Nation’s largest end-to-end affordable housing nonprofit sharpens its focus to strengthen its impact

COLUMBIA, Md. (November 12, 2020) – Against a backdrop of higher housing costs, lower wage growth, rising inequality and a pandemic that threatens the housing stability of thousands of families, Enterprise Community Partners (Enterprise) today launched a five-year Strategic Plan that sharpens its focus on three goals to address the nation’s most pressing challenges through the lens of home and community. Enterprise’s new strategic goals are to:

• Increase Housing Supply: Enterprise invests in and advocates for the preservation and production of quality homes that people can afford.
  • It’s doubling down on its commitment to preserve and build affordable homes through expansion and innovation in its Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), tax credit, debt and equity products.
  • By collaborating with all levels of government, Enterprise is maximizing resources and strengthening federal and local policy and programs.
• Advance Racial Equity: Dismantling the enduring legacy of systemic racism in housing – in policy, practice and investment – is central to Enterprise’s work.
  • To provide emergency Covid-19 relief, Enterprise directs millions of dollars to support organizations in communities of color disproportionately affected by the pandemic.
  • It continues to advocate for fair housing and equitable, inclusive communities.
  • Enterprise’s in-depth research examines the root causes of racial inequity as the organization pivots to invest with greater intention and innovation to achieve the systemic change needed in the United States.
• Build Resilience and Upward Mobility: Enterprise strengthens people and places to prepare for and recover from shocks to ultimately promote stability, well-being and upward mobility.
  • Economic, climate and health shocks devastate communities. Together with its partners, Enterprise is working to change the systems that have withheld opportunity, undermined self-agency and promoted exclusion, particularly in low-wealth communities of color.
  • As Enterprise builds an equitable recovery from Covid-19, building resilience and advancing upward mobility – through income- and wealth-building, power and dignity – are more important than ever.

"The dire effects of the current pandemic and economic crisis amid an overdue national racial reckoning only cemented our conviction of the importance of having a stable home and advancing racial equity as driving forces of our Strategic Plan," said Priscilla Almodovar, chief executive officer, Enterprise. "We are here for impact and we are here for systemic change. Because anything less fails to meet the urgency of this moment."

Enterprise’s new Strategic Plan also focuses on how the organization works, implementing its work across three divisions – Solutions, Capital and Communities – that form the foundation of Enterprise’s unique end-to-end-approach that addresses America’s affordable housing crisis from every angle

• The Solutions division, led by Jacqueline Waggoner, operates nationwide with programmatic, policy, advisory and capacity-building arms at the national, state and local level. In more than 800 communities and in collaboration with thousands of partners in the nonprofit, public and for-profit sectors, Enterprise drives systems change to benefit people and the places they call home.
• The Capital division, led by Charlie Werhane, invests and asset manages a range of tax credits and equity, operates a nonprofit that is one of the country’s largest publicly-rated CDFIs, and, through Bellwether Enterprise, provides access to conventional mortgage products.
• The new Communities division, led by Brian McLaughlin, operates the nation’s fifth-largest affordable housing nonprofit developer, owner, operator and provider of resident services – serving 22,000 residents across 13,000 homes.

As Enterprise works to close wealth gaps and end historic disparities, it is shifting how it evaluates impact to include a tighter connection between its three strategic goals and the resources it deploys every day. This means shifting to focus not only on the number of housing units and dollars invested, but on the impact it’s having on people, communities and systems. The result will be greater intention brought to where Enterprise invests, the resident voices it seeks to elevate and the essential partnerships it leverages.

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About Enterprise
Enterprise is a national nonprofit on a mission to make home and community places of pride, power and belonging for all. To make that possible, we operate the only organization designed to address America’s affordable housing crisis from every angle: we develop and deploy programs and support community organizations on the ground; we advocate for nonpartisan policy at every level of government; we invest capital to build and preserve rental homes people can afford; and we own, operate and provide resident services for affordable communities. All so that people not only make rent, they build futures. With this end-to-end approach, 40 years of experience and thousands of local partners, Enterprise has built and preserved 662,000 affordable homes, invested $53 billion in communities and changed millions of lives.

Media Contact

Jordan Miller, Group Gordon
jmiller@groupgordon.com