Reports

MACDC itself has had a long-standing commitment to supporting community organizing within our members going back to the creation of the Ricanne Hadrian Initiative for Community Organizing (RHICO) program in the mid-1990s. We actively encourage CDCs to go beyond the minimum requirements of DHCD when it comes to board representation and we successfully advocated for the Community Investment Tax Credit (CITC) program to put a large emphasis on community engagement, organizing and collaboration. Indeed, CITC was designed specifically to encourage and help CDCs implement programs and ideas that emerge from the local community, with less emphasis on what funders want and more emphasis on the views of local residents. The Mel King Institute, founded by MACDC and LISC in 2009, has also offered a wide range of trainings and professional development support to community organizers in our field.