Collection

Using Creative Financing

Solutions Journalism Network

Finance is crucial—not only to funding programs, but also as a direct means of giving people autonomy. By leveraging the power of creative financing and positive financial incentives, communities and individuals can solve challenges they face in the ways they see fit.

The stories in this collection examine solutions that use creative financing to drive social change. We see examples of organizations that have had to get creative with revenue streams. Read the Next City article by Oscar Perry Abello to learn about the work of the Illinois Facilities Fund (IFF), a Community Development Financial Institution working to help nonprofits and small businesses access resources through the Paycheck Protection Program.

In many cases, money is best spent by those who are facing the challenges. Whether it is accomplished through direct cash transfers via foreign aid or by government-supplied stipends, we can see that providing individuals and communities with financial autonomy increases the greater good. Issie Lapowsky writes about the positive effects of a basic income payment made to members of the Cherokee tribe in North Carolina.

Explore further to learn how a different form of payment, by the Nepalese government to mothers, is trying to normalize multiple female births among families living in poverty.

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