Los Angeles Business Journal Features SDS and its Founder

The Los Angeles Business Journal (LABJ) article, “West L.A. Firm Helps Take Stakes in Communities, ”  profiles SDS and its founder, Deborah La Franchi. The article focuses on the impact investing activities of SDS, including its success in raising capital for the Los Angeles YWCA Job Corps Campus, assisting with the development of a new mortgage model for Habitat for Humanity and Ms. La Franchi’s earlier efforts at helping structure Genesis LA and serving as its first CEO.   Also detailed are SDS’s role in helping launch many Double and Triple Bottom Line funds around the country, the company’s growing activities internationally and the funds that SDS now directly manages and invests in poor communities nationally and internationally.

Click here to see full article: https://www.sdsgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/LABJ-SDS-Article-111003.pdf

SDS Corrections to the Article:

1.  Ms. La Franchi started with the City of Los Angeles through her work on LA’s Business Team, housed within the offices of Mayor Richard Riordan.  Her prior studies at Georgetown included a study she undertook on Rebuild LA, which helped inform her economic development perspectives. She did not work at Rebuild LA, as stated in the article, but with LA’s Business Team.

2.  Ms. La Franchi and her business partner, Belden Daniels, have developed $2 billion of Double and Triple Bottom Line funds. During the economic crisis they had to stop development on four funds-which were separate and distinct from the $2 billion of past funds developed.  It was the four ‘new’ funds that they pulled from the market given the turbulence, not the prior $2 billion of funds built and capitalized.