Our Strategic Plan
In 2020, LIIF announced a commitment to drive $5 billion in investments over the next decade to advance racial equity.
To launch this effort, LIIF has developed a strategic plan which charts a course for the organization through 2024, with a focus on growing our impact in three key areas: impact-led lending, affordable housing and early care and education (ECE).
Our three focus areas are where low-income communities and communities of color face deep inequities and where we believe we can make the most significant impact on people’s long-term well-being and opportunities for economic mobility. Our racial equity approach will be embedded across these areas and focused explicitly on generating more equitable outcomes in the communities we serve.
Read LIIF’s Strategic Plan: Mobilizing Capital to Build Communities of Opportunity, Equity and Well-Being
While our strategic plan was thoughtfully crafted over the course of a year, the realities of a global pandemic, resulting economic recession and rise in public consciousness of the acts of violence against people of color—particularly Black individuals—have underscored the urgency of this change for LIIF and our field.
LIIF has become a leader in creative capital deployment and investment in affordable housing and community facilities. Yet, we know that our work is driven as much by the financial system in which we participate as by our understanding of what is needed to create healthy, inclusive and vibrant communities. With the launch of our new strategic plan, we both acknowledge the extent to which the traditional capital markets have long been rooted in White supremacy and move more intentionally toward our vision of equitable and inclusive communities for all.
We know that in order to truly achieve economic and racial equity in this country, we must pivot from business as usual; our new strategic plan is our roadmap to doing that. We know we must both meet the immediate needs of communities facing crises and seek long-term responses to build a more equitable future. This strategic plan outlines how we aim to meet these widespread challenges as we work to help build communities
of opportunity, equity and well-being around the country.
Strategic Plan Focus Areas
- Impact-led lending: As a community development financial institution (CDFI), lending is the primary engine of impact LIIF uses to build communities of opportunity, equity and well-being. Since inception, LIIF has deployed $2.7 billion, and our new plan will guide us toward establishing measurable, equitable outcomes for people of color through our investments by 2024. Ultimately, LIIF hopes to create a model that can be leveraged by other CDFIs and lifts up strategies that put power, community decision and capital closer to where it belongs — in communities.
- Affordable housing: Long-standing racial disparities continue to create barriers to quality affordable housing for communities of color. The COVID-19 pandemic has only amplified this imbalance. LIIF is focused on preserving and increasing the supply of quality affordable homes, specifically seeking to advance strategies that address housing inequities and displacement for people of color and lower-income people. To accomplish this, LIIF has committed to offering capital products, seeking out mission-aligned partnerships and filling funding gaps to drive equitable access to housing.
- Early care and education: Equitable access to early care and education (ECE) is fundamental to holistic community development and a critical social determinant of health. Child care investments create positive long-term outcomes for children, families, small business owners and employees and have an outsized impact on communities of color. As part of our plan, we’re committed to doubling the number of children and ECE professionals we serve by 2024 to expand and preserve access to high quality early care and education.
