Rewiring How Power, Capital, and Community Work Together: Co-Designing for Healthy Communities

CDFIs and intermediary funders are uniquely positioned to do more than move capital — they can shift how decisions get made. This report, authored by Reinvestment Fund’s Jennifer Fassbender, Leah Rusenko, and Jacob Kraybill (Healthy Communities team) and TheCaseMade, draws on nearly a decade of experience across Invest Health and Building Healthier, More Equitable Communities in New Jersey to make the case for co-design as a practical, scalable approach to community investment.

Co-design goes beyond traditional community engagement. It means sharing real decision-making authority with local leaders, practitioners, and residents — and building programs around their expertise rather than alongside it. The report documents how that approach strengthened cross-sector relationships, produced more relevant and durable outcomes, and built local capacity that outlasted the initiatives themselves. It also offers eight concrete strategies for funders and CDFIs ready to put co-design into practice.

Support for this work was provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.