About the Program
The 2026 Community Investor Accelerator is a year-long action-learning network for 4-6 place-focused foundations—community foundations, health conversion foundations, etc.—ready to build governance consensus and an implementation plan for community impact investing.
The Accelerator includes deep education and training provided in a virtual setting with peers, along with customized coaching support to each foundation team. In the Accelerator, foundations will:
- Explore the field of community impact investing while your team builds shared understanding of how this tool could create positive and equitable mission impact in your community.
- Design and enact a community impact investing strategy, including action steps needed to advance that strategy.
- Engage and tap the expertise of foundations from around the country that are investing in their communities.
- Improve and evolve the framework through our collective learning and action – to build a stronger toolkit and strategy set for use by Accelerator participants and the field.
- Advance the field of community impact investing by capturing and disseminating the learning and stories surfaced in the Accelerator.
At the end of the Accelerator, each foundation will have a set of community impact investing guidelines, a proposed investment policy, capital deployment tools including a decision-making rubric, and an initial implementation plan for board approval. Many teams also start to identify a test investment pipeline for their proposed strategy.
Learn More
Want to learn more? Request a conversation or attend one of our webinars:
Informational Webinar:
Why Foundation Invest Locally
September 4, 2025, 12-1PM ET
Join a conversation with two community impact investors: Montana Community Foundation and Kansas Health Foundation.
Informational Webinar:
Get Started Investing Locally
October 22, 2025, 12-1PM ET
Join a conversation with staff and board of a community impact investor: Community Foundation of Central Illinois.
> Register Now
Program Structure
The Accelerator includes six virtual peer learning convenings, customized foundation meetings in-between peer gatherings, and foundation-identified board engagements to grow understanding of local impact investing and share the emerging program design. The Community Investment Project staff and consultants set agendas, analyze and prepare materials, and provide thoughtful guidance and coaching throughout the engagement.
Who Should Participate
The Accelerator is ideal for foundations whose staff and board have done basic impact investing learning and whose leadership, the CEO and board chair, hope to develop the ability to deploy impact investments in the community. The Accelerator is designed to speed individualized impact investing program development while building broader stakeholder buy-in.
Once the Accelerator begins, the crux of the Accelerator experience is your foundation team which we call the Core Team. Each Core Team should include participants who are critical – as decision makers, influencers and/or implementers – to deepening your mission-aligned impact using the tool of community impact investing. We recommend a Core Team of five to nine members. Your team should include key foundation staff (e.g., CEO, CFO, program officer) and board members (e.g., board chair, members of investment committee). If it is your practice to include engaged community partners (e.g., community members of your investment or grants committee), you may consider including these individuals too. As you finalize your Core Team, consider whether each member – and the team as a whole – meet these criteria:
- Has the capacity, by position or personal characteristics, to influence your foundation's understanding, vision, action, and practices now and in the foreseeable future.
- Brings key decision-making, implementation and/or advocacy skills to your work during the Accelerator, and as you carry the work on in the future.
- Agrees to attend all Accelerator convenings and Core Team meetings. We anticipate that the Accelerator will require approximately 40-45 hours for members over the nine months
Throughout the program, each foundation and Core Team will have the support of two coaches with experience in place-focused philanthropy and impact investing. Your Core Team will regularly interact with the Core Teams of other foundations, other coaches, and staff and board from other foundations that have previously implemented community impact investment programs.