NFF invests in nonprofits that play a critical and often undervalued role in building community wealth and well-being. Our work focuses on nonprofits anchored in and serving communities disinvested of their own wealth, where our capital and resources can contribute to building equitable prosperity.
Core Strategic Commitments
Enhance NFF’s long-term sustainability
How We Apply These Commitments
Theory of Change
NFF effects change in communities by working with nonprofits, partners, and systems to build community wealth and well-being.
Our Clients
Low-income and historically disinvested communities have long been excluded from building wealth, and so we are especially focused on supporting and partnering with organizations that serve them.
Community Engagement
Our Community Engagement team helps NFF listen to needs on the ground, learn from community experiences, and design jointly with community partners to arrive at how NFF can best contribute to a community’s envisioned goal.
Elements of Our Strategic Plan
Our work is organized into Strategic Pillars and Emerging Opportunities.
Strategic Pillar 1: Capital
As a CDFI, we provide capital in the form of loans, grants, equity and equity-like equivalents, including our New Markets Tax Credits Program; regranting opportunities; and NFF Impact Investing Services.
NFF’s loan products help nonprofits acquire or renovate facilities, strengthen their operations with working capital, and meet cash flow needs while waiting for payment from committed grants and government contracts. Our New Markets Tax Credits program supports large community facility projects in severely distressed census tracts.
Our NFF Impact Investing Services business supports investors who want to make financing and funding available to meet community needs, including for smaller-budget nonprofits, especially in lower-income communities. Services include advising and training philanthropic staff looking to expand their community investments beyond grantmaking, and support designing and managing customized loan funds for those seeking new mechanisms to achieve social impact.
Strategic Pillar 2: Consulting
NFF’s Consulting practice partners with clients to craft practical, customized solutions to making financial decisions that fuel mission work. We offer one-on-one engagements with nonprofits, as well as cohort-based convenings, workshops, and partnerships. We help nonprofits, funders, financial institutions, and government entities connect money to mission and community impact; provide education on nonprofit financial management; and equip leaders to make financial decisions that best serve their missions.
Strategic Pillar 3: Advocacy
The third core pillar of our work is advocacy, which includes our thought leadership. Over the three years of the strategic plan, we are formalizing and expanding our advocacy activity. We are focusing our advocacy on: ensuring funding continues to flow to the CDFI sector; ensuring government funding is appropriately inclusive of nonprofits; and influencing policies and practices to support fairer, more accessible funding flows to nonprofits.
Aligning Our Work with Emerging Opportunities
Three Emerging Areas
NFF identified the following areas for our community-responsive work: community ownership of assets, climate resilience, and government funding challenges.