Our Impact
Impact is the heartbeat of a CDFI.
It’s how we turn capital into opportunity and hope into progress. Every dollar invested, home built, and space developed helps pave the path to opportunity.
2024 IMPACT
$3.2B
invested
$6.6B
leveraged
24K
affordable homes & apartments
989K
sq. ft. of commercial & community space
What does this look like on the ground?
THE VIEW UP CLOSE:
$3.2B invested
“
The faster we can help small businesses get back on their feet, the faster the region can begin to recover. We are committed to supporting our community every step of the way.”
Marvin Ellison, Lowe’s chairman & CEO
LISC delivered $3.2B to 1,357 community partners last year through a variety of grants, loans, and equity investments. Strategizing the right way to deploy capital helps ensure the funds are used efficiently and productively. To aid small businesses in the wake of 2024’s Hurricane Helene, for example, the best solution was to put flexible cash grants in the hands of disaster-impacted business owners ASAP.
Supporting small businesses is a mainstay of LISC’s mission because they are the lifeblood of local economies. In North Carolina small businesses account for 45 percent of private-sector employment. And according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), some 40 percent of small businesses never reopen after a disaster.
To prevent that follow-on catastrophe after Hurricane Helene, Lowe’s launched the Lowe’s Western North Carolina Small Business Recovery Fund, a $2.5 million commitment to assist hard-hit enterprises in its home state. Six weeks after Helene struck western North Carolina, Lowe’s partnered with LISC to implement the targeted recovery program, which provided grants of $20,000 for 100 affected businesses, along with support for local organizations that help entrepreneurs navigate disaster aid.
LISC rapidly disbursed the grants to small businesses across disaster-declared communities in North Carolina, targeting communities large and small throughout the mountainous region.
The grants went to vegetable farmers that supply local restaurants and food-aid programs, dairy and meat producers, and a grower of native azaleas. Grants also supported gift shops, food purveyors, and other retail stores facing what one owner called a “devastating loss of foot traffic.” They aided fly-fishing and mountain-biking outfitters that fuel the region’s outdoor recreation and tourism industry as well as small manufacturers and the construction companies that will be especially vital to recovery, including a home builder, a handyman service, and a landscaper expert in drainage solutions.
THE VIEW UP CLOSE:
$6.6B leveraged
Last year LISC’s direct investments of $3.2 billion helped pull an additional $3.4 billion into the community projects we supported. That leverage is fundamental to our mission. We put dollars to work strategically. We fill budget gaps to make projects happen that otherwise wouldn’t, join forces with corporations and foundations to stretch the impact of philanthropic funds, and support developments with low-cost, risk-tolerant capital that incentivizes private investors to come aboard.
This strategy is nowhere more apparent than in the grants we make to strengthen our local partners. Funded by a program of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) first authorized in 1993, our capacity-building grants helped local organizations build or preserve 40,000 housing units and attract $11 billion in additional investment between 2020 and 2024.
In rural America especially, these funds often support partial salaries for the key personnel who drive projects forward. In 2024, for example, through Rural LISC, the seed funding helped 44 hardworking organizations to:
Preserve housing value.
In Marvell, AR, a LISC grant supported a part-time healthy housing coordinator at the Boys, Girls, Adults Community Development Center (BGACDC). The staffer spearheaded an “essential needs” repair project focused on homes under the group’s management occupied by low-income single women and seniors. The grant also funded a maintenance plan for BGACDC’s scattered-site and neighborhood homes, preserving 56 units for stable, healthy living.
Build affordable homes.
LISC capacity building allowed expert staff at Sumter, SC-based Santee-Lynches Affordable Housing & CDC to put in the time required to develop seven detached single-family homes in neighboring Lee County and raise new funds to begin work on four more lots. In Welch, WV, a grant enabled staff at Safe Housing and Economic Development (SHED) to oversee development of a four-unit duplex in the small city’s center, maximizing the impact of financing from the West Virginia Housing Development Fund.
Expand housing for populations in need.
With a long track record of rehabilitating and developing homes in Hutchinson, KS, Interfaith Housing and Community Services opened its first transitional “LightHouse” home for housing-insecure young adults in 2023. LISC’s capacity-building grant has helped support key staff managing the LightHouse project, which includes supportive services and has leveraged donations from local businesses, churches, and individuals, along with thousands of volunteer hours.
THE VIEW UP CLOSE:
23,612 affordable homes & apartments
Each year LISC helps to finance many thousands of affordable dwellings in every part of the country. That top-line number of “units” is important given our nation’s severe housing shortage. But it can obscure what each home means to a family and a community—and how much collaboration and intentionality it takes to create the homes.
Let’s look, for example, at the work of one LISC Upstate South Carolina partner. If you were to drive around the Northside neighborhood of Spartanburg, SC, in early 2024, you might notice a handful of pretty, new-built homes tucked into formerly vacant lots. And you might see signs of the new homeowners settling in and making memories: a wreath on the door, a rake propped in a porchway, a child’s wheeled toys in the yard.
This picture represents an opportunity for low-income Spartanburg residents not only to remain in their community despite rising property prices driven by rapid population growth, but also to benefit from that growth, as their homes have already appreciated nicely in value.
And that’s exactly what Christopher “CeeJ” Jefferson hoped to accomplish with the real estate development and brokerage company he founded in 2021, Oak and Ave Property Group.
Jefferson developed the Northside homes with James White, Jr., an experienced builder, owner of James White Enterprises LLC, and Jefferson’s pastor. With support from TD Bank and under the leadership of executive director Dawn Deck, a Spartanburg native, LISC Upstate SC became a partner in Oak and Ave.’s work at an early stage.
LISC’s flexible loan of $730,000 has been a “key factor” in Oak and Ave’s success, Jefferson says, financing the construction of nine affordable single-family homes to date. Deck also helped Jefferson forge the local partnerships necessary to keep the houses affordable and provide prospective buyers with services like down payment assistance, credit repair, and homeownership education.
Thanks to this hands-on support more than 60 local residents have crossed the threshold to homeownership, including a working mother of three who lost her husband to COVID-19 and a longtime Spartanburg man who bought his first home in 2024 at age 73.
In a few short years, Jefferson and his partners built an effective model for revitalizing Spartanburg neighborhoods and opening a pathway to economic mobility for the city’s families. “Once they complete one project,” says LISC’s Deck, “they’re moving on to the next, and each project is becoming larger, proving how this approach is scalable.” Working with a grant from Wells Fargo, Deck has that example in mind as she seeks to accelerate the pipelines of other emerging developers in the Upstate.
THE VIEW UP CLOSE:
988,601 sq. ft. of commercial & community space
LISC invests not just in affordable homes but in all the assets communities need to flourish, from health clinics to retail storefronts to childcare centers. Promoting the importance of safe places to play, in the last 30 years we’ve helped to create some 500 sports and recreation facilities in under-resourced American communities.
Through a partnership with the DICK’S Sporting Goods Foundation announced in 2023, for instance, we invested nearly $3 million to build or renovate 35 sports facilities in 28 cities. Dubbed “Game On—Community Places to Play,” the project provided local organizations with grants of $50,000 to $100,000 and technical assistance to create quality venues for organized youth sports.
Game On has helped local groups develop outdoor basketball courts in a neighborhood park outside Cincinnati, OH, add programmable LED lighting to a baseball field in McAdams Park of Wichita, KS, and renovate an indoor baseball and softball facility that provides year-round training opportunities to youth in Pittsburgh, PA.
Last March saw the ribbon cut on a state-of-the-art football field and track at KIPP Bold City High School in Jacksonville, FL. Partners in the project—including LISC Jacksonville, the Jaguars Foundation (representing Jacksonville’s NFL team), and general contractor Carlton Construction—joined KIPP Jacksonville Public Schools in celebrating a proud new home for Bold City’s Greyhounds and sparkling amenity for the broader community.
“What this represents today,” said KIPP Foundation CEO Shavar Jeffries, “is a space that’s designed to activate the dreams of our young people . . . designed for our children, families, and communities to walk into the fullness of their potential.”
Teal-and-black pom-poms flashed in the sun and cheers erupted from the stands as Bold City High players took the field to model the Greyhounds’ new uniforms. Speaking to a reporter for Jacksonville Today, one junior, a high-achieving student and three-sport athlete, called the new field “a blessing and an opportunity.”
Our affiliates in 2024
LISC’s impact is scaled by our family of affiliates, which have attracted tens of billions of dollars to communities that would not otherwise have the capital they need to build and grow. They have pioneered new approaches, hand in hand with local partners, that expand local economies, helping support a good quality of life for residents. Their products and services expand the housing and economic development solutions we are able to deliver to the communities we serve.
National Equity Fund, Inc.
National Equity Fund, Inc. invested nearly $2.7 billion to build and preserve affordable rental housing in 2024—the strongest year in its 37-year history. NEF has 193 housing funds under management and has financed nearly 200,000 apartments through Low Income Housing Tax Credit projects, as well as workforce housing and preservation developments.
$2.7B
invested
$3.9B
leveraged
Broadstreet Impact Services
Broadstreet Impact Services celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2024 and ended the year with more than 100 impact investing funds and $2.1 billion in assets under management or administration. Broadstreet leads LISC’s New Markets Tax Credit program, having deployed nearly $1.2 billion deployed to support small businesses, community facilities, housing, jobs and health in under-resourced communities.
$19M
invested
$46M
leveraged
LISC Fund Management
LISC Fund Management invested more than $101 million in 2024 to support affordable housing and revitalize disinvested communities. LFM leads a lineup of city-specific housing investment funds in places like Charlotte, Dallas and Detroit, as well as small business funds operating nationally. All told, LFM has more than $800 million in assets under management.
$101M
invested
$681M
leveraged
45 years of impact
SINCE 1979
$35B
invested
$93B
leveraged
530K
affordable homes & apartments
83M
sq. ft. of commercial & community space
5-year growth
