Hope rises in Baltimore

by: Jeremy Burton

Fri Oct 22, 2010 at 12:35:56 PM EDT

Great story in the Urbanite, a Baltimore local, regarding City Arts, a project I've mentioned here before, in part:

“Artist housing.” What does this phrase bring to mind? Perhaps a rickety, walk-up garret with north-facing windows but no running water. Maybe a gritty, brick-walled industrial loft with all the creature comforts of an abandoned warehouse.

Chances are you don’t envision spacious new apartments with handsome kitchens in a modern building wired for high-speed Internet. City Arts Apartments, soon to be completed at 440 Oliver Street within the Station North Arts and Entertainment District, offers these amenities and more as Baltimore’s first purpose-built housing development for artists. It takes advantage of a federal program that allows developers to receive low-income tax credits while creating rental housing with a preference for artists.

JFSJ, through Tzedec Community Ventures, our (as the names suggests) investment venture fund (and of who's board I am proud to be a member) is - in partnership with BUILD, the Baltimore IAF affiliate, several local black church, along with local Jewish family foundations and the Associated, Baltimore's Jewish Federation - a lead investor in TRF-DP, one of the development partners of this project.

We're proud to collaborate to support the revitalization of Baltimore's historic neighborhoods and very excited to see this project progressing. Read the full article here.

Pizza, Pasta, Tzedekah, Recovery

by: Jeremy Burton

Mon Apr 26, 2010 at 10:19:01 AM EDT

If you are in New Orleans this week for JazzFest (or at any other time for that matter), you can now be a consumer at another small business that we've been invested in:  Pizza and Pasta, located in a food court on Decatur Street in the French Quarter.

L-R: Tonette Rising (ASI), Loc Pham, and Sarah Taylor (ASI)

Pizza and Pasta is owned by Loc Pham and Thinh Nguyen, a husband and wife team that JFSJ made a loan to through our 8th Degree program, a pooled fund to provide micro-loans to small businesses in greater New Orleans in partnership with the ASI Federal Credit Union.

This past week, while visiting New Orleans, I sat down for lunch at P&P with our friends from ASI. Compared to all the heavy meat and seafood that is part of traditional cuisine down here, a simple slice is a nice option sometimes, though they definetly have the meat laden pizzas too (& especially since I don't eat the meat and seafood).

Pizza and Pasta is part of the food court at Jackson Brewery (aka Jax),

Triple Bottom Line returns in Baltimore, and Hope too

by: Jeremy Burton

Thu Mar 25, 2010 at 20:55:02 PM EDT

I was in Baltimore this Tuesday for the annual meeting of investors in an exciting project led by TRF Development Partners Baltimore,  and BUILD, the Baltimore IAF affiliate, both long time partners of JFSJ.  Together TRF and BUILD, led by a coalition of primarily African-American churches, are building housing and businesses for lower income ownership in East Baltimore, restoring hope in their community and bringing a long depressed urban area back to life.

The most exciting new piece of the project, recently unveiled at a press event with HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan and National Endowment for the Arts Director Rocco Landsmen, is the City Arts development site, just two blocks east of Baltimore's Penn Station.

This site, scheduled to open in December 2010, will provide affordable rental apartments for lower income artist, townhouses for sale, studio space, and professionally managed gallery and performance space.

In a challenging economic time, when construction is down and jobs are tight, TRF and BUILD are

Victory for community development credit unions in new TARP policy

by: Jeremy Burton

Thu Feb 04, 2010 at 21:31:11 PM EST

Are you as angry as I am about the bailout of the banks and ever bashed TARP program?  Well then, maybe you'll be as excited as I am about some great news that came our way today.

Our partners at the "Federation" (that would be the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions) wrote to us today to tell us that:

At a meeting with key leaders of community development credit unions (CDCUs) and community development banks, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced yesterday a major capital investment program for depositories certified as community development financial institutions (CDFIs).

JFSJ is ourself an investor in the Federation (which is a CDFI), as well as in many community development credit unions, through our Tzedec Economic Development Fund.  Cliff Rosenthal, CEO of the Federation, has been one of the leading Jewish voices for building access to capital in low income communities.

As the Federation's justly excited announcement explains:

My first time...

by: Jeremy Burton

Fri Apr 04, 2008 at 14:48:34 PM EDT

About ten years ago I was working at Jewish Funders Network and at one of our conferences Jeffrey Dekro, our co-founder and a board member, stood up in a session and talked about this idea he was developing, based on the Torah of Money (ToM) work that he had been doing for several years.  The core of ToM, as discussed in his book (with Larry Bush) "Jews, Money and Social Responsibility" was that to paraphrase R. Yishmael in Bava Batra 175b, money is an ever flowing stream, the greatest area of Torah study. Put simply, we can relate to our money through a framework of mutual responsibility and the halachic ethical imperatives within Judaism, thereby elevating the simple everyday transactional behavior to the level of sacred and covenental financial actions.

Big idea, sure.  And now Jeffrey was proposing a way to give a tool to Jews who wanted to live the Torah of Money: a finance fund, held and operated by the Jewish community, to take investments from Jewish foundations and wealthy individuals and in turn invest that money in community development financial institutions (CDFIs) across America as an act of Tzedakah, while delivering below market interest returns to the investors.

From that concept was born the Tzedec program and