Nov 18, 2020
BE SURE TO SEE THE SHOWNOTES ANDLISTEN TO THIS EPISODE HERE
Eve Picker: [00:00:11] Hi there. Thanks so muchfor joining me today for the latest episode of Impact Real EstateInvesting. My guest today is Annie Donovan, COO at LISC, anorganization deeply rooted in the community. Annie has built atruly remarkable career in community investment by embracing apursuit of fairness in economics and finance. She found her way tothis mission through her roots in Pittsburgh, growing up in aworking-class family where she was exposed to ideas of socialjustice early in life. In no particular order, she has served as asenior policy adviser in the Obama administration's Office ofSocial Innovation, as the CEO of the social enterprise, CoreMetrics, heading the Community Development Financial InstitutionsFund, and she spent two decades at Capital Impact Partners, allbefore taking over as COO at LISC. Be sure to go to EvePicker.comto find out more about Annie on the show notes page for thisepisode, and be sure to sign up for my newsletter so you can accessinformation about impact real estate investing and get the latestnews about the exciting projects on my crowdfunding platform, SmallChange.
Eve: [00:01:39] Hello, Annie, I'm reallyhonored to have you on my show and pretty excited to talk to afellow Pittsburgher.
Annie Donovan: [00:01:46] Well, thank you, Eve.I'm very happy to be here and I'm always thrilled and delighted totalk to Pittsburghers.
Eve: [00:01:55] Good. So, the first question Ihave is actually about Pittsburgh. So, you grew up in Pittsburgh,and I'm wondering how that shaped the way you see the world.
Annie: [00:02:04] Thank you for that question.It very much did shape the way I see the world. Well, first of all,let me just tell you a little bit about my context. I grew up onthe North Side of Pittsburgh. From an Irish Catholic family, I amthe 10th of 11 children.
Eve: [00:02:19] Wow.
Annie: [00:02:19] My father's family, so he wasfirst generation American. His parents both came from Ireland. Theyactually bought a house on the North Side. So, the way that my, myparents were actually able to afford to raise a family that big wasbecause my grandparents passed their home on to my parents. And sothey never had to pay a mortgage. So, yeah. So, that's how we sortof made ends meet economically, and, you know, were able to createsome mobility in our family.
Eve: [00:02:58] What neighborhood was that?
Annie: [00:03:00] Brighton Heights.
Eve: [00:03:01] Brighton Heights. Ok.
Annie: [00:03:03] But the things aboutPittsburgh, you know, when you're from there or when you've lived along time there, you know, Pittsburgh can take a hit for, you know,being provincial. And that's certainly the case. I mean, in myparents' generation, my parents had an ethnically mixed marriagebecause, you know, my father was Irish, and my mother was partGerman. But in their generation, people even went to church basedon ethnicity. So, you know, so there's a lot of that sort of ethnicpride and it can feel a little provincial. But Pittsburghers arealso very unpretentious and very warm and open hearted, I think,and just possess a lot of resilience and, you know, grit. Those arequalities that I'm very proud to have had instilled in me growingup that I've relied on throughout my career.
Eve: [00:03:58] So, you know, I think also whatI noticed in Pittsburgh and I heard stories about the steel millsactually purposefully separating neighborhoods intoethnicities.
Annie: [00:04:09] Yes.
Eve: [00:04:10] And that sort of prolonged thathere.
Annie: [00:04:13] Yes.
Eve: [00:04:13] And it's made the cityarchitecturally interesting ...
Annie: [00:04:15] Yes.
Eve: [00:04:15] ... because the neighborhoodsare really distinctive and unique ...
Annie: [00:04:20] Yes, yeah, very much so.
Eve: [00:04:21] ... and look very different.It's fascinating. And then, of course, there's the managersneighborhoods and the steelworker neighborhoods, so you know...
Annie: [00:04:28] Right. And you know,interestingly, what happened in my family, I grew up in aworking-class neighborhood and it was very working class. My fatheractually went to school at night and earned a college degree fromDuquesne, and he was the only person in the neighborhood who had acollege degree. And he was an accountant. He worked for theAllegheny County. So, we had this interesting blend of, you know,when our country was experiencing sort of white flight. Right, solots of white folks moving out to the suburbs.
Eve: [00:05:03] Yes.
Annie: [00:05:03] And those white folks movedout and then they went on toward more upward mobility. And westayed in the working class neighborhood. But we were still, in myfamily, able to experience upward mobility because we owned ourhome. And my father had a college degree.
Eve: [00:05:21] A degree, yeah yesh, yeah. Whatled you into the world of community finance?
Annie: [00:05:25] I had always had, I think, aheart for social justice work. I thought a lot about poverty, and Ithought a lot about the kind of injustices that were in my worldgrowing up. Of course, I was born in 1964, Pittsburgh being, youknow, not only ethnically divided, but lots of really hard linesaround racial division, as well.
Eve: [00:05:54] Yeah.
Annie: [00:05:54] And I have to say, I have tohand it to my mother, because when we were growing up, this isprobably the mid-70s and my brothers ... well, so, in my family,there are six girls, and then three boys, me, and a boy. So, it'salmost like having two generations, you know. And I grew up withthe boys. They wanted to start a street hockey league. And you knowso, of course, I was out there playing street hockey with them. I'ma Title IX gal, and they were looking for a coach. And so they putan ad in the newspaper and a guy responded to it. And his name wasCurtis. He was from the Hill District. And of course, the HillDistrict is the historically Black neighborhood. And so they signedhim up and he came over to Brighton Heights, which was a very whiteplace, and coached the street hockey team. For me, you know, theyjust got me thinking about, like, why why do we have thesedivisions? And I have these ideas of what people from from Blackcommunities were supposed to be like. And he wasn't like that. Hewasn't like my image. And my mother, you know, they'd play streethockey and it'd be time for dinner, and of course, whoever wasaround my mother invited in for dinner. So, often times Curtiswould eat dinner with us. When we said Grace before dinner, the wayhe bowed his head and prayed, you know, it just struck me thateverything I'd kind of learned about our Black neighbors I didn'tsee in him. And so this is what got me thinking, like, what was allthat education about? And so I've always been on a quest tounderstand what these racial lines are, too, and what the classlines are. And so, you know, I studied economics in college. Earlyon in my journey there was a 101 economics class and we werelearning about rational thinking and optimization.
Annie: [00:07:53] And I remember thinking,well, this isn't really a fair way to allocate resources across asociety. And so I said that to my professor afterwards, who was,you know, a classically-trained economist who was like, ChicagoSchool. And he said, well, this isn't about fairness, it's aboutefficiency. And that was like, OK, I've found my mission. And so,you know, and then I joined the Peace Corps, went to the PeaceCorps after college. You know, lived in a very poor place. Andthen, you know, then it really sunk in because the people that Ilived around were supremely resourceful and smart and really dirtpoor. And so, what was that about? So, that's when I became sort ofeven more fiercely committed to it. And, you know, that's so,that's been the pursuit of my career since then, is how do we usethe tools of economics and finance, and how do we rewrite them in away that produces a more inclusive prosperity, because we areleaving a lot of talent on the table.
Eve: [00:09:10] Ok, so you've had some reallybig roles from the White House to the head of the CDFI Fund. Andnow you're at LISC. And I'm wondering, I'm familiar with LISC, Iactually benefited from a loan from LISC years ago ...
Annie: [00:09:23] Good.
Eve: [00:09:23] ... for one of my projects. AndI'm wondering what brought you there.
Annie: [00:09:28] Yeah. So, what brought me toLISC was, so after my experience at the CDFI Fund, I knew I wantedto go back into practice, because that's kind of where my heart andsoul lies. And so, one of the characteristics about LISC is that itis very committed to local – 'local initiatives' is part of ourname. And I wanted to be in a place that was toiling more closelyto the ground. You know, we have local offices, we have 35 andgrowing, local offices that really are programmatically focused andfocused on capacity building alongside lending. And so, that'swhere I saw the ability to more closely connect those pieces andnot just be finance oriented. But to get deeper, closer to thecommunity. And then the second thing was I saw in Maurice Jones, aleader in our industry who is boldly ambitious, is ambitious forthe sake of impact, and I was attracted to that as well. So, yes,so that's what drew me to LISC.
Eve: [00:10:41] Then like about communitycapital, what does community development capital look like todayversus 20 years ago?
Annie: [00:10:49] Yeah, that's a really goodquestion. So, I think 20 years ago, if you think about, or even 25years ago, you know, the sort of the history of communitydevelopment or community capital, community investment ... Thecommunity investment world, really, it braids togetherorganizations and institutions that come from different originstories. So, there's the origin story of the black-owned banks andminority depository institutions that got underway right afteremancipation, for Black Americans to build wealth. There is thecredit union movement that was tending to people of modest meanswho wanted to come together and save together and, you know, haveaccess to financial services that were owned and controlled bythem. And then you had the nonprofit loan fund world that emergedbecause community development really took shape in the war onpoverty and the commitment of the federal government to fundingcommunity development corporations. There was an era there wherethere's a lot of federal funding, and we can talk about urbanpolicy and how that, you know, CDCs kind of shifted urban policy.But then in the beginning of the Reagan era is when the feds reallypulled back. And that's when loan funds really started to emerge tosay, well, we have to create new ways to finance the activity ofcommunity development. And that's when the loan funds reallystarted taking root. And then when Clinton came into office, hecreated the CDFI fund. And that has been a really important policyinnovation, still as a policy innovation today, that has beeninvesting the kind of equity capital that the industry needs togrow, that you can't really get anywhere else.
Annie: [00:12:46] So, the industry has reallyblossomed, partly because we had good seed capital and partlybecause we just have been a bunch of people who have had a faith inthe people and the communities that we're investing in and havefound a way to work with traditional and non-traditional sources ofcapital, to blend them in a way that allows investments to work in,you know, places where, you know, my old economics professor wouldhave said you wouldn't invest in because it wasn't efficient, therate of return wasn't commensurate with risk, and all those sort oftraditional measures, you know, that's the reason capital doesn'tflow to some of the communities that we care about. And we arebecoming more mainstream. And even though we're still a tinypercentage of the financial services sector, I think through, eventhrough the pandemic, you start to see CDFIs emerge, getting moreattention in mainstream media. And certainly LISC has gotten a lotof, we've been able to raise a lot of resources through thispandemic because there's a recognition, and we've not only done theinvesting and gotten the money there where people said it can't go,but we've done it financially in a fiscally responsible way. So,we've proven that the places and the people we're investing in arecreditworthy. That has allowed this industry to grow. And I thinkit's going to continue to grow. I'm optimistic about that.
Eve: [00:14:19] Years ago, I helped found a CDCin Pittsburgh. And what was really fascinating to me, because I waspretty new here and I didn't really understand this lay of the landvery well, you know, I sort of dropped in from another country.But, you know, all of the work we did was to get us to the sameplace as neighborhoods and places that were doing OK. And I've beenin, I've been in this work for a long time and we never seem to getthere. And so, I'm wondering, you know, because when you take astep forward with CDFIs, and maybe this is, you know, a reallynaive way to look at it, but you take a step forward with CDFIs,and you take a step back with banks who no longer really want tobank in or lend in communities, or want more equity or want, youknow, more traditional products to lend in, and it's just thisnever ending catch up, so, how does it all get better.
Annie: [00:15:30] Yeah. So, of course, I, I'vebeen doing a lot of thinking about this and I think a lot of, a lotof folks have been soul searching around this, particularly becauseof the uprisings, demanding more, you know, racial, that we addressracial equity. And so, it does often feel like, you know, some daysit really just feels like we are just doing the work of bandaid,you know, putting bandaids on things. And that's, that's where Ithink this the work right now is really important because we can'tbe satisfied with what we've done because it's clearly not enough.And, but I think we are in a moment that we have to take, make thebest use of, because we can't do this on our own, as our, with ourlittle bitty organizations. And even if we're a billion dollars ortwo billion dollars or 10 billion dollars, we're still to ittybitty to to create change on the scale that needs to be, that needsto happen. But that doesn't mean this stuff shouldn't happen. Andit's, and it does have to happen because even over my career, youknow, 25 years ago if somebody had said that you'll be working fora CDFI or you will help the, you know, build a CDFI, that will getto be a billion dollars. You know, wow, that would have been,because we, these loan funds were starting at, they just wanted toget to 10 million, you know.
Eve: [00:17:04] Right.
Annie: [00:17:05] And and we we wouldn't be wewouldn't have the opportunities that are in front of us now if wehadn't taken all those baby steps to get to here. So, over the longhaul, you know, I hope that we can get there. But, you know,there's the bigger, we have to be able to impact the biggerpicture. And, you know, for example, it was discouraging to me whenI was at the CDFI Fund, and the second two years I was there underthis administration that, you know, that a tax policy got, gotenacted that just, you know, felt like it was going to undoeverything that we were trying to do. So, there are these macroforces that, you know, that we have to try to turn the tide on.
Eve: [00:18:04] Yeah, that's depressing. But Iknow (laughter) but I know it's a really long patient game becauseI've been, I've seen that, you know, on things I've worked on thatinitially were like, what are you doing? You're nuts to now being,OK, this is mainstream. Like co-working or lofts downtown orrevitalizing downtowns ...
Annie: [00:18:27] Exactly.
Eve: [00:18:27] ... or all of that. And we'reactually ...
Annie: [00:18:29] Exactly.
Eve: [00:18:29] ... I think you're right. We'rein a moment. All of the progress we were heading towards has beenunbelievably compressed by everything that's happened this year.So, maybe that's a good thing, but ...
Annie: [00:18:44] Yeah, and I think that it'salso very complex too, right? Because, even we see in some placestremendous progress running exactly alongside of things that feellike tremendous regression ...
Eve: [00:18:56] Yes.
Annie: [00:18:56] ... you know, so, and both ofthose things are happening at the same time.
Eve: [00:19:01] Well, what's ... I'm going toask you, may not know the answer. But I really puzzle about what'shappening in traditional financial institutions. So, you know, Ihave this crowdfunding platform and what's been startling to meand, you know, and our purpose is to help raise money for creativechange-making projects and help developers get a little equitytogether, that seems to be a little more and more equity every yearas banks change their position on what they lend for. Because wethink that creative, those projects are important for making citiesbetter. B
Annie: [00:19:41] Yeh, yes.
Eve: [00:19:41] But it seems to me that they'reretracting even further because we're just being flooded at themoment, and equity requirements go up. It just seems to be harderand harder to borrow money, to do things, that are different thanthe things we have today. And we know we need to do thingsdifferently to fix some problems.
Annie: [00:20:09] Yeah, yeah. Well, the way Ithink about this and what I see from my perch is that I think thatwe have to, we have to start thinking about the world beyond banks,and, you know, think about and work hard on this, you know, theidea of having broader stakeholders. I mean, banks have beenbrought to the table on community finance because of the CommunityReinvestment Act.
Eve: [00:20:45] Right.
Annie: [00:20:45] And so, so what are the waysin which, you know, there might be policy levers that need to bepulled to get more folks to the table. But also, you know, what thenext generation of employees and employers, I mean, I think thatwe're in for change and I'm really hoping that we're in for changewith the next generation of leaders. Because they have been raisedwith different expectations and they are already changing,corporate, the way ... corporations are reacting. And you see now,you know, we've been the beneficiary of, you know, almost a 100million dollars in corporate contributions that are going out tosmall businesses, as, you know, in this pandemic, in the form ofrelief grants.
Eve: [00:21:44] That's pretty fabulous.
Annie: [00:21:45] And what we did was, thefirst one that came in, the first corporation that came in andsaid, can you do this for us? And we said, yes, we can do it foryou, but we're going to do it in our LISC way. And that means weare going to get to community-serving businesses that aremajority-owned by people of color and women. And they said, OK,cool. Go ahead and do it. So, you know, and then the next companythat came in said we want to buy that, we want to buy, especiallyas PPP, the paycheck protection program and SBA, major piece of thethe CARES Act, you know, was clearly written in a way that was justgoing to follow the old rules for how you distribute capital. Andthen people started saying, wait, wait, wait, there has to be otherways to do this. And so the work that we were doing was tipping thescales. We put our thumb on the scale in favor of community-servingsmall businesses and gave preference, and we're ending up with, youknow, somewhere in the low 90 percent, of the businesses that we'refunding, are owned by people of color.
Eve: [00:23:04] That's pretty great.
Annie: [00:23:05] And yeah, and in the paycheckprotection program, we got to about 80 percent of our companiesbeing minority women- and women-owned companies. And when you puttogether and in the, on the private sector side, our formula waswhere we're going to advantage certain census tracts. We're goingto advantage minority ownership and women ownership, and we'regoing to advantage certain size. So, when you line all those up,it's not that hard to come up with lots of folks to invest in. Andthat's where our money's gone.
Eve: [00:23:43] So, another question I have islooking at the other side of it. If a real estate developer hasaccess to community capital, what should her reciprocalresponsibilities be to that community?
Annie: [00:23:59] I think that's really, reallyvery important because, and we have to all get better at this aswell, in terms of how we doing community engagement, and how we'rebringing people into ownership of what happens at the communitylevel. And so I think, you know, there are just these models andthis seems to me to be what's out there on the fringe right now,you know, and it's always what's happening on the fringe that'seventually going to be where where we all go, hopefully. But what Isee is, I've been been advising on a project that's being done by afoundation of philanthropy. It's not a traditional philanthropy.It's one of the newer philanthropies. And they are, they're goingto do they're investing in a real estate project in a very, one ofthe most distressed census tracts in Washington, D.C. And they arebringing together community stakeholders to say, how do we create avehicle for people who live in that community right now before thedevelopment happens? How do we create a vehicle for them to investin it and to get ownership in it? And those are, I think, the kindof strategies we need to be thinking about. You know, how do we,because otherwise if you just let this play out via market forces,you get gentrification a lot of times.
Eve: [00:25:40] Right, right, right.
Annie: [00:25:42] So, you know, we don't wantto go in that direction. And that that means giving people realownership stakes.
Eve: [00:25:48] I mean, I agree. That's what weat Small Change, I'm having similar conversations with some verylarge developers who are starting to think about that ownershippiece, in really humongous projects in D.C. and New York. And it'sreally exciting to see that people are thinking about it. It ishopeful.
Annie: [00:26:08] So, yeah. And if you thinkabout like, so, another example, and this is not at the projectlevel, this is at the fund level. But, you know, we're managingwe're going to be managing money on behalf of Netflix. And Netflixwent out, and this was somebody inside Netflix who said, you know,in their treasury department, why are we sitting on all this moneyand not thinking about where it's invested? Why don't we get thisto black-owned institutions and, you know, and that, and that'swhen, so, you know, like back to your question, when are we evergoing to see this get better? I mean, that's when it's going to getbetter, right? When that person inside that corporation goes to theCEO, and the CEO says, yeah, absolutely, why aren't we doingthat?
Eve: [00:26:53] Yeh, yeh.
Annie: [00:26:53] And then you put it outthere. And once, when Netflix put that out there and they made theinvestment in us, we had so many corporations respond to say, well,how do we do that, too? So, that's what we have to do. We have tocreate the bandwagon. But the bandwagon that's moving money in thisdirection.
Eve: [00:27:12] Yeh. Yeh, yeh. So, I mean, howwould you define impact investing then?
Annie: [00:27:20] Ok, so impact investing tome, I always define it as it's a spectrum, right, because I like Ithink it's important for all of us to have a big umbrella and beinclusive. Right? And on one end of the impact investing spectrumare the folks that would say, you know, you can invest, and do goodand do well at the same time. Right? And there's not really a tradeoff. And then the other end of the spectrum is, you know, where mywork has always been, which is on the whether you call itconcessionary or catalytic capital, where you're trying to, becauseon that that first end of the spectrum, you're not disrupting anykind of the market forces. You're sort of saying the market can dothis, but there's something missing in terms of information flow.So, if everybody had perfect information, then you know that thatwould solve the problem. So, I've never bought into that because Idon't think that it accounts for the systemic racism that exists inour society and in our economy. And so, I think you have to be moredisruptive than that. And that requires capital that, that is, thatcan be designed in a, and stacked and engineered in a way thatallows more people to get access to it, to do the kind of projects,to create the kind of businesses that are going to let them into,you know, more economic activity. So, yeah. And my dream is alwaysin my work is always trying to think about, how do we get thepeople who are on one end of the spectrum down toward the catalyticend? Because if you want to disrupt poverty, you can't do it on themarket end, purely market end.
Eve: [00:29:28] No. Interesting. I mean, impactinvesting has been growing, I still think it's small. Do youexpect, I'm, I suppose I'm wondering if you expect this, the eventsof this year to rapidly increase interest in that, too. Well,certainly if you see it from Netflix.
Annie: [00:29:52] Yeah, I think I think it is.And I think the question is, you know, the question that's on ourmind at LISC is how do we, how do we convert the short-terminterest into long-term relationships. Because, and how do we getpeople to see? Because actually, frankly, in the short run, it'sgood for a corporation's brand to step up and do this kind ofwork.
Eve: [00:30:17] Oh, yeh.
Annie: [00:30:17] I mean they're ... Yeah, andthere's not really much at stake there. And frankly, you know, theycould direct, if they wanted to, they could purely direct this outof their PR budgets.
Eve: [00:30:28] Yes.
Annie: [00:30:29] You know, and so how do we,how do we, you know, convert people to the long-term play? That'sthe work that's in front of us right now.
Eve: [00:30:40] Right. So, Just shifting gearsa little bit, how, you know, what do we need to think about to makeour cities and neighborhoods just better places for everyone?
Annie: [00:30:55] Yeah. I think that we haveto, we have to think comprehensively, first of all. So, I don'tthink, that's the other another reason that I wanted to join LISCis because I like the comprehensive approach. Because I don't thinkthere's any one dimension to neighborhood life that is a silverbullet. Right? So we have to invest more in education and housingstability is fundamental to economic mobility. And so, we have toinvest in all of these things. And, you know, back to, back to thebig picture of tax policy and how we tax and spend. I do think wejust, the thing is, we know exactly what we need to do.
Eve: [00:31:54] Yes.
Annie: [00:31:55] We just have to invest in it.Right? We know the payoff of early childhood education. We know thepayoff of education in general. We know the payoff of preventivehealth care. So, you know, what more evidence do you need? We justneed to have the will and the commitment as a society. And oncethat's there, I think everything else follows.
Eve: [00:32:24] Yeh. And I see physically, too,we know the payoff of neighborhood parks and better streets andbetter lighting and all of those things that everyone wants intheir own neighborhood. And some people don't have.
Annie: [00:32:39] Right. And we have to developwe have to develop our collective will to say that that's not OK.That's not the world we want to live in.
Eve: [00:32:49] So, what community engagementtools have you seen that have worked that, you know, you mentionedthat that's a critical piece of it and that's hard.
Annie: [00:32:59] It is hard. It's hard for alot of reasons, one of which is that when community developers whodon't know community, if they don't know the community, if you'recoming in to this, you know, as a sort of professional, you mayhave certain assumptions about what people, and I think one of thethings we make a mistake on this all the time, like what does thecommunity want? Well, you know what? Not everybody in the communityagrees on what they want, just like, and just like in yourcommunity, you know.
Eve: [00:33:35] Yes.
Annie: [00:33:35] So, I think starting withlistening, and being open is really, really important. And so, Imentioned a, you know, the project where, you know, in Washington,D.C., where the funder was coming in and actually saying, OK, wewant to do, we want the result of, to be that people have anownership stake. But why don't we find out from the community whatthat means to them, how they would do it? What, is that what you,is that what's really wanted? You know, so I think, you know, goodcommunity engagement starts with listening, not making assumptionsand and bringing people in and just providing the space for voicesto be to be heard and listened to. And, you know, just having afaith in that. That that's, you know, that that's going to going tolead you down the right path is a good way to get people involved.And I think that also, you know, when I started my career, after Igot back from the Peace Corps, I went to work for the Campaign forHuman Development. And in that work, we funded a lot of communityorganizing. And the ability of communities to organize themselvesis also an important piece of this. Like the, there's very littleinvestment that goes into community organizing. And I think that'sa really important component.
Eve: [00:35:24] You know, that's what I wasjust going to say, because I think about, like when you're a verylarge developer doing a large scale project, you can absorb thatcommunity organizing piece.
Annie: [00:35:35] Yes.
Eve: [00:35:35] But when you're a smalldeveloper doing like interstitial projects that are, you know, fitinto a neighborhood, that becomes a pretty heavy lift in terms ofresources ...
Annie: [00:35:46] Exactly.
Eve: [00:35:46] ... and there to help, and howdo you get that done properly. It's really, it's hard. It'shard.
Annie: [00:35:53] Right. Right. And it's also,you know, and we need more philanthropy dollars in that becausethat's a really hard role for government to play. And we administera lot of Section 4 money, and that's out of the HUD budget, andthat's for capacity building of local organizations, and, tt'sreally hard money to work with.
Eve: [00:36:16] Yes. Yeh, yeh.
Annie: [00:36:16] You know, it's, so there's aneed for investment in, of flexible dollars into neighborhoodorganizing and leadership development.
Eve: [00:36:27] Yeah, no, I agree. So, what'swhat's next for you and LISC? I mean, what do you think the nextfive years will look like in this pretty fast-moving time thatwe're having here?
Annie: [00:36:40] Yes. So. Well, I think thatwe are on a pathway, move, you know, moving to the next level ofgrowth and scale. And for us, that's about how do we, how do we usethe assets that we've built so far to get to the next, to get tothat next level? And I think for us, you know, putting impactfirst, you know, the racial equity piece of this is reallyimportant. And I think, I am very hopeful that we are going to beable to do the deeper work there, that we're going to, you know,take, choose the pathway of doing the harder, deeper work. Becausethe long-term outcome is going to be better. And we're going to,you know, try to bring our partners along for that ride. And Ithink that we are through this period, we have greatly increasedour capacity to reach small businesses, and to think aboutinclusive economic development. How do we build the infrastructurefor more inclusive economic development? And ecosystems thatsupport community, small community-owned or locally owned smallbusinesses? And, you know, and we have to be thinking about how arewe disrupting systems? So, because we're at the edges of them now,you know, in terms of their usefulness and we have to buildsomething that's built to suit, for the next level of scale.So.
Eve: [00:38:41] Thank you very much. I reallyenjoyed the conversation. And I can't I really can't wait to seewhat you build and where LISC goes and where you go with allthis.
Annie: [00:38:52] Well, thank you and I lovethe work that you're doing, every dimension, you know, that, everystrategy that brings in more capital and the, you know, more of thekind of equity capital that you're pulling in and democratizingthat, I think is a really powerful strategy. And I also wish youthe best.
Eve: [00:39:17] Yeh, all takes ... Thank you,Annie.
Annie: [00:39:19] Yes. I can't wait to. I can'twait to see that happening.
Eve: [00:39:22] Bye.
Annie: [00:39:22] OK. Bye, bye.
Eve: [00:39:29] That was Annie Donovan. Anniethinks we need to start thinking about the world beyond banks. Weneed to find a way to let communities invest in order to change howwe tackle development. To give them a real stake in their ownfuture. Listening is key, as is providing the space for people tobe heard. For Annie, impact investment needs to have a big umbrellaand be deeply inclusive. She also understands playing the longgame, saying that we know exactly what to do, but that we need todevelop as a society, the collective will to invest in thatknowledge. You can find out more about impact real estate investingand access the show notes for today's episode at my website,EvePicker.com. While you're there, sign up for my newsletter tofind out more about how to make money in real estate while buildingbetter cities. Thank you so much for spending your time with metoday and thank you any for sharing your thoughts. We'll talk againsoon. But for now, this is Eve Picker, signing off to go make somechange.
