Capital & Financing Research
What would it take to make it easier to acquire capital for community ownership?
Community ownership models — including cooperatives, community land trusts, resident-owned communities, and other forms of community-owned real estate — need capital structures that reflect their goals and timelines.
This page brings together research and emerging strategies for building a stronger financial infrastructure for community ownership. The resources below examine both the potential of financial aggregation and the broader capital needs, gaps, and solutions facing community-owned projects.
Capital Needs for Community Owned Real Estate
This research brief examines the capital needs of community-owned projects (commercial, mixed-use, and residential) across the full project lifecycle — from predevelopment and acquisition to construction, permanent financing, and long-term stewardship. It identifies persistent gaps and emerging solutions for making capital more flexible, patient, and aligned with community ownership.
Community Ownership Financial Aggregation Research
This study explores whether aggregating capital can make financing more accessible for shared ownership while keeping community control at the center. It outlines what different structures could look like and the conditions necessary to make them viable.
In this webinar highlight reel, we dive into the findings of The Bridgespan Group's first-of-its-kind study on financial aggregation for community ownership.
Join Atharva Sinha (Bridgespan Group) and Curt Lyon (Transform Finance) as they unpack the critical tensions between hyper-local needs and national-scale capital markets. In a conversation facilitated by Ahmed Mori (University of Miami's Community Ownership Learning & Action Lab), they discuss the study's recommendation for a dual-track aggregation model and other strategies to make community ownership a viable competitor in today's real estate landscape.