15cV Venture Lab + Social Finance Studio
Capital for Social Impact
Infrastructure for Alternative Economies

Fifteen Cents Ventures (15cV)

A venture lab and social finance studio building research, design, and investment infrastructure for collective liberation.

Get in touch View work + assets

What We’re Building

Fifteen Cents Ventures (15cV) is building community-centered capital systems that reimagine how resources flow into the Creative, Care, and Cooperative Economies.

We design and deploy tech-enabled investment pathways that expand access to capital for founders who have been historically undercapitalized - including BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, neurodivergent, and disabled entrepreneurs - while enabling community investors to participate in the upside of their success without reproducing extractive capital models.

We center models of shared prosperity, where capital circulates through, is stewarded by, and sustains the communities that create it.

How We Work

Fifteen Cents Ventures (15cV) operates as a four-part ecosystem designed to move ideas into assets, assets into investment, and investment into shared prosperity.

🧪 Research & Learning Collective

Economic Justice League (EJL)

The EJL collective grounds the 15cV ecosystem in practice, data, and movement accountability through participatory research, evaluation, and storytelling.

  • Analyze outcomes across investments and programs
  • Build data systems that connect capital to impact
  • Facilitate learning with founders and ecosystem partners
  • Translate insights into tools and frameworks
🌍 Venture Lab

Getting Assets Ready

We work with founders to prepare projects and enterprises for investment through design sprints, peer coaching, and technical assistance.

  • Position work as an investable asset
  • Build infrastructure to absorb capital
  • Design and test revenue-generating experiments
  • Access early, catalytic funding
  • Develop governance and decision-making structures
  • Strengthen organizational alignment and relational capacity
💸 Social Finance Studio

Structuring the Deals

Designs non-extractive capital instruments that protect founders, reward investors fairly, and circulate wealth through community networks.

  • Recoverable grants
  • Revenue share agreements
  • Community Asset Trust (CAT) notes
  • Community Investment Vehicles (CIVs)
  • Limited Asset Ownership Agreements (Product, Publishing, Land, & Social Impact Bonds)
🌐 Community Investment Marketplace

Matchmaking & Measurement

Connects community-rooted founders with values-aligned investors and tracks impact transparently as capital moves.

  • Expands access across three investor classes
  • Matches projects with aligned investors
  • Measures and shares social impact outcomes
  • Enables automated savings and investment networks that mirror real-world communities

Why This Work Matters

Our Realities (Grounded in Research)

  • Most community finance still relies on debt, with limited access to equity pathways (Opportunity Finance Network, 2025).
  • Small businesses (5–249 employees) create the majority of jobs in cities and up to 70% of jobs in distressed inner-city neighborhoods (JPMorgan Chase Institute & ICIC, 2019).
  • Traditional investment models continue to exclude many founders and households from ownership and wealth-building opportunities (Brookings Institution, 2020).
  • Traditional venture capital models are not designed for community-rooted ventures, alternative timelines, or collective impact outcomes (Mikell, 2019).

Our North Stars (Rooted in Practice)

  • Non-extractive capital structures — investment models that protect founders and align returns with long-term community benefit
  • Expanded ownership and participation — more people can invest in, co-own, and benefit from the assets and enterprises shaping their communities
  • Technology for access and accountability — tools that reduce friction, expand participation, and make capital flows and impact visible
  • Care-centered collaboration — relationships built on trust, reciprocity, and well-being, where how we work matters as much as what we build

Case Studies & Library

Selected work across research, design, capital, and ecosystem building—paired with a browsable library of projects, assets, organizations, and collaborators.

Case Study

Arts & Culture Capital Lab

Designed, implemented, and evaluated a two-year pilot supporting community wealth building projects led by Chicago artists.

Research Program Design Access to Capital
Offering

Economic Justice League (EJL)

Research and learning infrastructure connecting economic justice, evaluation, and movement-rooted capital systems.

Research Learning Systems Theory of Change
Emerging Framework

Resource Conjuring

Emerging practices and sprint models connecting narrative, data, and resourcing strategy for founders and ecosystems.

Frameworks Learning Systems Resource Mobilization
Browse the library
Explore assets, projects, organizations, and collaborators through the tabs below.
What you’ll find
Decks, frameworks, reports, videos, live sessions, and ecosystem relationships connected to 15cV work.

A living library of 15cV work, collaborators, and public-facing assets.