Non-profits

Girls Inc.

October 7, 2022 by

The mission of national non-profit Girls Inc. and its affiliates is to serve girls and young women ages 6-18 by fostering long-term mentoring relationships within safe spaces for girls to develop their strengths and take charge of their futures. Girls Inc. deploys an evidence-based, pro-girl model to address the systemic barriers that hold young women back today. Within pro-girl, girls-only safe spaces, Girls Inc. teaches young women to be Strong, Smart and Bold.

Strong – Programming that teaches nourishing habits, including stressing the importance of positive choices, a healthy diet, rest and self-care, to create the resiliency essential for future accomplishment.
Smart – Programming that prepares girls for fulfilling work and economic independence. Specific career opportunities and pathways are described, with a focus on STEM fields that experts believe will offer the largest number of highly-remunerative professions for which demand is growing – professions in which women continue to be underrepresented. Girls Inc. also provides access and opportunities for young women to meet and learn from female role models and community leaders. This exposure demonstrates to young, underprivileged women that women can and do succeed in all realms.
Bold – Programming that fosters positive self-image and intellectual confidence, encouraging girls to develop and use their voices. Girls Inc. wants to see young woman become comfortable taking risks, learning from mistakes, and growing.

In 2004, Girls Inc. inaugurated its San Antonio chapter. A majority of its participants come from impoverished communities of color, with program attendees almost exclusively Hispanic. These young women struggle, growing up in neighborhoods affected by violence, in under-resourced schools, and without access to adequate nutrition or healthcare. Birth rates among teenage young women of color are twice as high as among white teens.

In 2020, sixteen years after its establishment in San Antonio, Girls Inc. acquired a permanent headquarters facility, enabling a quantum leap in its capacity and capabilities.

In September of 2022, in partnership with Texas Mezzanine Fund, and Chase Bank, Crescent closed on a $9M Federal NMTC financing which will enable Girls Inc. of San Antonio – eighteen years after its establishment – to complete and fully equip its new headquarters and youth activity campus, providing a safe space for San Antonio’s underprivileged young woman of color to develop their strengths, learn from mistakes, and take charge of their future, according to the proven Strong, Smart, Bold model.

The completed campus will rank as a vanguard initiative designed to recover ground lost during the pandemic, during which time narrowed horizons, academic underperformance, violence and abuse have proliferated among San Antonio’s disadvantaged young women of color. The new Girls Inc. campus will double the number of young women attending the evidence-based programming offered by Girls Inc., from 2,500 annually to 5,000 annually. FTE staff numbers will double as well from 15 to 30.

Jefferson Community Health and Life

September 9, 2022 by

Jefferson Community Health & Life was established in 1963 as Jefferson County Memorial Hospital and Nursing Home, the first hospital/nursing home combination in the state of Nebraska. The facility has grown over the years, adding a home health agency in 1984, a community wellness center in 1996, expanding outpatient services throughout the years, and adding the Fairbury Clinic in 2016, and opened the Plymouth Clinic in 2018. Through its 50-plus-year history, Jefferson Community Health & Life has been very active and involved in its community, and has worked to promote health and wellness. Currently 20 visiting specialists utilize this space each month, allowing area residents the opportunity to receive specialty care locally. JCHL operates two rural health clinics offering primary care services by 9 employed providers.

In Nebraska, nearly 30 percent of the state’s population resides in rural areas like Fairbury and its surrounding communities. JCH&L faces a unique combination of rural forces not faced by their urban healthcare peers, such as continuing health provider shortages, limited access to specialty care, disparate socioeconomic factors, and higher rates of obesity, hypertension, suicide, and death by serious injury.

In August of 2022, in partnership with Hampton Roads Ventures, and US Bank, Crescent closed on a $9M Federal NMTC/$9M Nebraska State NMTC twin financing for the expansion of the Jefferson Community Health and Life Critical Access Hospital..

The expansion includes 23 exams rooms, 2 special procedure rooms, a radiology room, and a specialty room for COVID and flu patients. JCH&L currently employs 192 FTEs and this expansion will create 10 new full-time jobs ranging from nursing to support staff as well as laboratory technicians. 65% of JCH&L’s patients are Medicare/Medicaid, and this addition is expected to grow Medicare/Medicaid services by nearly 10% from 2022-2026. Additionally, the subsidy from the transaction will enhance JCH&L’s liquidity in funding ongoing services for the hospital.

Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma

February 15, 2022 by

CFBEO is Feeding America’s designated food bank for the twenty-four county region of eastern Oklahoma centered around Tulsa. In 2019, the food bank distributed a record 28.9 million pounds of food.

In 1981, in response to the rising number of people struggling with hunger, Tulsa’s Neighbor for Neighbor feeding program evolved to become the Tulsa Community Food Bank. Operating from a small, donated warehouse space, in year one the food bank provided food assistance to 25 partner agencies and distributed 90,000 pounds of food, the equivalent of 75,000 meals.

In 2006, the Food Bank opened its current facility, the Donald W. Reynolds Food Distribution Center. That year the Food Bank distributed 7.5 million pounds of food, a record at the time.

Since its founding, the food bank has also steadily grown its service area and has continued to expand the scope of its services. Programs include on-site feeding programs, emergency shelters, emergency food pantries, children and senior feeding programs, veterans’ outreach initiatives, disaster relief and other low-income programs that have a meal component. All of these programs provide food free of charge to people who struggle with hunger in the community.

The food bank’s work also includes direct feeding programs such as Cooking Matters, Food for Kids, and Senior Servings, as well as clinic pantries, mobile pantries, and culinary center and college campus pantries. Collectively the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma coordinates more than 380 direct feeding sites.

In 2019, the food bank distributed a record 28.9 million pounds of food, the equivalent of more than 24 million meals, to the hungry. The food bank distributes food via both direct programs and through 350 partner agencies, located in the 24 counties of eastern Oklahoma that comprise nearly 30,000 square miles and contain a population of more than 1.5 million people.

Despite these ongoing successes, CFBEO’s distribution center has been bursting at the seams for years. At 78,000 square feet, the facility was designed to have the capacity to distribute 20 million pounds of food annually.

In February of 2022, in partnership with Hampton Roads Ventures, Heartland Renaissance Fund and Capital One, Crescent closed on a $16M NMTC financing to construct the new Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma.

CFBEO will add 66,000 SF to CFBEO’s existing 78,000 SF facility, increasing its design capacity from 20 million pounds of food distributed annually to nearly 52 million pounds of food distributed annually. Even though improved workflows will greatly boost the productivity of CFBEO’s existing workforce, additional hiring will be needed, resulting in nine permanent new positions. Approximately 250 construction jobs will also be generated by the facility expansion component of the Build Hope campaign. A new 12,500 SF food preparation kitchen will enable the growth in prepared meal distribution, and fresher, more nutritious offerings will be made available.

Ursuline Academy – SMART Lab/STEM Studio

December 28, 2021 by

Ursuline Academy has educated young women for nearly three hundred years. Founded in 1727, only nine years after New Orleans’ establishment, the school currently occupies an eleven-acre campus inaugurated in 1912. Nearly six hundred students attend grades Pre-Kindergarten through 12.

In recent years Crescent Growth Capital has repeatedly helped Ursuline Academy leverage its capital projects fundraising to generate tax credit subsidies, resulting in a more attractive and competitive suite of educational and programmatic offerings. In 2010 Crescent structured and closed a New Markets Tax Credit financing to enable a key element of Ursuline’s post-Hurricane Katrina recovery plan: the debut of a dedicated Early Childhood Learning Center. Another central institutional objective, the rehabilitation of the school’s circa 1935 gymnasium to accommodate its enlargement and conversion into a Fitness and Wellness Center, was achieved with the assistance of Crescent’s contingent fee-based historic preservation consulting and historic tax credit monetization services. Subsequent historic preservation consulting work was undertaken by Crescent on behalf of the Ursuline Sisters to subsidize improvements to the National Shrine of Our Lady of Prompt Succor, located on the academy’s campus but administered independently.

In January 2020, Crescent was again approached by Ursuline Academy to provide contingent fee-based historic preservation consulting and historic tax credit monetization services, this time in support of its development of a SMART Lab and STEM Studio within its 1912 academic building. The academy deleted a circa 1960 library space to allow for the installation of an IOT-enabled SMART Lab, a cutting-edge practice platform for STEM instruction, a robotics competition zone, an entrepreneurship space, and a media lab. An adjoining bathroom stack was also reconstructed to code, conditioned by the new central HVAC system installed for the SMART Lab and finished with salvaged marble partitions and historic wooden fittings.

Crescent Growth Capital’s in-house historic preservation specialist prepared a twelve-element Historic Preservation Certification Application over twenty-two months. Part 3 approval was received on November 16, 2021, with credit monetization accomplished by Crescent and tax credit sale proceeds delivered to Ursuline in December.

New Orleans Museum of Art – Stern Auditorium

September 24, 2021 by

The New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) was established in 1910 in the wake of an endowment received from sugar planter Issac Delgado. Known as the “Issac Delgado Museum of Art” for its first six decades, the museum’s historic core consists of a Greek Neoclassical structure completed in 1911 to a design by Samuel Marx. In 1971 three wings were added, extending from the east, west and north elevations of the original museum and providing for more exhibit space, improved amenities, and a dedicated auditorium. The 1971 additions were executed in a minimalist style, devoid of ornament and clad in white concrete aggregate panels. The formerly quadrangular museum became T-shaped in plan at this point and was renamed “The New Orleans Museum of Art.” In 1993, the most recent set of additions were completed, executed in a restrained postmodern style, and resulting in the creation of two rectangular courtyards about the east-west axis of the museum.

The museum interior contains two significant spaces. The skylit, covered central courtyard, just inside the main entry, is original to the 1911 structure and is executed in a highly detailed Greek Neoclassical style modified by decorative flourishes inspired by subtropical flora. A postmodern style atrium three stories high and dating to 1993 spans the museum’s east-west axis and provides dramatic, centralized access to every programmatic component of the building.

The New Orleans Museum of Art today boasts a collection of almost 40,000 objects, with notable strengths in French and American art, photography, glass, and African and Japanese works. The preferred venue in the region for important touring exhibitions, NOMA in its early years hosted a retrospective on Pablo Picasso (1940) organized by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and welcomed, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase, a survey of five centuries of French painting (1953), populated exclusively by works on loan from the Louvre. The museum’s 1971 expansion enabled the hosting of still more elaborate exhibitions, including those displaying treasures from the tomb of King Tut (1977) and artifacts addressing the life and times of Alexander the Great (1982), with the former exhibition welcoming nearly one million visitors in the course of its short run. The completion of the 1993 expansion permitted additional notable exhibitions, including one on the paintings of Claude Monet (1995) and, in honor of New Orleans’ 300th birthday, an exhibition (2018) displaying together for the first time since the 18th century many of the works collected by the city’s namesake, Philippe II, Duc d’Orleans. The most recent physical enlargement of NOMA’s footprint occurred with the debut in 2003 and expansion in 2019 of the outdoor Besthoff Sculpture Garden, installed around several lagoons adjacent to the museum.

Hired in late 2019 to provide contingent fee-based historic preservation consulting and tax credit monetization services for a $7.1 million rehabilitation of the museum’s Stern Auditorium, east courtyard, and café, Crescent Growth Capital’s in-house historic preservation specialist prepared a six-element Historic Preservation Certification Application over an eighteen-month period. The project reconfigured the non-historic auditorium to increase the space’s flexibility and technological capacity, with three of its four walls serving as the new location for Enrique Alferez’ “Spirit of Communication” (1967), salvaged from its original installation within the escalator lobby of the now-demolished Times-Picayune building in New Orleans. The non-historic east courtyard (1993) was enclosed, though extensive glazing preserves its light-filled character. Part 3 approval was received on May 17, 2021, with credit monetization accomplished by Crescent in September. Tax credit sale proceeds of approximately $1 million were subsequently delivered to NOMA.

Biomedical Research Foundation – Center for Molecular Imaging and Therapy

June 24, 2021 by

The Biomedical Research Foundation of Northwest Louisiana (d/b/a BRF), a 501(c)(3) based in Shreveport, LA, was created in 1986 to serve as a cornerstone for a rebounding Shreveport economy. Shreveport had enjoyed a fairly robust expansion from the mid-1970’s to the early-80’s, driven in large part by a heavy dependence on the oil and gas industry. However, a sharp decline in the global price of oil in the mid-1980’s had a particularly devastating effect on Shreveport’s economy, forcing most of the city’s major employers to either close their doors or leave town.

In the wake of the oil glut, Shreveport’s Chamber of Commerce commissioned an economic study that focused on laying the foundation for a more diversified local economy. In 1986, the Biomedical Research Foundation was created to serve as one of the pillars of the new, multifaceted Shreveport economy. In 1994, BRF opened the $36M Virginia K. Shehee Biomedical Research Institute, the home of the state and region’s first Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Center. PET scans expedite the diagnosis and treatment for cancer patients, as well as advancing research on many other diseases. BRF also launched STEM education programs for local high school students to assist in educating future innovators and workers in the region.

In June. 2019, BRF engaged Crescent Growth Capital to pursue a New Markets Tax Credit financing for its $15M Center for Molecular Imaging and Therapy (CMIT), and in summer, 2021, the team closed on a $5M Louisiana State NMTC financing to purchase state-of-the-art PET and CT scanning equipment for the new CMIT facility.

The new CMIT center will serve as a platform to host advanced clinical trials and cutting-edge healthcare solutions, while providing research opportunities for scientists from around the country. CMIT is capable of producing and distributing radiopharmaceuticals for speedy detection of medical conditions, while expanding the molecular imaging program through its two main divisions:

The Radiopharmaceutical Division for expanded access to both existing and novel radio pharmaceuticals
The Imaging and Therapy Division for expanded access to diagnostic scans and novel therapies

CMIT has evolved to also provide access to unique diagnostic probes as advanced medical tools for the local population as well as researchers. For example, CMIT offers cancer patients image-guided treatment options, and state-of-the-art advanced medical care via targeted alpha therapy. Similarly, CMIT patients with neurodegenerative disorders have access to radiopharmaceuticals specific to their disease that can assist physicians in customizing therapy to the individual patients. Such options are currently available only at select academic centers across the nation.

The $14.8M CMIT facility is expected to increase total employment from 16 to 41 FTE’s, with the 25 new positions earning an average of $60,000 annually. CMIT serves a patient base that is comprised primarily of referrals from the former LSU hospital in Shreveport, one of Louisiana’s two main safety-net hospitals. As a result, 70% of CMIT patients rely on Medicare/Medicaid, and 15% are uninsured: since 1995, CMIT has conducted 46,000 PET scans, including 10,000 free scans to uninsured and indigent patients. Furthermore, CMIT has a financial hardship assistance program that provides for varying levels of payment assistance depending on the patient’s family size and need.

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