Our Mission
LOCUS believes that philanthropy and mission-driven investors should work alongside communities to grow economies that work for all. We partner with these impact investors to redefine their role as capital providers, activate investments and endowments for community impact, and use their capital as a tool to drive equitable prosperity.
LOCUS is a national nonprofit consultancy and mission-driven investment advisory firm.We meet our partners where they are and help them realize the vision of where they want to be. LOCUS works with our partners to educate stakeholders and develop strategies; to identify and assess investments through transaction support such as sourcing, structuring and due diligence; to service and manage investment portfolios; and to design, structure and manage investment funds and collaborative investment infrastructure.
Success in this mission requires that we track the impact of our work, modify our approach to produce greater impact, and share our learning with partners and the field. Towards that end, LOCUS tracks and reports on three impact goals:
- More impact investors and capital committed to place.
- More effective and equitable local impact investing practice.
- More impact capital deployed in communities.
What is Local Impact Investing?
Local Impact Investing is a new tool for philanthropy and impact organizations that care about place. Check out the video below for an overview of how it all works.
News & Events
Over the past five years, we have helped an additional 30 community foundations become community investors. Along the way, the LOCUS team recognized that local impact investing by community foundations differs from that practiced by private, non-place-focused foundations. And we identified a need for community foundations to come together to discuss, debate, and even troubleshoot the challenges – and opportunities – that local impact investing creates.
People’s Solar Energy Cooperative’s new program demonstrates how by serving as a cooperative commons it can enable community-based solar developers to build community ownership of solar, especially in low and moderate-income communities and communities of color.
What have we learned from our past three Accelerators? As our team reflected on these experiences, we hit upon five themes for using peer cohorts to support "learning for action" that grow the practice of local investing by foundations.
