Opportunity Zones National Insights

In the past six months, we have gained deep insights into what people in nationwide OZs say, not what investors think they want. Specifically, we sent two emails to 27 million people who live in OZs in December 2018 with a survey that asked questions such as, “What is the greatest strength of your neighborhood/local region?” and “What economic development opportunity should your elected officials prioritize?” A remarkable four out of five of those who opened the first email also opened the second (despite it being sent over a holiday break).

These surveys and the “digital conversation” with residents that followed accomplished two vital outcomes. They created useful and actionable insights into what OZ communities value and need, and they gave those communities a greater sense of agency and connection as we continued to engage and share with them throughout this process. Eleven months after our first survey—when the Department of Commerce sought public comment on new rules governing Opportunity Zones—the residents we’d been engaging understood OZ well enough and felt enough agency in the process that they overwhelmed the comment request with over 67,000 comments encouraging Commerce to continue improving OZ to ensure investors measured impact and that more resources were dedicated to measuring local community’s strengths and needs.

As a result of this work, we have begun to develop a robust resource at every level  — not only for investors and fund managers, but also for economic development organizations, city officials, and other local leaders. Because our data is based on values, we understand the importance of a value-oriented investment approach. We want the original spirit of the OZ law to prevail, transforming these communities for the better, so we are being selective about who we work with during the early days of OZ market development. We want investors who care about community priorities and intentionally pursue impact to outperform those who do not.

For less than 1/1000th of the cost of traditional engagement programs, we have developed an approach where leaders can directly communicate with an overwhelming majority of the population in OZ census tracts in the moments when residents are most interested in engaging, map business interests and public space usage in these zones, and better understand community priorities through direct survey response and analysis of resident behavior in the digital and physical space.