Community Infrastructure Building Blocks: 10,000 Communities Initiative | Finance Forum 2025

Market Demand and Appetite

• Department of Energy energy improvement rounds for rural areas received over 1,100 applications for only 40 grants.
• The Economic Development Administration's ReCompete pilot program received 585 applications (a record high) for only six grants.
• Rural jurisdictions represent over 50% of the eligible distressed labor markets for the ReCompete pilot.
• There is a verified, high appetite for investment in rural infrastructure and economic opportunity.

Core Constraints to Deployment

• Projects are often too small and lack the scale required to justify the high overhead costs (modeling, due diligence, contracts) incurred by large institutional investors.
• Rural communities face capacity constraints, including volunteer elected officials, thinly staffed city halls, and limited access to financial institutions.
• Lack of governance structures hinders partnerships across rural jurisdictions or between rural and urban entities.
• Non-profits and community institutions often lack credit scores (FICO), making them appear as high credit risk to traditional lenders.

Capital Stack and Financing Solutions

• Successful deployment requires a blended capital stack comprising public, private, and philanthropic capital to de-risk projects in small or distressed areas.
• The Inflation Reduction Act's "direct pay" provision now allows non-profits to claim solar investment tax credits as direct Treasury checks, removing a major historical barrier.
• Revolve has achieved a nearly 100% repayment rate by developing internal financial health scorecards and utilizing portfolio approaches to mitigate size and risk concerns.
• Philanthropic and government entities must provide credit enhancements and bridge financing for projects that do not yet meet Wall Street risk standards.
• Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), credit unions, and nonprofit loan funds are underutilized assets capable of underwriting these deals if paired with clean energy technical expertise.

Technology and Standardization

• Digital platforms (e.g., Banyan Infrastructure Platform) aim to automate origination, underwriting, and compliance to reduce overhead costs for small-ticket investments ($100,000 to $10 million).
• Securitization and liquidity for small-scale assets are currently blocked by a lack of standardized contracts and visibility into project pools.
• Capital providers are hesitant to share "secret sauce" credit boxes and underwriting standards, hindering the creation of industry benchmarks.
• Digitizing assets allows for cross-departmental and cross-bank visibility, enabling larger institutions to target specific asset classes (e.g., CNI solar) without needing to review individual deal terms.

Narrative and Behavioral Shifts

• Rural community revitalization requires a 20-year horizon, shifting from "learned helplessness" to local agency and economic ownership.
• Trust mechanisms in rural areas are relational, requiring "bridging infrastructure" that translates large-capital provider risk models to local community contexts.
• Lawrence Berkeley Lab data indicates that non-residential solar installations at nonprofits or places of worship drive an average of 80 follow-on residential installations within five years.
• The prevailing narrative of rural areas as "poverty pockets" must be reversed by showcasing their role as essential producers of food, energy, and recreation for the national economy.

Future Outlook and Economic Impact

• If standardized and scaled, small-scale rural infrastructure could become a permanent, self-sustaining asset class driven by intrinsic profitability rather than philanthropy.
• Long-term success aims for a market where local institutions can offer clean energy loans (e.g., solar/storage) with the same ease as traditional consumer loans (e.g., auto loans).
• Reviving rural economies is framed as essential to US competitiveness, given the interdependence between rural resource production and urban knowledge economies.
• The goal is to create wealth at all levels, ensuring that the 90% of clean energy investments do not bypass low-income communities and families.