Think Globally, Act Locally: Why Investment Must Begin in Our Own Backyards
Across the world, billions of dollars are mobilized each year to support education. Governments fund international development programs. Foundations invest heavily in global girls’ education initiatives. Universities and multinational donors contribute to school construction, teacher pipelines, and learning recovery efforts abroad.
According to the World Bank, international education aid exceeded $20 billion annually prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, with renewed commitments following global learning loss (World Bank, 2023). UNESCO estimates that achieving universal education worldwide will require nearly $100 billion per year in global education financing (UNESCO, 2022).
These investments matter deeply.
Yet alongside this global commitment lies a difficult contradiction.
While education abroad is widely recognized as a public good worthy of flexible capital and long-term investment, communities across the United States — including cities like Philadelphia — struggle to fund and maintain the very infrastructure needed to educate children locally.
The question is not whether global education deserves investment.
It does.
The question is why our commitment to education weakens as proximity increases.
Why is it easier to fund a school thousands of miles away than to finance one across town?
When Global Values Stop at the City Line
“Think globally, act locally” is a phrase often painted on school walls and civic buildings. In West Philadelphia, those words appear on the exterior of the former Richard Allen Preparatory Charter School — now a vacant, deteriorating structure located in Bartram’s Village.
The message remains visible.
The investment does not.
This contrast reflects a broader pattern in how capital flows. International education initiatives are often supported through blended finance, philanthropic risk capital, and long-term horizons that allow experimentation and patience (OECD, 2021). Domestic education infrastructure, by contrast, is governed by rigid funding streams, restrictive lending standards, and market-based real estate systems that rarely account for community benefit.
As a result, schools and youth-serving institutions in U.S. cities are expected to operate without the very tools routinely used in global development contexts.
Education Capital Is Flowing — Just Not to Place
This disparity is not driven by scarcity.
It is driven by structure.
In the United States, philanthropic education funding overwhelmingly supports programming rather than facilities or land acquisition (National Education Philanthropy Database, 2022). Traditional lenders are hesitant to finance schools and nonprofits without collateral or long operating histories. Public redevelopment processes are slow and opaque, often stretching across decades.
Meanwhile, cities like Philadelphia face a growing inventory of vacant public school buildings resulting from enrollment decline and aging infrastructure.
The School District of Philadelphia’s long-range facilities planning process anticipates multiple school closures and consolidations over the coming years (School District of Philadelphia, 2023). Research shows that these closures disproportionately affect low-income neighborhoods and communities of color (Philadelphia Research Initiative, 2022; Brookings Institution, 2021).
When schools close, communities lose far more than classrooms. Schools function as:
neighborhood anchors
after-school and enrichment hubs
food access and social service sites
stabilizing institutions for families
(Brookings Institution, 2021).
Yet the buildings themselves often sit vacant — unused assets surrounded by unmet need.
Vacant School Buildings as Untapped Community Infrastructure
Across the country, unused school buildings have been successfully reimagined as:
community learning hubs
after-school enrichment centers
arts and cultural spaces
health clinics and wellness facilities
nonprofit co-location campuses
(Urban Institute, 2023; National Trust for Historic Preservation, 2019).
However, such transformations are the exception rather than the rule.
Studies show that prolonged vacancy contributes to neighborhood instability, reduced safety, and lost economic opportunity (Urban Institute, 2023). At the same time, community-based organizations and startup schools struggle to secure affordable space — revealing a fundamental inefficiency in how public assets are governed.
We have buildings without programs, and programs without buildings.
Why Traditional Investment Models Fall Short
Conventional lending models prioritize:
collateral-based underwriting
short-term cash flow
market-rate real estate valuation
standardized risk metrics
These criteria systematically disadvantage nonprofit institutions, startup schools, and community facilities whose value lies in social return rather than financial yield (Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, 2022).
As a result, education infrastructure is often considered “unfinanceable” domestically — even while similar projects are routinely funded abroad using concessional capital and blended finance structures.
This is not a failure of vision.
It is a failure of alignment.
CDFIs and the Democratization of Local Lending
Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) were created specifically to address these gaps.
Certified by the U.S. Treasury, CDFIs provide capital to borrowers and communities excluded from traditional finance. As of 2023, CDFIs manage more than $300 billion in assets nationwide and operate in both urban and rural communities (CDFI Fund, 2023).
The Urban Institute identifies CDFIs as pillars of local economic growth, particularly in areas facing structural disinvestment (Urban Institute, 2023). Their impact stems from flexible underwriting, longer loan terms, and an explicit commitment to community outcomes.
The Enterprise Community Loan Fund offers a powerful example. Since 1991, it has deployed more than $3 billion in lending, leveraging over ten dollars of additional investment for every dollar loaned — financing affordable housing, community facilities, and nonprofit infrastructure that would not otherwise attract capital (Enterprise Community Partners, 2024).
CDFIs demonstrate that community investment is not charity; it is disciplined finance guided by different values.
Rethinking Fiduciary Duty to Community
One of the most persistent barriers to local investment is the belief that fiduciary duty prohibits mission-aligned or place-based investing.
This assumption is increasingly being challenged.
In Nonprofit Quarterly, Sandhya Nakhasi argues that fiduciary duty should expand beyond institutional wealth preservation to include responsibility to community wellbeing (Nakhasi, 2023). She proposes a framework grounded in:
duty of community care
duty of partiality toward historically disinvested populations
loyalty to long-term community outcomes
This perspective aligns with evolving interpretations of ESG and mission-related investing, which increasingly recognize social instability as material financial risk (Commonfund Institute, 2022).
Under this framework, investing locally is not a deviation from fiduciary responsibility — it is an expression of it.
Why We Must Invest in Our Own Backyards
Universities, hospitals, foundations, and financial institutions function as anchor institutions — benefiting from land, labor, public subsidy, and community presence (Democracy Collaborative, 2020).
Yet capital associated with these institutions frequently flows outward rather than inward.
Place-based investment asks a different question:
What would happen if capital followed community leadership?
Grassroots organizations, schools, and neighborhood institutions already possess trust, cultural knowledge, and implementation capacity. What they lack is access to patient capital, shared governance structures, and equitable partnerships.
From Global Commitment to Local Responsibility
If education is recognized globally as essential to human development, it must also be treated as essential infrastructure at home.
Vacant school buildings are not liabilities.
They are opportunities waiting for alignment — between capital, policy, and community voice.
Thinking globally requires moral imagination.
Acting locally requires institutional courage.
A Call to Invest Where We Stand
Thinking globally requires moral imagination.
Acting locally requires courage.
It requires institutions — universities, foundations, lenders, and civic agencies — to recognize that the communities surrounding them are not peripheral to their mission. They are central to it.
The vacant school buildings across Philadelphia are not symbols of failure. They are reminders of opportunity waiting for alignment — between capital, community leadership, and long-term commitment.
We do not lack compassion.
We do not lack capital.
What we lack is a system that makes it as easy to invest in our own neighborhoods as it is to invest abroad.
Until that changes, “think globally, act locally” will remain a slogan — not a strategy.
At New Horizons Impact, we believe the future of education, equity, and community resilience depends on investing where we live, learn, and belong.
Because lasting impact does not start overseas.
It starts at home.
