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A note on this series co-authored by Louise Adongo and Geraldine Cahill
Communities are reckoning with a number of pressures today: navigating economic uncertainty, artificial intelligence disruption, a deepening housing crisis, climate transition, and the erosion of public trust in institutions. The growing interest in and need for community wealth approaches and community finance investments, are being driven by these pressures.
This article, the first of three in a series, is a response to the question “How to invite others into the conversation? We should have hundreds of people thinking about these things but our circle is quite small.“
We begin to answer this question by identifying who “we” are.
The article is also an invitation to readers to engage with community economic development in new ways based on the shared language of this field, and evolving narratives about community finance, community wealth building and community capital.
Geraldine is writing this series to invite in ideas and build pathways to co-create the most clear and compelling narrative for this moment. For years she has been on a quest to articulate the most compelling social purpose vision for our ecosystem. While co-managing Catalyst Community Finance, the ideas included here are her own, offered in partnership with Louise Adongo.
Louise is contributing to this series based on her own reflections and recalibrations around what fields are, how they operate and who plays what roles in them. In part this is to get a sense of where things are and in part it is to understand then what opportunities for leverage and transformative shifts exist in service of optimal intentions for Catalyst members (and by extension their place-based communities’) success.
Our hope is that this series of articles begins the conversation as a resource rich context and content analysis for those so inclined. It is also our intention that this writing supports wayfinding for those who (1) want to locate themselves in their practice within the field, and (2) find out who else is here and what they are working on and (3) discuss how we may work better together.
Sometimes you have to clear the path in order to be able to walk on it yourself, as well as ready it for others. As I’ve said, it’s often tedious, inconvenient and bruising work. But in my experience this is what it takes if you are trying to enter a new frontier. – from The Light We Carry
What makes a field an emerging field?
There are many definitions for the term “emerging,” For this series, we draw from a 2021 article by Woelmer (Woelmer et al. (2021) Ten simple rules for training yourself in an emerging field.) providing advice to post-secondary students about ten principles for successfully entering (and contributing to) an emerging field, based on the authors’ experience in the emerging field of ecological forecasting.
An emerging field has 2 components:
(1) it draws from two or more parent fields, i.e. previously established fields [in their case, science; in our context related to community economic development] that inform the development of the emerging field.
(2) an emerging field combines these parent fields to address new or previously unanswered/able questions.
If you are now also wondering what a field is more generally, one of the authors has written more about this in a two-part essay exploring how fields work and what might support how they remain stable even in the face of critique or necessary redistribution. In this essay a field is described as:
“a structured social system organized around a shared problem space. A field exists when coordination, competition, and meaning-making happen because actors recognize each other as part of the same system”.
The two part essay examines field theory*, its role in the social/community/nonprofit sector, and provides a rigorous, ethically grounded diagnosis of how well‑intentioned systems maintain unjust distributions of authority by sounding reasonable, and how practitioners and bridgers* quietly absorb the cost of that instability.
When field theory enters the social sector, it is usually translated by philanthropic intermediaries, consultants, think tanks, evaluators and “field builders.” That translation (which can happen with abstraction and distortions) tends to emphasize: coordination, alignment, shared language, infrastructure, and legitimacy.
This is not a universal negative consequence, but it can result in communication challenges and slower recognition by other ecosystem stakeholders, like frontline service providers, policy and allied private sector actors. Further consequence is that practitioner context, and other ways of knowing (i.e. epistemic plurality), and often critique do not make it into decision making. (For more see two-part essay, Fields & Sectors: Wisdom & Practice part 1 and part 2)
It is our hope throughout this series and ongoing gatherings to break down some of these hurdles.
Admittedly, examining field theory first may feel academic, but it can also help explain who “we” are. Your insight on this explanation is very welcome.
A note on Field Theory
Field theory largely comes from sociology, political sociology, and organizational studies, and is written primarily by academics observing systems, not people responsible for keeping those systems running. They are excellent at diagnosis, abstraction, and pattern recognition. (And/but) They are not writing from inside consequence.
Who are these “they”? Some of them are: (1) Pierre Bourdieu – fields as arenas of struggle over capital and legitimacy, (2) Fligstein & McAdam – “strategic action fields” and institutional stability, (3) Schatzki – practice theory and the “site of the social”, (4) Suchman – legitimacy as actively constructed and maintained, (5) Power – audit, measurement, and governability as rituals, (6) Lukes – power’s invisible and agenda‑setting dimensions.
A note on Bridging
Photo by Claudio Testa on Unsplash
What is Community Finance?
In policy and institutional usage, community finance (often called community development finance) is generally treated as a subfield of finance focused on directing capital to underserved people and places. It emphasizes access to credit, place-based investment, and is managed by mission-driven financial institutions like Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) and credit unions. The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve explicitly frame community finance as financing that supports community and economic development outcomes.
Community finance is usually defined by financial tools and institutions (loans, equity, guarantees, funds), not by the full development strategy. From a practice and values perspective:
- Capital shapes power, ownership, and outcomes in communities
- Finance that ignores community context often reproduces extraction
- Community wealth building explicitly argues that how finance is structured determines whether development is extractive or generative
Community Finance Example: Fair Finance Fund
Fair Finance Fund mobilizes equitable and accessible capital for Ontario’s food and farm enterprises, which in turn are creating community social, environmental and economic benefits. They work to foster inclusive local economies and remove access-to-capital barriers, especially for equity-deserving communities, including racialized entrepreneurs, women-led businesses, and rural enterprises.
Traditional lenders often lack the sector-specific knowledge required to assess small-scale food and agriculture businesses, making them hesitant to provide financing. The Fair Finance Fund exists to address this dual challenge — bridging the gap for both underfinanced sectors and equity-deserving entrepreneurs. Read more
Connecting Community Wealth Building to Community Finance
Community Wealth Building (CWB), a transformative evolution of CED is best understood, in relation to a constellation of adjacent fields and frameworks rather than as an isolated one. CWB is:
A place‑based, ownership‑centered framework that sits at the intersection of community economic development, solidarity economy, and democratic ownership traditions—using community finance as a tool, not the definition of the field.
Community wealth building is newer as a subfield of community economic development and is [and more] explicitly framed as a distinct paradigm or movement, not just a technical field.
Academic and practitioner sources describe it as ‘a normative, place-based approach to economic development that prioritizes local ownership, democratic control of assets, and preventing wealth extraction’.
Finance is explicitly named as one pillar of CWB, alongside procurement, land, labor, and ownership structures.
CWB positions finance as necessary but insufficient on its own.
Fig 1: the evolving CED field
Community Wealth Building Example: Preston, United Kingdom
Preston has been affected by the failures of conventional economic development, deindustrialization, and, from 2010, crippling austerity imposed on a diverse, working-class community.
The city council, as the first real living wage employer in the north of England, worked with Preston’s anchor institutions – like hospitals, universities, transport providers and major private sector employers – to encourage them to adopt higher wages. This saw a quarter of low-paid workers in the city and surrounding areas receive a pay increase due to their place of work becoming an accredited Living Wage employer.
Preston’s push to increase public spending with local businesses was partly a result of a choice to regenerate its city centre primarily in local public ownership. Read more
In summary
Connecting the dots based on how these terms are used across policy, academia, and practice, the relationship usually looks like this:
- Community economic development (CED) → the umbrella field
- Community finance / community development finance → a specialized subfield or toolkit
- Community wealth building → a framework or paradigm that cuts across CED and finance
This structure is implicit in how institutions teach, fund, and regulate the work:
- Finance is taught for community economic development
- Community wealth building explicitly incorporates non‑extractive finance as one component of a broader system change agenda
Introducing Community Capital to the field
Should we situate community finance more concretely within the Community Wealth Building movement and what would that do for our narrative? Might we consider changing our language slightly to be in line with Meaghan Burkett, CEO at Ethical Fields in Australia? They are using the term place-based capital or community capital to describe their field.
What is the difference according to Meaghan? Community capital evokes resources beyond wealth & finances, especially finances leveraged and deployed in traditional capitalist ways.
Meaghan believes speaking [only] about community wealth traps us into wealth accumulation mindsets.
At Ethical Fields, they see community capital as providing a way for communities to generate local funding and capital sources, take control of their financial future and make decisions over capital that directly benefit local people. It allows communities to own and manage their assets – like land, businesses, and natural resources – and use them to improve local life.
This approach shifts communities from capital dependency to empowerment.
It may seem like a minor adjustment – more confusing than helpful – however, so much of our narrative development is still open to interpretation and becoming more concrete will be helpful.
Would this transition be helpful to you or will it make us more diffuse in the broader ecosystem? Beyond our field, will policy makers and community leaders see the possibilities for community capital growth more readily than community finance or community wealth building?
We can open up our meetup and online spaces for a closer look at these questions together.
Fig 2: Evolving CED field and emergence of community capital
Considering the Image
For those already rooted in community, or finding their way into community economic development work, one of the central challenges is making sense of where you sit within a field that is named in different ways. Community economic development, community wealth building, and community finance are often treated as distinct, but in practice they are deeply interconnected. The way capital is structured and deployed shapes ownership, power, and outcomes in place—meaning finance cannot be separated from community itself.
Traditionally, community economic development has been understood as the umbrella field, with community finance as a key toolset, and community wealth building emerging as a transformative framework that recenters ownership, democratic control, and anti-extractive approaches. While analytically distinct, they operate together in practice—now increasingly linked to solidarity economy and just transition, and expanding through ideas like community capital.
From this perspective, the question becomes less about which field you are in, and more about what role you are playing. Are you organizing, deploying capital, building enterprises, stewarding land, shaping policy, or moving resources? The growing availability of social finance funds creates real opportunities to align capital with community priorities—but only if engaged intentionally. These resources can shift who controls capital, how it circulates locally, and what gets built. The challenge is positioning your work to access and direct them in ways that strengthen, rather than dilute, community ownership and long-term wealth building.
This framing offers a way to orient: to locate yourself within the work as it exists now, to understand the tools and power you hold, and to consider how your role might evolve as the field—and its access to capital—continues to transform.
If this articulation and breakdown of the parent and subfields feel about right, we’d love to hear about it. We are particularly interested in engaging with Community Economic Development practitioners. This analysis is not meant as indictment of the parent, but as an evolutionary offering.
References for this content are added at the very end of the article.
What does that mean for actors in the ecosystem(s) and at its edges?
Catalyst aims to enhance the field of community finance to support the start-up and scale up of place-based and identity-based community finance organizations in urban, rural, and Northern communities across Canada. It is a network of impact funds, community loan funds, investment co-operatives, community land trusts, local credit unions, and other community finance organizations.
In listing out who the field contains, one recognizes that many of these actors are networks of their own – co-operatives and credit unions having a century+ head start on some of the others in this field. The intention behind much of this work is not new at all, yet the accumulation of practice and its potential transformational impact are underrealized at an ecosystem level.
Catalyst is driven to make this field more visible to itself – sharing practice, connections and learning across communities, to enable greater coherence and a growing maturity. It is also aiming to grow its visibility with aligned fields in philanthropy, policy and finance more generally; to encourage the generation of incentives and greater capital flows towards community investment. Finally, through this series and with attention to the growing CWB movement, we are interested in growing alignment and a shared narrative that resonates across the ecosystem most broadly.
As a subset of the broader fields of CED and CWB, Catalyst recognizes that attention to bettering practice and building the number and effectiveness of community financing products is only one element in the quest to foster more equitable, inclusive and just communities. And while we could leave it to other initiatives to build out CWB practice, there is a strong desire to ensure the two grow together.
For community finance to be rooted in community, we want to work with people and organizations also prioritizing local ownership, democratic control of assets, and the prevention of wealth extraction. For community investment to be truly effective, collaboration with these actors is needed to ensure capital allocation meets the community where they are.
Across Canada, in communities large and small, in faith based groups, in communities of colour, gender identity and other affinity groups, the impacts of growing wealth inequality and reduced confidence in democratic institutions show up every day in multiple ways. We don’t all have time to do all the things: understand how to design financial products, advocate for enabling policy, support frontline service delivery. However, with an ecosystem approach and mindset, we can better connect the elements that will steer us to greater coherence and impact.
And so, as we stated at the outset of this article, we aim to invite many more into this conversation. To extend our meetups, gatherings and digital spaces to those working on community economic development and community wealth building more broadly.
In our second article we will discuss the drawing up of a journey map practitioners can see themselves in. We will explore how we can better connect, learn from, adapt, translate up and across the fields, and in what ways we might experiment our way forward together.
About the authors
Louise Adongo is the Principal Owner of Caprivian Strip Inc.
Geraldine Cahill is the co-manager, Catalyst Community Finance and Director, UpSocial Canada
Shared Resources offered by the community
At a recent monthly gathering of the Catalyst Community, members shared recommendations including: “13 Ways to Kill Your Community” by Doug Griffiths, “Adventure Finance” by Annie Penter, and “Connected to Place” by Matt Bigger, The violence of market based returns, Permaculture and systems practice connections,
Also shared was Cradle-to-Cradle: Redesigning Sustainability for a Regenerative Future, Regenerative Economics, The Banks We Deserve: Reclaiming Community Banking for a Just Economy by Oscar P Abello; he also has more articles on Next City. Finally recommended, The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.
Reference Themes and Connections
Defining Community Finance and CED:
- U.S. Department of the Treasury. (2021). Community Development Financial Institutions Fund: About CDFIs
- Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. (2019). What is Community Development?
- Canadian Community Economic Development Network. (2020). About Community Economic Development
- Community Development Finance Association (CDFA). (2015). What is Community Development Finance?
These sources are referenced in passages outlining the institutional definitions of community finance and community economic development, emphasizing how policy and practice distinguish between C ED as a field and community finance as a tool set.
Community Wealth Building: Paradigm and Practice
- Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES). (2019). Community Wealth Building: Theory and Practice
- Gibson-Graham, J.K., Cameron, J., & Healy, S. (2013). Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities
- Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. (2022). Building Community Wealth: Policy Tools for Local Economic Development
These works are cited in sections describing Community Wealth Building (CWB) as a distinct framework, including its emphasis on local ownership, democratic control of assets, and a system-change orientation.
Just Transition / Regenerative Economics and Future Orientation
- Just Transition Alliance. (2022). Principles of a Just Transition
- Jackson, T. (2021). Post Growth: Life after Capitalism
- Benner, C., & Pastor, M. (2015). Inclusive Economy: Creating Opportunity and Sharing Prosperity
These references support passages connecting CWB to climate justice, sustainable economic models, and the evolution of the field toward regenerative and inclusive goals.
Solidarity Economy, Cooperative Economics, and Democratic Enterprise
- Solidarity Economy Principles. (2022). United States Solidarity Economy Network
- Birchall, J. (2013). Resilience in a Downturn: The Power of Financial Cooperatives
- Community-wealth.org
These are cited in discussions defining solidarity economy as a movement, and in highlighting the foundational role of worker cooperatives, credit unions, and community – owned enterprises within CWB.
Economic Democracy / Political Economy Foundations
- Wright, E.O. (2010). Envisioning Real Utopias
This reference is relevant to the theoretical foundations of CWB, particularly in passages addressing power, ownership, extraction, and the critique of conventional development models.
Inclusive Economy / Growth
- OECD. (2019). Inclusive Growth
- Benner, C., & Pastor, M. (2015). Inclusive Economy: Creating Opportunity and Sharing Prosperity
These support the discussion of adjacent fields, contrasting the goals of equity and participation with the more transformative aims of CWB.
Policy Tools and Field Naming
- Shuman, M. (2000). Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in a Global Age
- Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. (2022). Building Community Wealth: Policy Tools for Local Economic Development
These provide additional grounding for passages on the practical and policy implications of naming, framing, and operationalizing “the field.”