We’re Meeting the Moment
An End-of-Year Note from Micah, Napoleon, and the Activest Team
Our cities are caught between impossible pressures. Federal funding is collapsing—Medicaid cuts loom in 2026, renewable energy credits are expiring and $27B in funding for energy efficiency projects has been frozen—while residents rightfully demand transformed policing, robust educational infrastructure, and climate-resilient systems. Mayors and county managers tell us the same story: even those committed to building better futures for residents struggle to find answers in this environment.
Cities need two things simultaneously: access to capital for critical investments, and accountability that ensures those investments actually serve residents. For nearly a decade, Activest has worked to solve both problems. We provide fiscal justice analysis that helps communities make strategic demands of their leaders, and we deploy capital that rewards municipalities making sound, equitable financial decisions. It’s a carrot-and-stick approach—and it works.
This year felt different. Our expertise moved from novel (or niche) to urgently needed. Municipal bond market volatility, weaponized fiscal policy, and the federal government’s abandonment of local infrastructure have proven what we’ve long argued: how cities access capital and what they do with it are questions of justice, not just finance.
Scene from a community mural at IAJE (Immigrant Alliance for Justice & Equity) in Jackson, Mississippi.
What We Accomplished in 2025
Launched Next World Assets and deployed $50M in fiscal justice capital
This February, we realized a long-term goal to add another tool in our toolbox to support fiscal justice in cities with the launch of Next World Assets, a North Carolina-based Registered Investment Advisor bringing our fiscal justice research directly to an investment strategy. We’re currently managing a $52M separately managed account for Kataly Foundation, and we’re seeing a lot of evidence that our thesis works. You don’t have to sacrifice returns to invest in what matters—water access, climate resilience, education equity, HBCUs, and majority-BIPOC school districts.
Our early investments include North Carolina A&T, where we’re supporting essential facilities at rates that should be standard—but often aren’t for HBCUs. The bond market isn’t just filling funding gaps; it’s choosing who gets to build their future and at what cost. We’re working to change that calculus.
Built place-based partnerships reimagining community economic futures
In Jackson, Mississippi, we collaborated with Christy Slater and Azia Cimone—leaders who ground our work in power analysis and accountability. Understanding Jackson’s redlining history (60% of the city in the 1930s) and how white flight stretched infrastructure costs clarifies the municipality’s’ responsibility to communities who sustained neighborhoods for generations.
In New Jersey, we followed our comprehensive fiscal justice report by taking on our first “deal book”—identifying transformational investment opportunities for Black and brown communities while making visible the capital access mechanisms that whiter, wealthier communities routinely use. In 2026, watch for the next phase of this work with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as we help cities gain better access to the bond market through more transparent processes and more capital with a fiscal justice lens.
Amplified the conversation through film and podcast
“Equity & Ownership: Napoleon Wallace and the Reconstruction of Black Wealth” won Best Documentary at the Boston International Film Festival this spring. The film chronicles Napoleon’s comprehensive strategy for Black wealth-building and multiracial prosperity across the South, connecting today’s work to Reconstruction’s remarkable though brief success before violent backlash overthrew elected governments.
We also launched The Activest Podcast on the Impact Alpha Podcast Network—weekly conversations with leaders in place-based impact investing, unpacking what fiscal justice means in practice and highlighting grassroots efforts reshaping how capital flows to communities.
Homero Radway and Ellen Ward-Owen at the US SIF Conference in Washington, D.C., June 2025.
Why This Approach Works Now
The municipal bond market is revealing uncomfortable truths. For the first time ever, top ten universities now account for 52% of new bond issuance in 2025—not because they’re thriving, but because federal funding is vanishing. The disparities are stark: elite prep schools like Andover secure better rates for dining halls than HBCUs like Spelman get for essential facilities.
Traditional credit analysis penalizes municipalities for housing value disparities created by discriminatory policies. Our fiscal justice framework evaluates investment quality by acknowledging inherited inequities rather than compounding them. When enough investors adopt this approach, we fundamentally change how communities access capital for infrastructure.
Communities face enormous inherited challenges—tax giveaways that constrain budgets, infrastructure debt from past development patterns, credit ratings that reflect historical extraction. Yet communities know exactly what they need: collective stability, collective agreements, collective care. Our work connects those needs to capital that can meet them.
John Killeen & Homero Radway at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in New Jersey, September 2025.
Looking Ahead to 2026
Our priorities for the coming year:
- Launching the CRIB Fund through Next World Assets—a private fund for institutional and qualified investors ready to deploy fiscal justice capital at scale
- Releasing our data center research—examining the fiscal justice implications of data center construction and tax incentives
- Expanding place-based work in the Gulf Coast region and deepening existing partnerships
- Launching our impact monetization work—expanding earned-income opportunities for justice-oriented nonprofits
- Strengthening institutional infrastructure across our family of enterprises
You can expect to hear more from us next year—a content series diving deep into case studies, reintroducing you to the Activest team, and exploring the issues we care about most.
We Can’t Do This Alone
Movement leaders: Chat with us for a quick exploratory call to see if we can support your work. We’re natural coalition amplifiers that do our best work supporting the leadership of local organizations. We want to help place-based organizations conduct fiscal justice analysis for more equitable outcomes.
Investors: Our close partner Next World Assets needs introductions to Chief Investment Officers, OCIOs, and asset managers whose clients might be interested in the CRIB Fund. We also need help sourcing deals that may be a good fit given our approach to credit analysis. We also need help sourcing deals that may be a good fit given our approach to impact investing. Help us source deals, adopt our approach: we would love to set up a meeting to trade notes and strategies.
Funders: Connect us with peers working on maternal and infant health, data center accountability, or financial infrastructure. These are domains where fiscal justice analysis can drive transformational change.
We are grateful for your partnership through our first decade. Our community supported us as we figured out this novel approach. Now that we’re seeing real progress, we need you more than ever.
We’re better together.
Micah, Napoleon, and the Activest Team