Program Related Investments

SUPPORT ORGANIZATIONS

Abell Foundation
www.abell.org/abellinvestments/index.html
This Baltimore-based foundation, in a variation on the typical loan-based PRI, sets aside about 15% of its portfolio for venture equity investments in Baltimore-based small- and medium-sized businesses that benefit the community as part of its strategy to create local jobs while promoting energy efficiency and alternative energy sources.

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Americans for Community Development
www.americansforcommunitydevelopment.org
Americans for Community Development is a coalition that encourages the use of program related investments through low-profit, limited liability corporations (L3C) to achieve social goals. The group’s efforts helped result in a 2008 Vermont law giving legal recognition to such companies. The Vermont law specifies that companies so designated much further the accomplishment of a charitable or educational purpose, and demonstrate that the company would not have been formed but for its relationship to such purposes.

Helen Bader Foundation
www.hbf.org/programs_pri.htm
This group, based in Milwaukee, has used program-related investments as part of its strategy to promote community revitalization, providing over $600,000 in loans to support local wealth building efforts since 2001.

Otto Bremer Foundation
www.fdncenter.org
The Bremer Foundation main areas of support are housing, health care, and human rights. Bremer has used program-related investments to support affordable housing production in Minnesota and upstate New York.

Ford Foundation
www.fordfound.org
The Ford Foundation initiated its PRI program in 1968 and continues to use program-related investments to support community development both within the United States and throughout the world.

George Gund Foundation
www.gundfdn.org/GRANTS/grants_investments.asp
This Cleveland-based foundation’s first PRI was made in 1984 when $333,000 was lent to support the building of a 183 unit housing development in the Hough neighborhood of Cleveland. Since then, nearly 25 separate PRI transactions have been completed. Currently, the Foundation has over $8 million invested in 13 active transactions.

F. B. Heron Foundation
www.fbheron.org/programs/grantmaking.html
The Heron Foundation focuses on promoting five wealth creation strategies: home ownership, business development, childcare, community development, and access to capital. As of December 2003, it had disbursed $15.5 million in program-related investments.

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,
www.macfound.org/programs/pri/affordable_housing.htm
The MacArthur Foundation has traditionally focused its PRI programs to provide capital for community development financial institutions. Since 1986, it has made over $200 million in program related investments. In 2003, while continuing this past support, MacArthur initiated a new $50 million initiative designed to address the growing shortage of affordable rental housing by providing direct capital support to nonprofit leaders in affordable rental housing preservation.

Meyers Memorial Trust
www.mmt.org/grants_programs/pri/prilist
This Oregon-based foundation has provided program-related investments since the late 1980s in a number of areas, including environmental protection, historic preservation, microenterprise, social enterprise, and affordable housing.

David and Lucille Packard Foundation
www.packard.org/categoryList.aspx?RootCatID=3&CategoryID=216
The Packard Foundation was the nation’s leading provider of program related investments in both 2002 and 2003. As of January 2005, the foundation had made a total of 119 PRIs with a combined value of $375.4 million.

PRI Makers Forum
www.primakers.net
The PRI Makers Network is an association of grantmakers who use program-related and other investments to accomplish their philanthropic goals. The association aims to provide a forum for networking, professional development, collaboration and outreach to funders, including those not currently making PRIs or other social investments. Through its activities, the group also seeks to strengthen the capacity of grantmakers to affect change across diverse program areas.

Rockefeller Foundation
www.rockfound.org/efforts/impact_investing/impact_investing.shtml
Rockefeller's Program Venture Experiment (ProVenEx) has made 15 equity investments to date totaling $20 million. The program provides patient capital to businesses that improve the lives of the poor and marginalized, while helping grantees operating businesses achieve greater self-sufficiency.