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Fifty years ago, nonprofit and civic leaders sought to solve a shortage of affordable housing by searching out individual homes they could purchase, renovate, and rent to low-income families.

Their hearts were in the right place, but their impact was limited. In St. Louis in the 1980s, for instance, the pioneering Ecumenical Housing Production Corporation saw only a third of the families in its 150 homes eventually transition out of poverty into the economic mainstream.

By the late 1990s, the organization had changed its approach to achieve greater social impact—and changed its name to Beyond Housing to represent the wider scope of its new mission.

Today, Beyond Housing is recognized nationally as one of the most innovative and successful organizations in its field. In the past 15 years alone, the community development nonprofit has raised and invested more than $175 million in North St. Louis County.

Beyond Housing's portfolio includes more than 800 rental units as well as commercial and retail properties, a health center, entertainment and hospitality venues, and more. Its staff works in schools, partners with municipal governments, and provides homeownership education. Its acumen in securing grants has helped local police departments purchase state-of-the-art technology, low-income homeowners make deferred repairs, and forestry teams tackle green space projects to remediate urban heat island effects.

The secret to Beyond Housing's significant, scalable social impact is cross-sector collaboration.

A Strategic Response to Complex Challenges

Cross-sector collaboration is an increasingly common strategic response to complex societal challenges. The synergies achieved when pooling resources, expertise, capacity, and networks yield much more progress than solutions developed and implemented in isolation.

However, the process is not always straightforward, and there is limited research on what characteristics contribute to achieving collective advantages. Beyond Housing provides a case study in how to navigate conflicting priorities, balance stakeholder inclusion, and achieve consensus among collaborators—while still keeping operational costs in check.

Early Innovation Around Comprehensive Community Development

Beyond Housing's collaborative approach arose out of frustration about results. Former board member Joe Cavato, an investment banker who specialized in tax-exempt bond financing for housing and community development, said the nonprofit's board recognized the ineffectiveness of funding individual houses. Even its efforts to fund housing across entire communities to maximize access to county and federal resources were insufficient to achieve the scale of impact it believed was possible.

The nonprofit began to draw in significant supporters like Monsanto (now Bayer), allowing it to expand its place-based services to wider communities. The concept gained momentum, and in the early 2010s, two dozen small municipalities joined forces to create the 24:1 Community. Its 33,000 residents are still at the heart of Beyond Housing's service delivery area.

Beyond Housing also expanded its mission to address the comprehensive set of challenges that disproportionately affect under-resourced areas, including education, economic stability, health, and employment.

"Beyond Housing was before its time in terms of putting people in housing and surrounding them with everything that goes with it," Cavato said. From partnering with social services agencies to helping municipal governments streamline amenities such as trash pickup, the nonprofit was involved everywhere. "Beyond Housing even did a ton of work consolidating court activities," Cavato said. "Beyond Housing has made more progress toward intergovernmental cooperation than any other entity in the region."

Beyond Housing President and CEO Chris Krehmeyer, who took the helm in 1993, enthusiastically embraced the collaborative approach. Working with major foundations and corporate partners as well as local residents, he tenaciously built networks to support program after program. For instance, one research-backed early childhood initiative was launched with the support of more than 30 agencies.

The Benefits of a Diverse Infrastructure

"The scope of Beyond Housing's work offers many entry points for collaboration," Krehmeyer said. "That allows us to leverage the strengths of partners in various sectors."

Beyond Housing's cross-sector collaboration proved especially effective during the onset of the COVID pandemic. Along with more than a dozen partners, it quickly ramped up a task force to provide food, personal protection supplies, educational resources, rental and utility assistance, and other essentials.

Kendra Holmes, President and CEO of Affinia Healthcare, recalled that "partnering with Beyond Housing on setting up drive-thru testing in one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods in the metro area was a wonderful experience in a difficult time. The power of partnerships coming together to serve the community is one of my most fond memories."

Examples like the pandemic task force are exactly why cross-sector collaboration is needed, said Marietta Rodriguez, President and CEO of NeighborWorks America, a network Beyond Housing has participated in for decades. "What we have found is that if you have an infrastructure of well-run, strong, resilient community organizations that are in the community for the long term, they can respond when there is a pandemic or when there is a financial crisis. They can flex with the needs of the community and not be crippled by those crises."

Beyond Housing's cross-sector approach continues to gain new adherents like the Light a Single Candle Foundation, which focuses on combatting food insecurity. It is funded through the Tracy family, owners of Dot Foods, the largest food redistributor in the U.S. Recognizing the interconnectedness of food and housing insecurity, Light a Single Candle contributes to Beyond Housing's program for first-time homeowners.

"Lots of nonprofits are trying to plug the holes in the boat, one after the other," said foundation representative Pat Tracy. "We try to lift up entire communities from extreme poverty."

Additional support for homeowners comes from the financial sector. St. Louis-based Midwest BankCentre and Enterprise Bank & Trust have sponsored millions of dollars in home repair grants from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines. Altogether, Beyond Housing has brought more than $20 million in home repair funds to the 24:1 Community since 2014.

"The cumulative impact of these grants extends from providing thousands of families with structural safety to increasing home values and tax revenue to boosting business opportunities for local contractors," Krehmeyer said.

Amid this year's growing economic, Beyond Housing remains committed to revitalization. It currently has more than 50 parcels of land in development for new home construction, easing complications and financial risk for builders like McBride Homes, another of its longtime partners.

And it continues to seek investment capital through the concept of a "nonprofit IPO" with returns measured in human lives and community strength rather than financial dividends.

"Everything we are doing is replicable," Krehmeyer said. "Every day our work offers additional evidence that we can collaborate to address multiple challenges simultaneously while building on community assets and resident leadership."