Help Rebuild Asheville

Post Helene, here in Asheville, we are finding that in doing local, small scale convening around pressing problems like water, electricity, connectivity, and community free food, the work of connecting the dots that we do at Neighborhood Economics is more valuable than ever. Gathering the people making a difference works in a disaster. And we […]

Unlocking the Capital Stack: A Showcase of Game-Changing Funding Strategies at Our Asheville Conference

Are you ready to revolutionize how you think about funding and entrepreneurship? This November 12-13, in Asheville, NC, we’re bringing together some of the most innovative minds in finance and community development for an exclusive Capital Stack Showcase at the Neighborhood Economics Conference. Whether you’re an entrepreneur looking to grow or a funder eager to […]

A Chamber of Commerce for All

“There is a gap between the sustainable economy and the economy focused on economic justice. They seldom meet.” The core of a Neighborhood Economics conference is highlighting promising and potentially replicable solutions that are working to repair the economy in one neighborhood, solutions could be replicated in other city.  At our national conferences, we highlight […]

Gearing Up for Asheville

We’ve got several exciting and intriguing sessions teed-up for our fall conference in Asheville. Rev. Luke Lingle, who worked with three Methodist churches in Asheville as they became vital community centers while maintaining worship spaces, has joined our team. He is going to lead our faith-based sessions looking at how churches create shared and mixed-use […]

Why Foundations Show Up for Neighborhood Economics

Our Neighborhood Economics conference in Jackson, Mississippi, this past spring had a surprising degree of success attracting the leading national catalytic foundations that invest in economic justice.  The Jackson conference was just our second in-person event since the pandemic, and we attracted the MacArthur, Surdna, Heron, and Kellogg foundations, and we are in conversation with […]

Catalyzing the Growth of Black-Owned Businesses

Imagine a world where every Black entrepreneur doesn’t just survive—they thrive, shattering systemic barriers with unyielding resilience and innovation. Despite the unwavering spirit of Black entrepreneurs, the stark reality remains: 95% of Black-owned businesses are sole proprietorships, a figure reported by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2019. This overwhelming majority stems from pronounced financial disparities, […]

Meet Strong Towns, Important New Partners in Our Work

Background You Need to Know One key principle that the team at Neighborhood Economics has taken from our experience in building SOCAP, the impact investing and social enterprise conference we started and ran for a decade, is finding the valuable strangers and helping them become unlikely allies.  That principle is one reason SOCAP became the […]