Joe Kriesberg
President & CEO
The Massachusetts Association of CDCs

Robert Van Meter
Executive Director
Boston LISC Program

Beginning in 1997, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations (MACDC) undertook something new for community development in Massachusetts, and in fact for community development nationally. With the early, strong and consistent support of the National Community Development Initiative (NCDI), which is now know as Living Cities, LISC and MACDC began an effort to deepen and expand the practice of community organizing in Massachusetts community development corporations.

That initiative, the Ricanne Hadrian Initiative for Community Organizing (RHICO), was, in fact, a turning point for the practice of community development here in Massachusetts. It marked the first time that a capacity building initiative was designed in large measure by community development practitioners. It marked the first time that such a program incorporated peer learning and a community of practice among the participants from the beginning of the initiative. It marked a significant broadening of the outlook by community development practitioners about what the appropriate roles for a community development organization were in a neighborhood. Community developers more and more began to think of themselves and their organizations as community builders instead of as a housing industry.

Community engagement moved from the fringes to the center of our field.

The work of the initiative really began in 1996 in a series of bidders conferences and information sessions that brought practitioners together to talk about what kind of organizing work the initiative hoped to support and to learn more about what others were already doing.

Living Cities support was the core funding for the initiative for its entire nine years, and helped to leverage more than $1 million in additional funding from local and national funders. This enabled the RHICO to support community organizing work with multi-year direct grants to 13 community development corporations and provided additional grants, training and technical assistance to more than a dozen more organizations between 1998 and 2007.

The broader thinking about community building engendered by the RHICO initiative was responsible for a series of ambitious efforts toward transformational community development. This initiative was also a model that allowed LISC and MACDC to move toward a collaborative style of working together and with others. This set the stage for us to collaborate on other projects designed to push the field forward. Living Cities resources, invested over a number of years, have helped to transform the community development field in Massachusetts. We have become outward looking, learning-oriented, concerned about both people and place, and open to new partnerships and ways to make a community impact. As we confront the challenges and opportunities in front of us, we are confident that these qualities will serve us well.