy and is rapidly acquiring farmland in both the South of the US and the global south, particularly in Brazil.

Harvard students protesting Harvard’s role in land grabs – image from www.stoplandgrabs.org

• Divesting for Palestine: The next set of office hours for the MoveMoney4Freedom.org are now scheduled – RSVP here! MoveMoney4Freedom.org is a new website that provides accessible resources to support you and your community in divesting from genocide, apartheid and occupation, and moving money towards collective freedom. With questions, please contact info@movemoney4freedom.org. The next office hours are scheduled for Tuesday, August 12th, 2025 from 3-4 PM ET.

a student encampment demanding divestment for Palestine – image from www.movemoneyforfreedom.org

• This one isn’t a specific campaign, but an important action: The Forum emphasized the fact that organizations often have fees tied to accepting investments from investors. At Chordata, we’d like to start inviting our clients to consider covering those fees with grants, in support of the investment’s long term health. We encourage any investors to proactively cover these kinds of fees when making investments.

• Action St. Louis and ArchCity Defenders, two Black-led racial justice organizations in St. Louis, have come together to establish the Northside Movement Center. The 36,000-square-foot center will open in early 2026 in North St. Louis, a historically Black community that has suffered decades of systematic disinvestment. In addition to housing the multifaceted advocacy and organizing work of these two organizations, it will serve as a community center, convening and coworking space, and resiliency hub. If you are interested in learning more or supporting, please contact executive directors Blake Strode (bstrode@archcitydefenders.org) or Kayla Reed (kayla@actionstl.org).

an illustration of the future Northside Movement Center – image by Trivers

• Boston Neighborhood Community Land Trust (BNCLT) builds community power, neighborhood stability, and an alternative model for social housing by taking properties off the speculative market. BNCLT is one of few organizations that focus on acquiring smaller, scattered-site buildings – properties that are most prone to purchase by speculative buyers, resulting in the displacement of BIPOC, low and extremely low-income families. BNCLT is currently seeking to replace a $3 Million short-term loan that allowed the organization to purchase 5 buildings (17 units), which are now community-controlled and permanently affordable rental units. We invite solidarity investors to make a 0-2% interest, 10-year term investment in BNCLT’s Loan Pilot – a needed alternative to existing high-debt lending options. More info here!

Boston row houses – image from www.bnclt.org

May 6, 2025

In 2024 Chordata invested in Communities In Partnership (CIP) after being connected to the organization through Lina, a client local to Durham NC. In March, Tiffany and Lina spent two days visiting CIP’s many projects in East Durham and getting to know their dedicated leadership. Our team member Sarah sat down with Tiffany and Lina to debrief their visit. 

CIP is a Black women led, predominantly Black women founded, community accountability organization that is nationally recognized for its work addressing all five social determinants of health. CIP supports interconnected programs addressing food sovereignty, entrepreneurship and workforce development, affordable housing, and leadership development. CIP envisions East Durham and the surrounding area as a vibrant place where all residents have an exceptional quality of life with the economic and political power to impact decision making that affects their community. If you’re interested in supporting CIP’s work, please do so here!

Sarah: Lina, how did you first hear about Communities in Partnership? 

Lina: I heard about Communities in Partnership in 2018 through the Triangle Community Foundation. I started giving a monthly donation but I hadn’t met any of the team there. In early 2019, through alternative education circles in Durham, I met Valine Zeigler who’s the founder and director of Empowered Minds Academy, an incredible Montessori and self-directed learning school in Durham. I didn’t know at the time but Valine was connected personally and professionally with CIP.

After I’d been supporting Empowered Minds for a couple of years, the building they were in came up for sale and they were trying to figure out if it would be possible to buy it. I wanted to be supportive of EMA through whatever happened. CIP was interested in buying the building, because part of their vision is around Black ownership of business and property in downtown Durham, which is rapidly gentrifying and becoming unaffordable.

So we worked together, and I ended up donating the biggest gift that I’ve ever given to help, and CIP actually bought the building! Now CIP owns the building and Empowered Minds is the first Black-owned Black-led business that’s occupying that space, with the idea that ownership will remain in the community’s hands.

The beautiful building that houses Empowered Minds Academy

I saw a lot of natural alignment between what CIP is doing and what Chordata invests in, so I connected them with Tiffany and Kate, and that first conversation has evolved now into this current investment in CIP.

Sarah: Tiffany, how was your trip to Durham?

Tiffany: It was such a great trip. We first heard about CIP from Lina, then learned that they are a part of Equitable Food Oriented Development, a project our friend and colleague Anthony Chang supports. I already knew CIP’s work was amazing, but seeing the work and meeting their leaders was very impactful.

I was really moved by the story of how Communities in Partnership was created. CIP started in 2011 after there was a shooting in the East Durham neighborhood, and the community was frustrated by an inadequate and uninformed response from city officials. Community members started gathering for the sake of building relationships and asking, “What’s going on? How do we address the violence that’s happening in our neighborhood?” They were mostly parents, so this was really high stakes. The first arm of their work was around food justice, and they started a food cooperative. Now – flash forward – they have a very strategic approach to addressing interlocking systems of oppression, aimed at transforming their neighborhoods. 

Inside the East Durham Market. Pictured is Lina, Cassie (staff member at CIP), and Justin (Tiffany’s partner).

During our tour I got to see the food cooperative’s Impact Hub, where they give out food boxes. They talked about lines down the street of people coming to get food boxes. Then I got to see the East Durham community market, which is a grocery store that can help meet basic food needs of community members. 

There’s another arm of CIP’s work focused on entrepreneurship that supports the Culinary Femme Collective, a group of femmes of color who all have food businesses and share a commissary, and are getting their food wares out in front of people, including at the East Durham market. Oh my God – they had the best crackers!! Part of our investment is going toward supporting the Collective’s entrepreneurial ventures.

Delicious crackers created by a member of the Culinary Femme Collective! The Collective works to advance food businesses owned by femmes of color dedicated to creating a more equitable and just local food economy in Durham.

We also saw the Empowered Minds Academy building that CIP purchased. The pedagogy is amazing – the kids really lead and it’s predominantly Black and Brown children. CIP is also working with a developer who’s building housing, including a modern day boarding house, and the Culinary Femme Collective is going to have a cafe there to sell their wares. Everything we saw was connected and part of a bigger plan. 

Chordata’s investment is primarily in support of acquisitions of real estate, because gentrification is actively pushing Black and Brown people out of their community. Their neighborhood is only half a mile from downtown Durham and in order to keep community members in place they’re purchasing buildings and offering affordable rent to community members. 

Cassie, Tiffany & Lina outside the East Durham Market

A lot of the folks involved in the project from early on have taken on major leadership roles. Camryn Smith, who is CIP’s Executive Director, and her husband Ernest Smith are both trained in Community-Based Asset Development. They intentionally moved into the East Durham community upon returning from mission work in Eastern Europe, and Ernest earned his law degree late career to be able to address key needs voiced by the community. DeDreana Freeman is a mother, a nonprofit leader, and has been a City Councilwoman since 2017. Aliyah Abdur-Rahman, a founding member and leader of the CIP Innovation portfolio, has built a visionary collective strategy across multiple Black-led and Black-accountable organizations in the East Durham community. This is what organizing looks like!

A living library exhibit in the Impact Hub, where CIP runs their food program. The Impact Hub also has drumming lessons, step classes, and other community programming.

It was a pretty emotional trip. Throughout my travels around the country I’m seeing a repeated theme of systemic disinvestment. What I saw reminded me of my visit to West Jackson, where there were potholes in the street so big that you couldn’t drive straight. In East Durham, there were dirt roads, and you’re just half a mile from the city. You would see a house with a $1M value that is part of gentrification, right next to a house that looked like it was condemned, but it was really being rented out by a slumlord who wasn’t investing any money in it. A lot of those houses were going for something like $10,000 just 15 years ago. The racist red lining in East Durham meant that nobody in the community was able to get a loan to buy houses, and purchasers would need to pay in cash. Gentrifiers were just buying up the houses with hopes of making a big return because they’re so close to Duke and downtown. 

That’s where CIP’s strategy to buy real estate comes in. One of CIP’s recently purchased properties we visited was four duplexes. They are in the process of fixing these up and making them nice for people. They’ll then offer them to the community at prices that people can afford. It’s really powerful work.

Community In Partnership’s Impact Hub

Sarah: Lina, what do you love about CIP?

Lina: I love the enormity of the heart and vision and the real commitment to the people who are in Durham. They have this real clarity that everyone deserves to have enough to eat, a safe place to live, time to pursue whatever it is that they are passionate about, and that everyone deserves basic human dignity. 

For CIP, it’s not only about survival and people being able to continue to afford to live in Durham, but beyond that, they believe that people also need to heal from the harm that has persisted for a long time. They have the vision, and also the dedication and determination to figure out how to make that real. 

Tiffany, Cassie, Lina inside the Impact Hub, with food boxes in the background

Sarah: Tiffany, how was it for you to collaborate with Lina on this?

Tiffany: This was the first time we have worked alongside a client in this way. Lina is committed to racial justice and economic justice and made the bold move to support the purchase of this school building. She saw the values alignment and brought CIP to our attention. As we started meeting with CIP, we realized this was a project that our other clients would be excited about. I love that we got to lean into a model of collective action within the Chordata community by supporting our client’s badass contributions, and that it led to an opportunity for the whole community to invest.

Sarah: Lina, is there anything else you want to share with the Chordata community? 

Lina: I just want to convey how good it feels to me to be working with Kate and Tiffany. Especially with all the craziness of the world and the stock market. I have money held in trust for my benefit over which I have very little control. It is invested in the stock market because the trustees insist it is their fiduciary responsibility and that anything else would be irresponsible. Those investments have nosedived in the past weeks. And my personal money that I have been able to invest with Chordata, it’s invested in places like CIP, like East Bay PREC, and all the other places Kate and Tiffany have put it. All of that money is, for now, holding steady. AND, even if the scenario was flipped, I would still feel good about my Chordata investments because my money is not just at the whims of this crazy stock market machine.

My money is not just extracting with the point of benefiting only me, it’s really going to work in ways that are building something amazing. It’s experimenting with building a new world instead of experimenting with extraction and suffering. It’s so powerful for me to be part of the Chordata community in that way. And I feel so grateful to the other Chordata clients who have thrown in with me here in Durham!

We hope you’ll support CIP’s work! Learn how to do so here.

December 12, 2024

As radical investment advisors, we often get questions like:

“Why should a wealth holder with a commitment to redistribution invest some of their assets?”

“Why might projects want investment capital and not only grants?” 

One of the places these questions have arisen is in the Chordata Cohort. Our last cohort set up a $3M emergent flow fund and asked financial activists Aaron Tanaka, Jessica Norwood, and Anthony Chang to allocate that money as integrated capital. Nadav David and Jen Near then helped administrate some of that integrated capital. We recently invited Anthony, Nadav, and Jen into conversation with us, to glean learnings from this recent experience, and to share what we’ve learned over the years about the question of “why invest?”. 

Let’s start with some basic premises that guide Chordata’s work: 

• We invest in what we believe in. We only invest in tangible investments that center racial and economic justice, and we do NOT invest in the stock market. 
• We believe in integrated capital, meaning that giving and investing are powerful and interconnected tools that can both be mobilized in support of social movements and the solidarity economy. Giving and investing are not two sides of a binary. 
• We believe that wealth holders should use their surplus to both redistribute wealth as well as invest in ways that are reparative. We work with clients to develop an investment portfolio that includes both planning for the future and wealth redistribution. We then support people to build investment and redistribution strategies in relationship to those different time horizons.
• We apply the same principles and values to giving and to investing. Often with giving and investing, people are taught to hold two different sets of value systems. Someone’s giving may be beautifully aligned with racial justice values. But behind closed doors the investment thesis that money should make money off of money often reigns, and a wealth holder’s dollars might be invested in corporations that exploit communities of color. We seek to align our values and practices in giving and investing. 

So if we hold to be true that giving is an essential part of redistributing resources, why then, also invest in the solidarity economy? Here are 13 reasons we came up with in conversation with each other.

1. Because a project or a movement group asks for it. 

If you’re in consistent and meaningful relationships with partners, then partners will tell you what they need and why. If you can offer grants, and if groups say what’s best is grants, move a grant! If they ask for debt capital, either they’ve assessed that they can carry that debt because they imagine they’re going to have revenue in the future to pay it back, or they know they need it because they can use it to leverage other private and public funding, or some other reason. – Jen Near

Some groups already have an existing relationship with debt, and they’re already used to financing projects in that way. They may usually get it from a CDFI or credit union. If they’re able to get this debt at 0 or 2% instead of the 4 or 6% from the financial institution, they have more space to do the work. – Kate Poole

2. If you have money that you’re saving for future use, you can put that money to work so that other people can build resources.

Frontline groups need capital, and sometimes wealth holders have already allocated their giving dollars. But the other 90% of wealth holder’s assets can also be put to work. Folks on the ground can use that money to build the solidarity economy. – Tiffany Brown

Money is a resource that can be shared in community. Say you have $100,000 but you don’t need to use that money for 20 years. That $100,000 can be shared so that someone else, say an immigrant farmer, can acquire land. And then that resource gets returned over time, because the farmer is working that land, growing and selling food, having a livelihood for themselves. This also includes money that they would have been paying to rent that land, but now they own it instead, and have more stability. – Anthony Chang

3. Because the stock market is fundamentally extractive and exploitative and always has been. 

People often default to what is supposedly “true” in economics – that money should make money off of money. People aren’t convinced that the stock market is the scariest monster in the room, that it is absolutely about extraction, exploitation, and it always has been. It was used to finance the slave trade, that’s how far back it goes. If you peel back all of the bullshit of what people say should be true in economics, and instead do economics of your heart and your spirit, it looks really different. – Tiffany

If you look at any large public corporation that is high growth, you have to ask – how did they do that? How does a Wells Fargo or an Exxon Mobil make billions of dollars of profit? Their profit margins are obscene. They’re overcharging and exploiting people in multiple ways to be able to generate profit for their investors. It requires a lot of willingness for people to face the reality of this exploitation and to consider what their money does and how that ripples out into the economy and into the community. I hope that people are willing to go on that journey. – Anthony

4. Investing can open doors for groups to access other money. 

For many projects that are trying to build a structure for themselves that’s going to sustain them long term, some amount of debt is necessary. If they’re able to get debt in the form of patient and flexible capital from aligned funders, it opens doors for them to access public money or other private money from other sources down the line. It can be a really important stepping stone. – Nadav David

5. To do harm reduction around the assets of funders and donors. 

Many of us started doing this work because we were doing climate divestment work, and the options for reinvestment were things like Chevron’s renewable portfolio or Coca Cola. That was untenable from a movement perspective! The contradiction of 5% of assets being given to movement organizations, and 95% of assets being invested in corporations was too much to stand. We have to think about our engagement from divestment to reinvestment, and put a wedge in what is typically just a transfer of assets within the same kind of ownership structure. We want to transform ownership within our economy. – Jen

And a note from Anthony on not becoming complacent, even when we’ve done harm reduction with assets: How do we avoid institutions investing in the solidarity economy and then feeling good enough about it that they don’t meaningfully redistribute? I see this in foundations where they take a surplus pot of capital they could give away, but instead they invest it. And then this inertia can set in like, hey, if I invested in worker owned co-ops and community land trusts and Black and brown communities, then I’m having the same impact. I should keep doing that, instead of actually redistributing this wealth that I don’t need. How do we avoid people feeling good enough doing the thing that’s not actually the thing that’s needed? – Anthony

6. To expand the sphere of influence of our social movements over capital that’s being held in public trust. 

We spend a lot of time focused on how to influence funder’s and donor’s grants and giving, but our sphere of influence over grant resources is so limited. If our goal is to transform how resources are governed and who owns/benefits from our labor, land, and infrastructure in our economy, then how do we as the grassroots organizing sector and social movements actually contest for capital and power in larger ways? This question is what has led to foundation’s assets and donors’ investment portfolios becoming a target for social movements. It’s an opportunity for us to assert influence over and seek to align much the bigger forces of capital with our work and to potentially unlock some of these resources for community-owned and governed solidarity economy projects. – Jen

7. Because investing is a powerful tool in relationship with divestment. 

Divestment is a call that is most effective when it’s tied to a larger movement and a set of grassroots campaigns or demands (see the Social Movement Investing report for more context). There is the potential for narrative and material impact when we have a really clear sense of what investing looks like and can be alongside the divestment. If we’re able to move resources out of extractive systems and into solidarity economy projects, I think it can ignite much more collective energy and excitement about investment. In this moment where people and organizations are wrestling with and taking action to divest from occupation, apartheid and genocide in support of Palestine, we must actualize the ways that divestment and reinvestment are directly connected to the solidarity economy we’re trying to build in the US and globally. – Nadav

8. So that BIPOC and working class communities can reclaim productivity in service of collective wealth building. 

The phrase “productivity” is something I was politicized around by Ed Whitfield and Marnie Thompson (Seed Commons staff/board members). It’s about a community’s ability to produce and build wealth and have control of their material conditions in a meaningful way, so that they are no longer dependent on philanthropy. The investment piece is about how we work toward that goal of productivity, even while we still need to give and tend to a lot of the ways in which that’s not possible or people are struggling right now. That’s to me actually the tension between grants and investments. It’s not philosophical, it’s like, where can we actually build that productivity for communities and social movements to build wealth for themselves and have agency in that? – Jen

9. Investing can create a longer onramp towards giving. 

Say you invest $100,000 in a project for a 10 year loan. That’s 10 years of changing people’s lives. At the end of that 10 years, you have proof of concept of the power of this capital, and when the loans are set to mature, there’s an opportunity to evaluate whether you need that money back. As a wealth holder, you’ve been without that $100,000 for so long, maybe at that point you can part ways with that money. It’s like a 10 year experiment of getting comfortable not having that money. – Tiffany

10. Typical grant cycles don’t provide enough capital for major projects like land rematriation. 

Typical funders and donors, and particularly grant cycles, aren’t aligned around the really big, visionary dreams our movements have. In order to do major land transfers, rematriation, acquisition projects, we can’t just go for one grant per year. We needed a mechanism to leverage significant amounts of capital. That often looks more like the investment side of funding than the grant side. AND we really need funders and donors to shift their grantmaking practices, the level of resources they are willing to give to support projects (both grants and zero-to- low-interest loans), and the way they engage all of their resources in support of social movements.  We can look to Kataly’s Restorative Economics Fund as a powerful example of a funder moving resources that are deeply aligned both in how they structure as well as the level of resources they are moving in terms of grants and loans to land-based projects. – Jen

11. Investment dollars can allow groups to build the muscle of collective governance. 

There are increasing numbers of community controlled funds that have collective governance by folks that are directly in the community or folks in deep relationship to frontline communities of color. Boston Ujima Fund, Climate Justice Alliance, Right To The City Alliance, and many others are exercising the muscles of building the new, alongside fighting the bad. To do that, we need to be able to govern, and we need to have the room to learn and try things and make mistakes, and then adapt from those mistakes. Folks that are willing to put non extractive capital into these kinds of projects are providing a runway for groups to be able to practice governance, and we are going to need that in the economy we want. – Anthony

12. Because there is no simple answer or approach, and the tensions we’re working within are historical, massive, and coming from movement tensions. 

For instance, a core tension in the reparations movement right now in the US is that a lot of folks are urgently wanting to redistribute wealth as part of reparations. And within the movement, there are solidarity economy practitioners advocating for an approach that actually makes those assets and resources productive over time, an approach that goes beyond providing a $25,000 boost in income or payment toward individual home ownership to one that seeks to build collective wealth and ownership. These long-standing historical tensions feel very connected and present in some of the conversations that feel thorny and hard with funders and donors about redistributing their wealth. There is an opportunity for a deeper assessment of how we redistribute wealth in ways that build new regenerative economic structures. – Jen

13. Because “give vs. invest” is a false binary.

Given the complex conditions we live in, there’s no one size fits all solution to these questions. I think the question is “what are the conditions or the types of structures in which investment capital can be useful alongside grants, and thereby, how do we organize funders to be in alignment with those needs?” – Nadav

Investing in Community Movement Commons

The story of Community Movement Commons in Boston illustrates some of the learnings we’ve been in together. A recent Chordata Cohort decided they wanted to create a $3M flow fund. They worked with three financial activists- Anthony Chang, Aaron Tanaka and Jessica Norwood- to distribute the funds. Aaron’s portion was earmarked to go to Community Movement Commons in Boston, which was about $885K in investment and $356K in grants. CMC is a visionary space in Roxbury, a Black working class neighborhood, that will house social movement organizations, a Black-led birth center that will provide a full spectrum of gender-affirming reproductive care, and a space for neighbors to gather, organize and build community. 

The future Community Movement Commons in Roxbury, MA

The cohort’s contribution was originally made as an integrated capital investment, with a portion of it as grants and a portion as loans. The loan terms were as friendly as possible. When the project leaders took the design to the neighborhood and to community members, they got feedback that the footprint was too big and that it took up too much green space, and they felt strongly that the footprint of the building needed to be reduced. That meant that some of the uses of the building- a cultural space, a music space, some rentable office spaces- had to go. Given that these uses would have generated revenue, the opportunity for revenue decreased.

An image depicting the future birth center at Community Movement Commons

The organizers of the project spoke with the cohort and shared what was happening. They explained that debt totally made sense at the beginning, and that now the operating model was completely different upon getting the community’s feedback. The fact that the cohort agreed to give the project debt capital led to the project leveraging an additional loan, and also helped the project to get closer to their capital stack for a new market tax credit (a federal program that supports community development projects). It was a great commitment from the cohort, and so helpful! And, because of the changing plans for the building, it was now more difficult for the project to carry and pay back that debt. The organizers asked the cohort if they would be able to forgive the debt or turn it into a concessionary loan or a grant. And the cohort did!

The future site of Community Movement Commons

Jen, who was one of the people working on the project, shared: “Those of us doing the on-the-ground work of these projects, like organizing in neighborhoods, getting things figured out in terms of the design on the land and running the capital campaigns, we have to do a ton of work to align all those pieces in a values aligned way. And then we really need the funders and donors to stand with us and be in the same kind of relationship. It was so beautiful and powerful that this actually happened in this instance!”

Nadav is also involved in the project. He shared: “Initially in the project, having debt was a tool to organize other funders along the way. Funders who came to us and said, “We want to talk about debt with you”. We were able to say, “We’ll only talk to you about debt if it’s zero percent and patient, like Chordata is doing.” That was an important intervention. Chordata’s belief in the project and willingness to bring integrated capital made that possible. The more that we have real relationships between funders, investors, and the projects, the better, because we’re able to adjust and be flexible and ask for things that we need and to do it in a much more authentic way than the traditional relationships that funders have with grantees. This felt like a really beautiful example of how we could move together.”

Our most recent Chordata Cohort!

One of Chordata’s core invitations for wealth holders is to step into a practice of shared risk and accountability. We have to ask ourselves “What’s it gonna take to get to where we want to go?” It takes both a bet with your investment capital, it takes having skin in the game with your philanthropic capital, and it takes being in partnership over a long time horizon. 

Thank you to our friends Anthony Change, Nadav David, and Jennifer Near for lending your brilliant thoughts to this blog post!

Blessings posted at the Community Movement Commons. One reads “We are midwifing a future where families are cared for, connected and free. Bless this place <3”

March 28, 2024

We recently returned from Right to the City Alliance (RTTC)’s member assembly in New Orleans. We were incredibly grateful to be invited into this space and for the chance to learn directly from organizers building the solidarity economy!!! RTTC is a national alliance of more than 90 community-based organizations growing grassroots power to halt gentrification and displacement, and build democratic, just, and sustainable communities.

We’ve had a yearning since we first started with Chordata to get clear about what social movement investing looks like in our work. RTTC is developing an analysis and roadmap for coordinated national work for housing justice, including a clear analysis that Wall Street is not our friend. We loved chanting “Down, down with Corporations! Up, up with Liberation!” And are lit up to be in relationship with RTTC and mobilizing investments in line with this beautiful roadmap of what it takes to win!

We participated with groups across the country in building a shared analysis about what we’re up against. In a brilliant “State of the Movement” plenary, RTTC’s organizers described how the far right neo-fascist agenda is being developed and implemented in the US South, and how these strategies are coming for the rest of the country. They described how the rise of the far right is directly linked to the failure and devastating impacts of neoliberalism in this country. As neoliberalism stopped working for white working class people, the solution that’s been offered is neo-fascism, often couched in progressive terminology like “the elites don’t want you to have money or power”. The rallying cry at the assembly was that in order to defeat neoliberalism we have to beat back the far right, we need to focus our efforts in the South, and we need to block false solutions and build real alternatives.Towards these ends, we learned about core interventions like community controlled real estate, corporate targeting, rent strikes and tenant takeovers. One of Chordata’s investing priorities is community controlled real estate, and we felt so much alignment with RTTC’s vision! Some of our current community controlled real estate investments include EBPREC, Local Code Kansas City, Seed Commons, Cooperative Fund of the Northeast, and LEAF. 

Visiting Jane PlaceWhile at the convening we visited an amazing New Orleans-based project called Jane Place. They create permanently affordable housing, advance tenant rights, expand housing security, and uphold equitable housing patterns and land use planning. In 2016, Jane Place opened the first permanently affordable apartment building in New Orleans- the Palmyra Street Apartments- and they are currently working to develop 14 more units of permanently affordable housing.Leaders from Jane Place spoke at the conference, offering framing about the impacts of disaster capitalism on their city, as well as how the work they’re doing to create community controlled housing is tied to climate resiliency. So many houses in New Orleans are being purchased and turned into Airbnbs, leading to displacement of local people. We heard about Jane Place’s incredible organizing work to win new limits aimed at curbing short term rentals in residential neighborhoods- this means there can only be one Airbnb per square block in New Orleans! What’s beautiful about the work of Jane Place is that in the face of displacement and gentrification and super high rents, they’re able to purchase buildings and rent them at really affordable prices to local residents. 

Looking under the financial hood of tenant takeoversAlso at the convening, we heard from several groups that were able to organize tenants to take over properties!! One project with over 80 families ended up having to take on an around $12 million loan that they are paying around 8% interest on, a super extractive rate of return. That pencils out to around $1M in interest each year, which is an extra $12,500 that each of those families has to pay a year just to cover the interest! This creates a huge burden on tenants who are just trying to live in their homes. Stories go viral about beautiful tenant takeovers, as they should. But if you’re not looking under the hood and seeing what’s happening with the financing, there can still be a lot of extraction happening. We’re really curious to look at where the opportunities are to bring more values aligned, lower interest and no interest capital to tenant takeovers so that people aren’t saddled with so much interest. If we want to see more of these tenant takeovers happening all across the country it’s going to take a lot more capital. One of our major takeaways from the convening is that we need more people on the investment side of things coming in alongside this amazing organizing. We want to see those of us on the investment side of the ecosystem communicating with groups about different kinds of values-aligned capital that’s available, and mobilizing local and national capital to support these incredible projects with more favorable terms.

For those of you wondering how you can connect more to this work, here are a few places to start:Find Right to the City affiliates or other housing justice organizers in your community and figure out how to uplift that work and support renters in your region Look into your investments to see if you hold real estate investment trusts (REITs), or shares in corporations or private equity companies that are buying up apartments and houses and extracting wealth from tenants. If you’re a Chordata Client, we’re already working with you to divest from Wall Street! If you manage your own investments, consider divesting and shifting that capital into community-controlled real estate instead!

 If you’re a member of Resource Generation, get plugged in to their new national campaign on housing, in partnership with Center for Popular Democracy’s House Everyone Campaign!
 Reach out to Fernando Abarca at Right to the City to learn how to invest in their fund and move capital to support their work!