Meet Cort Gross
Cort Gross has a background in underwriting and has spent much of his decades-spanning career endeavoring to reconfigure the perception of risk for marginalized communities. He has led corporate capitalization and financial management for nonprofit housing developers, including the Low Income Investment Fund, Bridge Housing Corporation and the Self-Help Federal Credit Union. Today, Cort is a finance and development consultant specializing in community investment and the development of community-controlled real estate.
Cort had long been engaged in community development and financial structuring engagements, but in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, he sought out dialogue around issues of economic inequity, intergenerational wealth and Black history. His consulting company, B&T Productions, aims to deepen that dialogue. In the San Francisco Bay area, B&T Productions is redeveloping an important African American church and building more affordable housing in a historic African American neighborhood.
Trust but verify' is the route of underwriting
in my experience, especially when we’re working
on social change projects where you’re on
the same side as the folks who are trying
to do something. You very much want to help
them make it happen.
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MISSION
To pursue tangible ways to restructure issues of inequity within community development in African American neighborhoods.
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VISION
To reframe the perception of risk when it comes to lending to BIPOC communities and business entrepreneurs. Let’s do it through telling a story through good underwriting.
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SEEKING
Others who believe that now is the moment to work on issues of intergenerational wealth.
Cort’s Story
With over 20 years of experience in the industry, Cort Gross has served as the CFO of the non-profit housing developer BRIDGE Housing Corporation, Vice President of Affordable Housing with mortgage banker TRI Capital Corporation (now known as PNC Mortgage), and as Program Manager for Lending with community development financial intermediary, the Low Income Housing Fund (now known as LIIF). He has served on several non-profit boards and finance committees and published relevant articles. He sits on regional and national loan committees for the Nonprofit Finance Fund, and the finance committee of the northern California chapter of the Green Building Council. A former Coro Fellow in public affairs, Gross received his A.B. degree in history at Stanford University and his M.Div. degree in liberation theology at Yale.
"We’re breaking away from the traditional path of
[FILL IN] by going even further and creating [FILL IN]"
Q & A
We recently sat down with Cort Gross to find out more about his passions, his calling and generally dive in deeper to get to know him.
1
Developing alternative business models to the startup status quo has become a central moral challenge of our time. These alternatives want to balance profit and purpose and put a premium on sharing power and resources. Why is getting investments in this alternative model crucial for those who seek it?
It’s not a coincidence that white people have ten times the wealth that black people do in this country. That’s structural; it’s not natural. The reason it works that way is because it was set up to work that way. So, to try to do something different, you’re going against the way that things have always been done. That’s the bad news. The good news is that my whole career has been about going against the way things have always been done. The difference is that we have sought to exploit programs that have been created in moments of political opportunity. The big driver of my career is the low income housing tax credit and the Community Reinvestment Act. I spent most of the early part of my career working with ways to help banks meet their CRA needs and help investors take advantage of the credit. But there’s nothing that provides the type of incentive and financial opportunity that those two programs did. I’ve been dabbling more in the impact investment space lately. I very much want to believe that we have an opportunity in the moment to be working on issues of intergenerational wealth. William Barber has been an inspiration to me in terms of faith-based leadership. And he’s not alone in talking about a third reconstruction.
2
How do we shift the narrative about the role of capital in BIPOC communities and reframe the perceptions of the risk involved?
A lot of my career has been about doing just that! And a big aspect has been about the perception of risk. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy; you’re convinced it’s risky and therefore the market treats it as such. A lot of it, based on my experience, is just to demonstrate that by all conventional markers of risk, this project that you think is risky, ain’t so. I can point to the history of what’s been happening in the CDFI world; the nature of their lending is the integrity and discipline of their underwriting, and more importantly, the relationships that they maintain with their borrowers meant that far fewer people were put out of their homes with the self-help mortgage than in the industry generally. It just proves straight up, this stuff is not more risky. In fact, it’s safer because of how we do our work. And that’s the same argument in terms of perception of risk versus actual underwritten assessment of risk – two very different things. We’ve demonstrated that it works. It’s really that simple.
3
What are the top three pieces of advice you would give to BIPOC entrepreneurs, who are dedicated to both purpose and profit, as they are starting or scaling their business?
It’s going to take time; it’s not going to happen right away. Partnership is your friend; don’t think you have to have the capacity to do it yourself. Do a good assessment of your capacity: in today’s environment, there’s lots of capacity that now has been developed in the nonprofit sector to do strong, well-designed community development work. Finally, believe in yourself. Trust in your vision, trust in your mission. Interrogate it, making sure it has integrity. Make sure that it is based on values and principles that are defensible. Let your flag fly!
4
What is the call to action for investors who seek to promote social justice through investment solutions?
I’ve done a lot of work soliciting investments. You’re asking an investor to share this vision, to share this belief that this thing can happen. The way to make that case is just to do good underwriting. That’s a way of trusting what they are telling you. At the same time, double checking everything that is being represented is a great way to look at things. In terms of convincing investors, it’s a matter of telling a story that they want to hear. There are prospective investors who have participated in the Black Lives Matter march and all of a sudden faced some danger and opposition that folks who are working in the BIPOC space have faced their whole lives, and it’s like, WOW, this is kind of scary. Given the understandings that we have of systems now and the interconnectedness of systems and intersectionality of systems, we can draw a straight line between community health, community flourishing, and community engagement around issues of climate change. That’s a way of showing those connections. It’s just a matter of making it personal and telling the story that can help people see the connections and see how their investment either directly or indirectly can make a difference in this context.
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Cort is currently looking for people who
meet the following criteria to
work together
JUST: We create products and processes that uphold “nothing about us without us.”
RESPONSIVE: We listen to and build with multiple, diverse perspectives.
RADICAL: We commit systemic change by injecting restorative justice into Finance.
COOPERATIVE: We co-own and co-build this work through participatory processes.
HOLISTIC: We value the uncounted resources of lived experience and whole people.
EMERGENT: We listen and learn, adapt and modify, and value “done” over “perfect.
ABOUT US
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