What We Do

 

Community Venture Partners, Inc. (CVP) is a California nonprofit corporation that offers assistance and support, and provides educational programs for community organizations, nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, and local municipalities.

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Our goals are to effect positive social change through innovative approaches to community engagement. We believe that the community and those in need are best served by transparency and a bottom-up approach to government decision-making.

 

• Educate: CVP facilitates public meetings and educational presentations, and offers advisory services. CVP is also the publisher of the Marin Post, California's first citizen-journalist newsmagazine.

 

• Advocate: CVP develops in-depth analysis, publishes research articles and studies, and pursues legal actions on issues benefiting the public's interests;

 

• Demonstrate Solutions: CVP is actively working on a variety of projects (e.g., feeding Marin families, affordable housing, and online publishing) to demonstrate more sustainable solutions to growth and social equity challenges facing Marin communities.

 

CVP works collaboratively with these groups and NGOs, foundations, corporations, private donors and investors, and other stakeholders. Services provided by CVP are free of charge to qualified applicants. 

 

CVP continues to build its network of partners and collaborators who volunteer their time and expertise toward the organization’s charitable and educational purposes and assist with CVP’s projects, programs, and initiatives.

 

Why Community Venture Partners?

 

Municipalities and nonprofit community organizations are finding it increasingly difficult to plan for future growth and to serve those most in need. This is in part due to the high costs of government operations and inadequate community outreach before government decisions are made. This is particularly true with regard to their ability to coordinate with increasingly complex federal, state, and regional regulations.

 

At the same time, federal and state funding assistance remains scarce and smaller cities and counties often lack the kind of expertise and financial wherewithal required to maximize their relationships with private-sector financial resources, to achieve their goals.

 

CVP provides expertise rarely found in community organizations or municipal agencies. CVP brings a high level of expertise in a variety of disciplines needed to help smaller municipalities, achieve more equitable and sustainable growth and planning goals.

 

The Benefits of Collective Experience

 

CVP is the outcome of charitable and educational efforts undertaken by its officers, board members, and partners. Collectively, we have extensive experience and expertise in architecture, development, planning, business management, and finance. 

 

CVP’s business model is built upon a dynamic network of partners, collaborating nonprofits, community groups, and socially conscious individuals, who invest their time and expertise toward the organization’s charitable and educational purposes.

 

CVP’s expanding network includes finance specialists, lenders, investment bankers, and private equity managers, social venture investors, philanthropists, and nonprofit foundations, nonprofit charitable and educational institutions and organizations, architects, planners, government agencies, nonprofit executives, nonprofit and for-profit developers, and environmental and green building experts, and other interested professionals. See CVP Advisors for more details.

 

New Funding Methods Needed 

 

The methods of achieving environmental and economic sustainability and social equity must work in concert with each other to arrive at truly sustainable solutions. There is a need to explore more creative funding methods and participant collaborations.

 

In suburban and ex-urban areas, 90 percent of the potential affordable housing development opportunities are smaller, infill, mixed-use sites whose owners lack sufficient financial and development assistance.

 

CVP believes nonprofit/for-profit, public/private partnerships can offer more effective and more economically sustainable solutions to many intractable development challenges. CVP has found that a combination of grants, donations, low-cost financing, and “socially conscious” investment can often accomplish what purely market-driven or government-subsidized programs cannot, on their own.