Catalyzing a movement to build community wealth

Community wealth building (CWB) is a system-changing approach to community economic development that works to produce broadly shared economic prosperity, racial equity, and ecological sustainability through the reconfiguration of institutions and local economies on the basis of greater democratic ownership, participation, and control.

The traditional local economic development paradigm, based around using public resources to attract corporations designed to extract wealth and real estate capital designed to displace communities, has been fundamentally broken for some time—but for too long many local policymakers believed this broken game was the only one to play.

A signature achievement of the Democracy Collaborative has been the effective introduction and amplification of the idea that a real alternative exists: community wealth building.

With multiple cities now institutionalizing this paradigm in dedicated offices, and many more incorporating the term and frame into their planning and work, we have created a new sense of radical possibility at the level of local economic development.

Visit our comprehensive resource portal for community wealth builders: Community-Wealth.org

October 31, 2015

Cities Building Community Wealth

by Marjorie Kelly, Sarah McKinley

In an era of persistent urban inequality and chronic unemployment disproportionately impacting historically marginalized communities and communities of color, new alternatives to the traditional economic development strategies are clearly needed. This report responds to this challenge by highlighting best practices in inclusive innovation from twenty cities across the country, and offering a unified vision of the underlying new paradigm of community focused economic development.

Collection

Community Wealth Innovators

Working with leading practitioners in the field to document the inspiring new models and critical lessons learned in on-the-ground efforts to build more inclusive and equitable local economies. read more

November 16, 2014

A New Anchor Mission for a New Century screenshot

A New Anchor Mission for a New Century: Community foundations deploying all resources to build community wealth

This report offers an overview of how 30 representative community foundations, large and small, urban and rural, are working toward adopting this new anchor mission.

August 16, 2016

Conversations on Community Wealth Building

by Steve Dubb

Drawing on a decade’s worth of conversations with key leaders in the growing field, from cooperative developers and community activists to impact investors and social enterprise innovators, this book of interviews from the Democracy Collaborative dives into the front lines of the movement to build community wealth.