37 Detroit neighborhood groups join one $27 million fund, the biggest round yet

Thirty-seven Detroit community development organizations are now working together under a single $27 million fund, the largest coordinated round the city's neighborhood development network has seen. The money is meant to give the groups doing the most direct work in Detroit's residential communities the operating capacity to scale what they have already built.

Enterprise Community Partners announced the third phase of its Community Development Organization Fund on May 20, 2026. For the first time since the fund started in 2020, every participating group is working as one cohort rather than being split into separate groups. Community Development Advocates of Detroit, known as CDAD, is the lead facilitator, connecting each organization to technical assistance and shared services based on what it needs most.

The fund runs three years and is backed by a coalition of philanthropic partners: the Kresge Foundation, Ford Foundation, Gilbert Family Foundation, Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation, Hudson-Webber Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and Ballmer Group. Enterprise says more than $14 million of the $27 million target had been raised at the time of the announcement.

The CDO Fund has grown with each round. Phase I deployed roughly $12.2 million. Phase II raised that to about $23.7 million across 32 organizations. Phase III, at $27 million across 37 groups, is the broadest reach the effort has reached.

Enterprise points to the second phase as the case for scaling up. Across Phase II, participating groups served about 100,000 Detroit residents, created or preserved more than 1,400 affordable homes, and developed more than 30,000 square feet of commercial space, per Enterprise. The organization also reports that 97 percent of grantees diversified their revenue sources during that stretch, the kind of financial footing that flexible operating support is designed to build.

The model rests on an idea that has shaped neighborhood work in Detroit for years: developers who are rooted in a neighborhood and trusted by the people who live there can do things outside capital alone cannot. Operating support and organizational capacity, not just project grants, is what helps those groups sustain and grow.

"In neighborhoods across the country, and especially in Detroit, community development organizations serve as essential civic infrastructure," Ayonna Blue Donald, vice president and interim Detroit market leader at Enterprise Community Partners, said in the announcement.

Bringing all 37 groups into one cohort is meant to build something more durable than a grant cycle: a connected network of community developers who can learn from one another, share resources, and work across neighborhoods on problems that do not stop at a single block. The fund's focus spans affordable housing, economic development, and long-term neighborhood stability across the city.

CDAD, which has represented nonprofits and neighborhood groups citywide for years, will match organizations in the cohort to the specific support each one needs as it grows. "The CDO Fund has been instrumental to the organizations keeping Detroit's neighborhoods whole and thriving," CDAD executive director Madhavi Reddy said in the Kresge Foundation's announcement of the round. The goal is to strengthen the organizations themselves so Detroit's neighborhoods have a stronger foundation for what comes next.