What We Do

We provide technical assistance, capacity building, and advocacy, helping communities achieve their goals through local policy, innovative tools, public-private partnerships, ballot measures, state and federal grants, and philanthropic partnerships.

How We Work

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Access to jobs and affordable housing

Access to jobs and affordable housing

Access to jobs and affordable housing

Our Approach

Economic & Community 

Development

We help local leaders create more prosperous communities through initiatives to increase housing affordability, invest in thriving small businesses and neighborhoods, expand access to capital, and build career pathways.

Transit & 

Infrastructure

We work with leaders to generate local infrastructure funding and to leverage the historic federal investment in infrastructure to create wide-reaching economic opportunity and other community.

Housing & 

Innovation

We help communities confront America’s housing crisis by identifying and scaling practical solutions — from unlocking underutilized public land and deploying innovative funding strategies, to modernizing zoning and streamlining permitting.

Workforce 

Development

We work with local leaders to tackle workforce challenges and create pathways for high-quality jobs – those that provide family-sustaining wages, benefits, and opportunities for economic mobility.

By the Numbers

Latest Updates

Pictured left to right in from of a Clinton Global Initiative step-and-repeat banner: Cait Garozzo, Executive Director of The Skills Initiative; Liz Alkire, AFA's Director of Workforce; and Anne Bovaird Nevins, Chief of Economic & Community Impact

Two Commitments, Three Years of Local Impact

A screenshot of the cover of the Mayor's Action Guide for the 21st Century Road to Housing

The ROAD to Local Results

AFA adds local elected, national philanthropic leaders to its Advisory Council

Mary Ellen Wiederohl, pictured center right, with former Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and the city's economic development staff in 2018 in the library at the Omni Hotel.

The Expanding Mandate: Rethinking Economic Development for People and Place