Since our establishment in 1978, CEDAC has continued to evolve to better serve our non-profit borrowers, connect with Massachusetts’ network of community development corporations, and work with community partners to carry out our mission of community development and strengthening the communities across the Commonwealth.
As the needs of you, our partners, have changed, so have we. Providing support through technical assistance, early-stage financial resources that now include acquisition and bridge lending and project-specific lines of credit, in addition to our traditional predevelopment financing. In the last decade, we’ve incorporated this evolution into not just the way we provide capital, but in the way we’ve communicated with those outside of our organization.
A number of years ago, we decided that it was important for those outside of CEDAC to have a better understanding of what we do and why we do it. Effective community development is our mission, and by improving our public relations, marketing, and general communications efforts, we’ve been able to share this work at a state and even national level so that people better understand how CEDAC helps non-profit affordable housing developers and community-based non-profit child care providers turn their vision of a project into a reality, and how their project impacts their communities.
Over the past few years, we have particularly focused on expanding our digital marketing efforts – as you may be aware, we updated the CEDAC logo in 2015, revamped our website and entered the world of social media with a Twitter account in 2016, and launched this blog, INSITES, in 2017.
These tools have allowed us to illustrate the important work that our partners are doing in developing supportive housing units from Pittsfield to Boston, highlight the number of affordable units that non-profit developers have preserved over the last several years, share the stories of families aided by the Home Modification Loan Program, and celebrate the opening of renovated child care facilities who received grants from the Early Education and Out of School Time Capital Fund Program (EEOST).
This refreshed image and communications strategy you see of CEDAC today was accomplished under the oversight of Jennifer Brown, our Public Relations and Marketing Associate. We are sad to announce that Jenn is moving onto a new role following four highly productive years at CEDAC. We’ll miss her greatly, and the innovative work she did in promoting CEDAC and keeping you informed of our work.
But we are still interested in keeping you informed. And as we’ve evolved to meet the needs of our borrowers, partners, and stakeholders, we will continue to evolve to do just that. And if you have any suggestions on how we can improve our communications, please feel free to drop us a line.
