The Milken Institute (MI) is working to accelerate the development of a robust pipeline of shovel-worthy community infrastructure projects, focusing especially on under-served rural, urban, tribal and environmental justice communities with capacity challenges. MI’s Community Infrastructure Center platform connects community project sponsors to federal and non-federal funding sources and project readiness tools to help communities develop loan-worthy, grant-worthy and investment-ready projects. The CIC was initially supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce. To engage local communities and states about the importance of project predevelopment to enable communities to effectively access new federal funding, MI formed the 10,000 Communities Initiative, a collaborative partnership effort that organizes regional events across the U.S. to advance pipeline. Since public roll-out in January, 2023, the CIC platform now has 250 individual communities using our tools and 27 organizations now building a portfolio of 2500+ climate and rural equity projects using dedicated channels on the platform.
