Article from the Milken Institute, by Rachel Halfaker, Associate Director, Center for Financial Markets
The Milken Institute, a global think tank focused on financial, physical, mental, and environmental health, today announced new implementation partnerships designed to expand technical assistance to help thousands of underserved urban and rural communities across the United States access the funding, capacity, and talent they need to advance critical community infrastructure projects.
“New tools to help underserved communities develop a loan-worthy and investment-ready project pipeline will create more local jobs and increase local climate resilience,” said Michael Piwowar, executive vice president for MI Finance. “Our 10,000 Communities Initiative and Community Infrastructure Center (CIC) project platform links investors, technical assistance experts, and community leaders to seize this moment.”
In the year since it launched, the 10,000 Communities Initiative has held a series of regional training events to engage local business, government, philanthropic, and community leaders across the United States around market-based approaches to leverage public investment and build long-term economic resilience and unveiled a project-matching platform with over 800 organizations onboarded to date.
“These partnerships are designed to reduce project development costs through generative AI, online grant-matching, and other innovative financing techniques,” said Rachel Halfaker, who leads Milken Institute’s CIC effort. “We can’t do this work alone. These additional partnerships will facilitate our ability to help resource-challenged communities in rural and urban areas to build new broadband, clean energy, and other local projects faster.”