NEW MARKETS TAX
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT GROUP
SDS is committed to bringing about positive social and environmental change in low-income communities. SDS partners with community and economic development nonprofit organizations, government agencies, foundations, businesses, real estate developers, and associated entities to achieve community revitalization and environmental sustainability. Financially, SDS helps our clients strategically identify and secure needed funding by leveraging its in-depth understanding of financing sources and successful fundraising history with public and private entities on the local, state, and federal levels. Operationally, SDS provides our clients with the resources necessary to achieve optimum success by identifying and developing internal and external assets.
Core Services
Community and economic development entities increasingly face challenges in achieving their project goals as a result of funding cuts, increased competition for limited external resources, and constrained organizational finances. SDS helps our clients to secure needed funding, diversify funding sources, and achieve long-term project and organizational sustainability.
- Public and private sector funding identification
- Grant writing and financing application preparation
- Market-based funding strategies
In today's climate of rapid change and limited economic resources, many entities are challenged to dedicate enough internal resources to sufficiently address the multifaceted nature of organizational planning. SDS develops tools and strategies to help our clients more effectively manage and grow their organizations, achieve financial stability, and realize their social and environmental missions.
- Business, strategic and fund development/gap financing planning
- Program development and implementation
- Strategic partnership development
Increasingly, funders and investors require accountability in evaluating the return on their investments in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors. As well, it is critical to an organization's overall success to be able to clearly assess and understand its project and service outcomes. SDS is a leader in developing comprehensive assessment and reporting methods that help our clients to measure and track the social and environmental impacts of their projects. SDS develops tailored tools to assess clients' key project, program and organizational performance.
- Social and environmental impact reporting
- Organizational assessments
- Program evaluations
While community and economic development entities excel at providing crucial community resources, many may not have the research capacity to access the wealth of information needed to strategically inform and guide their organizations. SDS leverages its expertise in collecting, analyzing, and synthesizing information into concise reports to help clients make strategic decisions regarding their industry/service sector, community, and constituency needs.
- Fundraising, gap financing, and economic incentive programs
- Best practice strategies
- Community/stakeholder needs assessment
- Project feasibility studies
Building an organization's capacity to be more effective and efficient is an ongoing and time-intensive endeavor, but one essential to achieve long-term sustainability. SDS assesses organizations' strengths and weaknesses and develops trainings and tools tailored to our clients' specific needs in order to build and enhance their development, service, staffing, and organizational capacity.
- Funding identification tutorials
- Grant writing skills classes
- Industry best practices trainings
- Strategic communications document development
Our Approach
The following principles and values guide our work with clients:
Strategic |
SDS builds organizational capacity and financial stability by utilizing our diverse skill base, client strengths, and industry best practices to help our clients achieve their goals.
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Partnership |
SDS helps our clients connect and partner with multiple stakeholders to achieve success by leveraging SDS’ extensive experience and relationship networks.
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Flexibility |
SDS forms mutually beneficial partnerships with our clients to deliver strategic services that are tailored to our clients’ needs. SDS structures its pricing to ensure that our clients receive the tools they need at a price they can afford. |