RIIF & Ford Foundation Pledge $6 Million to Job Creation in Appalachia
RIIF and Ford Foundation have committed to invest $6 million in locally-owned small businesses in Appalachia. This initiative will provide customized financing solutions that businesses can tailor to meet specific needs.
In October, RIIF CEO Carrie McKellogg, CFO Peter Lippman, and RIIF Appalachian Growth Fund Manager Annie Forrest (former Farber Fellow and eighth-generation Appalachian) hosted a lunch conversation in Chattanooga to engage with stakeholders around the region. Attendees included employment social enterprise leaders from Project Return and Coalfield Development, representatives from regional CDFIs, and local impact investors.
We’re proud to join the Appalachian Funders Network and partner with local investors to support the economic development of this key region of the country.
RIIF Provides $25K Grant for Hurricane Helene Relief Efforts
RIIF contributed $25,000 to Mountain Bizworks’ WNC Strong: Helene Business Recovery Fund to support relief grants for BIPOC small businesses working to recover from Hurricane Helene’s catastrophic damage to Central Appalachia. This funding aims to help businesses and employees get back to work.
As RIIF continues to invest in Appalachia, we are grateful to support the fund’s anchor partners Mountain Bizworks, Invest Appalachia, and Appalachian Community Capital, and all other funders who have come together to respond to the once-in-1000-years flooding from Hurricane Helene.
RIIF Speaks at 2024 Opportunity Finance Network Conference
This fall, RIIF Senior Director Emilie Linick moderated an insightful panel at the 2024 Opportunity Finance Network Conference in Los Angeles, California.
She was joined onstage by Royal Ramey, CEO & Co-Founder of The Forestry & Fire Recruitment Program; Avery Ebron, Director at Community Stewardship Trust at The Guild; and Khaliff Davis, Managing Director at Reinvestment Fund.
In this powerful panel, they discussed how to reduce bias in underwriting through asset framing, made a business-and-mission case as to why lenders should invest in social enterprises and community led projects, and shared how investing in community-driven organizations — like social enterprises and real estate projects — can lead to transformative, equitable outcomes.
Quality Jobs Fund Invests $4 Million into RIIF
The Quality Jobs Fund, a collaborative project of the New World Foundation and the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, is a $100 million impact investment fund built to enhance and transform underserved communities by seeding sustainable, long-term, well-paid jobs, skill upgrading for working people and fuel small business expansion in vital growth industries primarily in Arizona, California, and Nevada, along with select innovative national models.
As the largest philanthropic effort of its kind — prioritizing a focus on investing in job quality, not just job creation — the Quality Jobs Fund has not only created thousands of new quality jobs, enhanced and grown hundreds of small businesses, and trained and upskilled thousands of underserved workers, but it has also catalyzed innovative solutions that address systemic drivers of local economic decline and resulting inequality, and that will in turn build prosperous, vibrant, and strong communities.
The Quality Jobs Fund invested $4 million into RIIF’s Growth and Mobility Fund to accelerate the first statewide employment social enterprise initiative, CA RISE, by providing flexible capital to build financial sustainability for employment social enterprises (ESE) statewide, creating jobs for individuals overcoming barriers to work. With this investment, RIIF will incentivize ESEs to increase use of job quality supports and show positive job quality outcomes. Employment social enterprises are well placed to develop new on-the-job training models and create apprenticeships in high need, non-traditional sectors like community health workers and social services, which increase diversity and improve access to these opportunities.
RIIF hosted a recent focus group with CA RISE leaders, led by RIIF loan originations manager Riya Annamraju. The focus group revealed strong interest in the Growth and Mobility Fund to improve access to working capital and fill financing gaps from outstanding receivables from public sector contracts, or non-extractive interest rates that allow ESEs to invest in skills development, on-the-job technology, and employer-provided benefits.
