About Us
ACI helps communities create equitable, effective investment systems that can achieve their visions so all residents flourish.
Vision
People want to live in places with quality affordable housing, economic opportunities, climate-resilient infrastructure, and other elements that allow individuals and families to thrive. But structural racism has shaped our financial systems to channel resources toward wealthy, white communities and keep them from the Black, Latinx, Native, Asian American and Pacific Islander, immigrant, and rural communities that most need them. When community leaders and institutions collaborate to create robust, equitable community investment systems, they can overcome the legacies of structural racism, secure the resources they need to do what they want to do, and turn community visions into realities.
Our Approach
Because no two communities are alike, we offer an approach that can be tailored to any community rather than a singular program or template. We equip community leaders with the capital absorption, adaptive leadership, and racial equity skills to transform their investment systems:
- Our Capital Absorption Framework helps communities define their shared priorities, develop and execute pipelines of investable deals to achieve those priorities, and create a supportive enabling environment of policies and practices to accomplish those deals more efficiently and effectively—which enables them to access and deploy the investments they need to achieve their goals.
- Capital absorption requires local government, community organizations, businesses, philanthropy, and residents to collaborate; adaptive leadership skills like thinking politically and strategic experimentation help make those collaborations effective.
- Racial equity is both the goal and critical to every step of the process.
Values
ACI’s values ground our work and shape our collaboration with our partners and program participants, in the community investment field and in low-income communities and communities of color across the U.K. Learn more about our values.
Racial equity is the compass that guides everything we do.
We embrace and amplify diverse perspectives, expertise, and voices.
We invest in people and keep sight of our shared humanity.
We recognize the urgency of our task and the need for deep, specific results to accomplish it.
We rely on learning and reflection to live our values and achieve our goals.
Our Team
Who We Are
ACI’s staff includes investment and banking experts; community development leaders, educators, and coaches; strategic communicators and housing, health, and community development policy experts; event organizers and fundraisers; and urban planners and technology whizzes.
Although we bring differing perspectives, we are committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion at every level, from how we recruit and hire our employees and consultants to the communities we work in.
Parent Organization and Partners
ACI understands the important role of philanthropic growth and innovation in shaping the flow of investment in communities. ACI is a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, which accelerates philanthropy in pursuit of a just world by continuing the Rockefeller family’s legacy of thoughtful, effective philanthropy.
The Altar Capaital Investment is supported by The Kresge Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, JPMorgan Chase, and The Cambridge Endowment.
