Communities controlling their own economic destiny is the holy grail of sustainable and equitable development, but time and time again, resources are instead given to outside developers because "communities do not have the capacity" to do development themselves. This claim then becomes a self-perpetuating trap: communities never get the resources they need, so they never get to build a track record or develop their capacity.

Capping off a decade of growth with a record-breaking combined allocation of $24M in 2022 and 2023 ($13M and $11M respectively), Seed Commons has shown the lie of this claim. Our networked non-extractive investing model has proved that when given the proper space and structure, communities can rapidly develop the capacity to drive their own economic development, resulting in far more equitable, lasting, and transformative benefit than traditional approaches.

Seed Commons is that structure and space.

Read our 2023 Impact Report now: