Grants for Community Development

Beyond grants, philanthropic involvement in CED prominently involves impact investing, such as community development financing and community loan guarantees. 

The tension between development, gentrification, and displacement is a source of ongoing debate and challenges in this field. Many grantmakers presently in the field give through an explicit racial equity or social justice lens, with a trend toward intersectional approaches and support of resident-led solutions. The current backlash against DEI may impact how philanthropy can support community development through the lens of racial equity.  

Community development grants go to a range of initiatives related to housing, health, employment, education, and other elements of a healthy, vibrant community. Grants for community development support many kinds of nonprofits and projects, including community land trusts, subsidized housing, supportive housing, tenants’ rights advocacy, job training programs, public health initiatives, early childhood education, and more. Historic preservation is also sometimes linked to community development and community revitalization funding. Climate resilience and “creative placemaking” are also focuses of some community development grantmaking.

History of philanthropy for community development

Community economic development has roots in 19th-century settlement houses, Progressive-era reforms, and later projects of the New Deal and LBJ’s “War on Poverty,” as outlined by urban planner and historian Alexander von Hoffman. In its early iterations, the field of community improvement already took a multifaceted approach, addressing work, education, social services, and more. Over the past century, the field has experienced shifting trends, where in some eras one issue (e.g., housing) becomes the primary focus, and in other eras a more multi-pronged, holistic approach is more common. For much of its history, the field was top-down and rooted in the idea that outside experts or professionals (such as social workers or policymakers) knew what was best for a community. As a result of the efforts of grassroots social movements from the 1960s onward, there is a growing understanding that solutions should come from and center community residents. 

Philanthropy has long played a role in community development alongside government funding. The Rockefeller family was involved in social housing efforts in New York in the 1920s and ’30s, researcher Gaia Caramellino explains. The Ford Foundation, a longtime shaper of the field, “provided funding for the nation’s first community development corporation (CDC), Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation in New York in the 1960s, and established a key community development financial intermediary in the 1980s,” Danielle Wallis explains. Today, many large private foundations make grants for community development as part of multi-issue work to address poverty and redress structural injustice, or as part of grant programs dedicated to specific aspects of community well-being such as housing, health, or education.

For more on the history of philanthropy focused on housing, and how housing grants intersect with community development, see IP’s Grant Funder at-a-glance view of grants for housing, which also offers a curated list of leading funders.

Gaps in funding for community development 

Community development funding is often associated with impoverished urban communities, with some eras of increased focus on poor rural communities. There is growing awareness of the need for equitable, inclusive community development funding in suburban areas as well. There is also a need for more dedicated support for community-based, resident-led organizations.