Some partnerships start with years of shared rooms and polite head nods across conferences hallways and meeting rooms. Others spark more unexpectedly, while wandering through a building in Oakland.
In the early days of Siegel Family Endowment’s grantmaking, our President & Executive Director, Katy Knight, was exploring how local institutions were reimagining opportunity and infrastructure in a region transformed by tech. She had heard that the Oakland Business Park was evolving into a hub for organizations committed to equitable innovation. So she did something increasingly rare: she browsed. That curiosity led her to ICA Fund.
ICA’s mission practically jumped off the page. Even then, they were making a clear case for something bigger: if we want inclusive access to the innovation economy, we can’t only focus on pipelines into existing companies. We must also invest in the people building businesses that create good jobs today. ICA Fund wasn’t theorizing about a more equitable economy, they were out building it. Their approach was tangible and rooted in equity, backing entrepreneurs often overlooked by mainstream capital, and proving that small businesses are powerful engines of community wealth and resilience.
Partnerships take trust, and trust often grows in vulnerable moments. ICA Fund CEO Allison Kelly remembers inheriting a Siegel grant during a time when not every ambitious idea had yet produced results. “As a new CEO, I was particularly vulnerable to be sharing that,” she recalled. “Instead, Katy listened, was an incredible thought partner, and helped us design the next stage of the work to move our partnership forward and advance ICA’s mission.” Allison notes that the relationship works because both organizations are challenging norms: Siegel pushes philanthropy to evolve, and ICA pushes finance to serve communities long excluded from capital and growth.
Building on our five-year partnership, we created this new series of case studies to spotlight ICA Fund’s work to shape a more inclusive economic system: one where entrepreneurs can access the capital and partnership they need to grow, where local economies thrive, and where quality jobs expand alongside profit. Each case study speaks to a core audience and a core belief: investors can generate both social impact and returns; business owners deserve capital designed for their success; policymakers can drive widespread economic growth by supporting equity investing that works for real people.
As Allison puts it, ICA’s work shows that backing overlooked entrepreneurs “delivers both social and financial returns.” We invite funders, business owners, and policymakers to explore what ICA Fund has built and imagine how these lessons might ripple outward.
Explore the ICA Fund Case Study Series:
