Spotlight on ACC and Our Members! |
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ACC Receives ARC Grant to Expand
Opportunity Appalachia
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ACC has been awarded $1.5 million by ARC for Phase 3 of its Opportunity Appalachia program.
This award is part of a recently announced nearly $54 million package supporting 64 projects across 217 coal-impacted counties through ARC’s POWER (Partnerships for Opportunities and Workforce and Economic Revitalization) Initiative. ACC is looking forward to expanding the successful Opportunity Appalachia program to Kentucky, in addition to continuing to work with partners in the five current participating states (Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee). Opportunity Appalachia provides targeted technical assistance and investor connections to support development projects that create quality local jobs, bring new opportunities to small businesses and entrepreneurs, and stabilize and revitalize underinvested coal communities in several Appalachian states.
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ACC Partners with Connect Humanity to Raise
$25M to Bridge the Digital Divide
Connect Humanity and ACC have joined forces in a bold campaign to raise $25 million through IDEA (Investing in Digital Equity in Appalachia), an initiative aiming to bridge the digital divide throughout Appalachia, one of the least connected regions in the U.S. The collaboration will create opportunities for local capital to invest in broadband infrastructure, including support for a community of CDFIs, banks, impact investors, and foundations dedicated to achieving digital equity. The IDEA fund will help communities raise the capital match required to apply for government broadband funds in addition to investing in communities that do not secure government grants. For more information, check out this podcast about the initiative featuring ACC CEO Donna Gambrell and Connect Humanity's Chief Investment Officer Brian Vo.
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Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund
Application Submitted
Last week, ACC came together with partners to submit an application for the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator, part of EPA’s historic $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The $6 billion Clean Communities Investment Accelerator competition will provide grants to 2–7 hub nonprofits that will, in turn, deliver funding and technical assistance to build the clean financing capacity of local community lenders working in low-income and disadvantaged communities, so that underinvested communities have the capital they need to deploy clean technology projects. ACC’s proposal is focused on creating a Green Bank for Appalachia, energy communities, and underserved rural America, and growing the next generation energy economy. ACC extends its thanks to the many local, regional, and national partners who contributed to the application and helped us cross the finish line!
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Sold Out OFN Conference Convenes 2,200
Attendees & Exciting Speaker Roster
2,200 attendees—the most ever—gathered in Washington, DC, for the 39th annual Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) Conference on October 15-18. The event, which sold out for the second year in a row, offered more than 70 breakout sessions with roughly 250 speakers on green finance, economic uncertainty, the future CDFI workforce, post-pandemic capital deployment, and social, racial, and economic justice. ACC CEO Donna Gambrell gave welcoming remarks and moderated the opening plenary, which explored climate justice with the father of environmental justice, Dr. Robert Bullard; Jerome Foster II, the youngest member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council; and Duanne Andrade of the Solar and Energy Loan Fund. Other conference speakers included Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, EPA Administrator Michael Regan, Noel Andres Poyo of the U.S. Treasury Department, SBA Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman, Interim CDFI Fund Director Marcia Sigal, Byron Auguste of Opportunity at Work, Maria Flynn of Jobs for the Future, and of course OFN’s Harold Pettigrew, who made his first conference appearance as President & CEO.
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Donna Gambrell & Amir Kirkwood |
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Virginia Community Capital Rebrands as Locus
Foundations, borrowers, local government representatives, banks, investors, and other partners came together on October 10 in Richmond, Virginia, for Virginia Community Capital’s (VCC) Social Enterprises Learning Exchange. ACC CEO Donna Gambrell served as the keynote speaker, and VCC CEO and President Amir Kirkwood shared an update from the organization, including that they are changing their company name and brand to better reflect their mission and community-centered work. The parent organization is now called Locus, with its subsidiaries known as Locus Bank, Locus Impact Fund, and Locus Capital. The new website will be locusimpact.org, and employee email addresses will change to [first initial][last name]@locusimpact.org. The definition of the word “locus” is “a particular point, position, or place,” and the Locus team hopes their new brand clearly communicates their commitment to creating impact in places across Virginia and beyond.
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Funding & Technical
Assistance Opportunities
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This program recognizes that significant economic opportunities often reach across state lines and that achieving maximum economic impact can demand a multistate approach. Through carefully crafted planning grants and transformational implementation grants, ARISE will foster creative collaboration across state lines to produce a more robust and sustainable regional economy. Mandatory concept papers will be reviewed every two months starting the day after the first submittal deadline, October 31. APPLY HERE
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This new program will offer grants to support partnerships between organizations from different sectors that will work together at the local, state, or regional level to improve access to fresh, healthy, affordable food by providing financial and technical assistance to eligible projects. Partnerships must be public-private partnerships; one entity must be a public entity such as a local, state or a tribal authority, government, or agency; the others may be nonprofits, for-profit businesses, foundations, food policy councils, food systems and food access organizations, among others. Application deadline: November 3. APPLY HERE
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October 25-27, 2023
Bentonville, AR Register HERE.
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The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has designated 483 census tracts as Community Disaster Resilience Zones, which makes them eligible for increased federal resources for resilience projects. These zones are census tracts identified as disadvantaged communities which are most at-risk of natural hazards. READ MORE
Smart Growth America, with support from the National Association of Development Organizations Research Foundation, the Nuclear Decommissioning Collaborative, and the Center for Creative Land Recycling, has released the Community Economic Diversification Roadmap. This resource is intended for nuclear host communities and other interested energy transition communities to explore how to strengthen and grow their economic base throughout the energy transition lifecycle and includes best practices and case studies. READ MORE
USDA has released the Department’s first Equity Action Plan and equity plans for each mission area, including Rural Development. READ MORE
Through the “Rural Workers: Amplified” survey, Rural LISC is collecting the perspectives of rural workers and those on the margins of the rural workforce on workforce supports that make a difference in their lives. READ MORE
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APPALACHIAN COMMUNITY CAPITAL
110 PEPPERS FERRY RD NW
CHRISTIANSBURG, VA 24073
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