New $22M Philanthropic Initiative Launches to Propel the Community Ownership ...

credit: Don Leach, Coastline Pilot

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is putting his money where his mouth is, with a $22 million initiative to support community ownership of real estate.

The Community Ownership for Community Power (COCP) Fund, announced Tuesday, aims to support community land trusts, housing cooperatives, and other models of community ownership in California, "not speculative developers or other public and private institutions who often fail to engage community leadership," per a press release.

"The launch of the COCP Fund is an important step toward building a robust ecosystem of community ownership groups and demonstrating the potential of community ownership to address rampant displacement of historically low-income communities and Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and communities of color and the catalytic role philanthropy can play in this work," says a program strategist at Common Counsel Foundation, which is managing the fund.

The COCP Fund has already received $10 million from a host of foundations, including the California Endowment, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, James Irvine Foundation, Great Communities Collaborative at the San Francisco Foundation, and the Weingart Foundation, and it plans to raise $12 million more.

"By coming together to provide catalytic funding for organizations across the state, we can help bolster existing efforts and substantial new investment from the public and private sectors," says Rajib Guha, director of program development at

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