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The Week in impact investing: Radical pragmatism ?? Dollars and sense.?Lending to help small businesses grow and create jobs is not a radical idea. Many banks seem to think it’s sensible to show flexibility to help more first-time homebuyers build equity and family wealth. And cutting in employees for an ownership stake in the companies they help to build has surprisingly broad support among business owners, investors and workers. As ImpactAlpha wrote this week to launch our Re:Construction spring tour, these pages in “the playbook for shared prosperity” represent the kind of common sense agenda that can lower costs, raise incomes and improve lives.? Indeed, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund), targeted for elimination by President Trump, appears to have a good chance of survival partly because many borrowers and businesses in Republican congressional districts rely on CDFIs as the only bank in town. Courts have repeatedly upheld the legality of “special purpose credit programs” that give banks and other lenders flexibility to redress past discrimination – and which the Trump administration is now seeking to terminate. And sharing the wealth through employee ownership is such a common sense idea that many business owners are considering it as a growth strategy even when they’re not looking for a buyout, as the Essential Owners Fund’s?Malini Ramanarayanan Moraghan said on this week’s Agents of Impact Call. Common sense only goes so far in these troubled times. As basic concepts, diversity, equity and inclusion all enjoy overwhelming popular support; as a weaponized acronym, “DEI” is being used to attack institutions, from law firms to universities. Chintan Panchal of RPCK Rastegar Panchal offered practical advice for raising a fund in a post-DEI world. Erika Seth Davies,?Ngoc ("Jade") Huynh?and?Bert Feuss?offered terms & tools?for asset owners still seeking to deploy capital to advance racial equity. Many remain committed “not in spite of, but because of, the likely resistance and retrenchment that lie ahead,” they wrote. As tech leaders push to roll back rules guiding responsible development of AI, big-pocketed asset owners are moving in the opposite direction, report VentureESG’s?Johannes Lenhard?and?Oliver Nixon. Other systemic risks as well don’t go away just because regulators are being laid off or shut down. “By clearly articulating the investment case for protecting these critical systems, investors can amplify the message that a trajectory set by thoughtless deregulation puts everyone at risk,”?wrote?Rick Alexander?of The Shareholder Commons. Self-Help Credit Union's Martin Eakes served up his own healthy dose of common sense. Given a fair chance, people and families of ordinary means “can survive and thrive,” Eakes told me, “but not if you put roadblocks up that make it impossible.” https://lnkd.in/gxgrBTZu