RFCDC

Roaring Fork
Community Development Corporation

The Roaring Fork Community Development Corporation is a joint creation of Healthy Mountain Communities, a 13 year old regional nonprofit organization and The Manaus Fund, a donor advised fund of The Aspen Community Foundation, which fosters social entrepreneurship.

What is a CDC? A Community Development Corporation (CDC) is a 501©3 non-profit, community-based organization designed to create or provide the infrastructure, services, and amenities that are challenging for private businesses, corporations, and local governments to provide. CDCs began to gain support as an important community development tool in the late 1960s. Today, there are over 4,000 CDCs operating in the U.S.

In the same way that traditional businesses seek venture capital to start or expand, CDCs seek grants and investors interested in moving the market toward more social purposes (affordable housing, job training, commercial development, health clinics) while still generating a return on the initial investment. CDC’s help re-circulate capital to build community wealth and address social issues. They are run by a local board of directors and have a mission of community improvement that often emphasizes democracy, social justice and equity, and quality of life.

What does a CDC do? Community Development Corporations work as brokers, catalysts, and facilitators between public and private interests and investments. Where nonprofit organizations normally seek annual grants to accomplish their socially oriented mission, CDCs operate more like a business. By creating products and services the market values and people will purchase, CDCs use market mechanisms to achieve their social mission – a double bottom line. This approach combines the generosity, caring, and determined optimism of the non-profit sector with the financial sense and innovation of the for-profit sector.

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Mission

The Roaring Fork Community Development Corporation’s mission is to improve the health and welfare of people and communities in the Roaring Fork and Colorado River Valleys.

As a 501©3 tax-exempt charitable nonprofit organization, the Roaring Fork Community Development Corporation achieves its mission by working as a broker, catalyst, facilitator, and developer to create community-based / civic focused projects that ensure low and middle income individuals and families can live in the communities of the region, increase opportunities for locally owned businesses, and encourage the efficient use of energy, land, and community resources.

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Vision

Affordable Spaces
In the Roaring Fork and Colorado River Valley the economy operates has priced many middle income and lower income households out of the housing and commercial markets. Consequently, workers commute great distances to reach their places of employment. The lack of affordable commercial rentals limits locally owned small business expansion as well as new start-ups. Roaring Fork CDC works with nonprofit, public, and private entities to create affordable spaces to ensure both the diversity of people and businesses in a community.

Placemaking
Cultures and climates differ all over the world," notes architect Jan Gehl, "but people are the same. They will gather in public if you give them a good place to do it." In a democratic society, such gathering places aren’t just niceties, they are practical necessities that give citizens places to "rub shoulders" together and exercise their community and democratic skills. Roaring Fork CDC works to ensure private and public projects are "places for people" by incorporating people centered design and raising additional funding as necessary.

Community Ventures
Individuals invest in their future through IRAs, 401ks, and REITs while communities invest in their future prosperity by reinvesting in their children and public infrastructure (schools, parks, housing, health care).

Roaring Fork CDC works to combine these investment tools and strategies to catalyze community-based investment and broker private / public partnerships to develop projects that not only build community wealth but address community and social goals as well.

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Board

Don Ensign

Michael McVoy

Doug Pratte

George Stranahan

Director

Colin Laird

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Projects

>> Affordable Commercial Space <<

Third Street Center