An analysis of the impact of mergers between community development corporations

Abstract

This thesis explores the occurrence of mergers between community development corporations (CDC's) in the United States in the past five years. The research examines how mergers between CDC's affect their capacity to achieve their mission and serve their constituents. In addition, the author explores the drivers behind CDC mergers, the impacts from those mergers, and the factors that contribute to merger success. There is currently limited data and literature on CDC and non-profit mergers. This paper uses three case studies of mergers between CDC's to explore how and to what extent CDC capacities changed, as a result of the merger. A CDC capacity framework created by Glickman and Servon (1997) is operationalized and applied to each case study to analyze the capacity changes. The results from the case studies and review of the literature show that CDC's can likely benefit the most from a growth in programmatic capacity as a result of a merger.