Local alt.Consulting merges to form bigger, broader rural outreach nonprofit

Local nonprofit alt.Consulting is merging with Community Resource Group to form a new entity focused on small businesses and entrepreneurs in the South and Mid-South regions.

The new organization – Communities Unlimited – will maintain alt.Consulting’s Memphis office, as well as existing offices in Jonesboro and Pine Bluff, Ark.

Founded in 1998, alt. Consulting has focused on training, consulting and lending for small businesses in the Mississippi Delta. It has assisted more than 3,800 small businesses with customized entrepreneurship strategies.

CRG, which is based in Fayetteville, Ark., is a rural development corporation created in 1975. It provides lending, training and on-site technical assistance for public water and wastewater systems in small communities.

The newly formed organization will continue the work of both CRG and alt. Consulting. Ines Polonius, former executive director of alt. Consulting and new CEO of Communities Unlimited, said that combining the skills of the two organizations – infrastructure expertise from CSG and business development from alt. Consulting – will allow the new group to work more deeply with communities and expand its reach.

It also will collaborate with other partners in sectors crucial for sustainable communities, including education and health care.
“Safe drinking water and local commerce are two fundamental building blocks of economic development, but alone they cannot lift a regional economy,” Polonius said. 

Both groups are certified as Community Development Finance Institutions by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and provide credit and financial services to under-served markets and populations.

Communities Unlimited will represent an expansion for alt.Consulting, which had previously only served the Mid-South area. The new organization will touch CRG’s entire seven-state region: Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama. Corporate offices will be housed in Fayetteville.

The group’s service area includes 60 percent of the nation’s persistently poor counties. Its mission is to move rural and under-resourced communities from poverty to sustainable prosperity.

 “Communities Unlimited emerges from two organizations with a shared history of taking risks for social gain and crafting innovative responses to seemingly intractable problems,” said Chris Page, senior vice president of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors in New York and chairman of the Communities Unlimited board of directors.

“Our goal is to create more opportunities for more individuals to decide their future, build their own path to prosperity and to create economies that will sustain them and generations to come.”

Visit the new organizations website for more information.

By Jane A. Donahoe