Local control with the benefits of scale

The OppCo model allows local community development organizations to enjoy the benefits of scale while keeping control and assets within the communities they serve.

OppCo leverages the combined resources of its members to provide a level of administrative support and programmatic capacity that would otherwise be out of reach. Members remain as independent nonprofits with their own missions and assets. Members also retain local control of decision-making, programming, and budgeting. Our program and administrative platform and access to OppCo’s deep pool of expertise helps members to strengthen the impact of their work, while avoiding the pitfalls that often accompany scale: decreased community accountability, and increased distance between community developers and local leaders.

Member benefits

Located across eastern Massachusetts , OppCo’s current members (The Neighborhood Developers, Nuestra Comunidad, and North Shore Community Development Coalition) benefit from the following:

  • More cost efficient administration and programming
    Shared back office services and affordable housing-related programming, combined with a wealth of knowledge on best practices in community development, helps keep individual members’ costs down and results high.

  • High capacity financial management
    A finance team delivers financial analysis and advice for managing assets and investments and implements uniform internal controls, reporting, and policies and procedures.

  • Full service human resources help members navigate a constantly changing work world to remain an employer-of-choice.

  • Sustained local control while benefiting from scale
    Members continue working with local residents, businesses, and municipalities while enjoying increased technical capacity in real estate development, asset management, and tenant services.

  • Increased organizational sustainability
    Investors and funders have high confidence in member ability to deliver results.

  • Greater capacity for learning
    A data and learning team fosters a results driven culture that provides members with proven methods for gathering and analyzing data directly from the community.

  • Robust asset management ensures members’ portfolios remain vibrant assets for the community over the long term while providing important cash flow for operations.

  • Deeper real estate and program outcomes
    Access to in-house expertise helps members to diversify pipelines and to expand the range and scale of real estate deals, from acquisition and rehab to homeownership and commercial development.

Outcomes

OppCo has successfully increased the capacity of our members to meet their community development and affordable housing missions.

OppCo has leveraged its scale to fill positions that are typically outsourced for higher costs or left unfilled.

The talent and expertise available to members includes: 

  • In-house expert real estate expertise to diversify pipelines and facilitate deal structuring and financing- functions that were previously fulfilled by consultants at a higher cost;

  • A CFO and a Controller to advance the ability to analyze and manage our assets and investments and ensure strong internal controls and uniform financial management practices;

  • Personnel solely dedicated to Human Resources;

  • An in-house team that manages a sophisticated database and learning activities; and

  • High capacity IT Services that provide tools needed to work efficiently.