Investment Readiness Framework

The Southwestern Pennsylvania Municipal Project Hub connects municipalities, nonprofits, and schools to the technical assistance they need to achieve investment-ready community and economic development projects. But what does investment readiness actually mean?

For the Hub, investment readiness refers to the ability of project teams to identify, design, and implement projects that can attract funding and achieve desired outcomes. To develop investment-ready projects, teams must be able to exercise a wide variety of functions and skills. For example, this can include articulating common goals, adapting best practices from other communities or groups, advocating for locally-significant funding streams, collaborating effectively with partners, and more. Each project and local context may have different strengths and weaknesses regarding investment readiness, and different funding and financing opportunities typically use a variety of readiness metrics. This can make it difficult for project teams to know where to begin.

To help project teams overcome this challenge, the Hub has created a simple framework that breaks the idea of “investment readiness” into fifteen criteria sorted into five categories. This can be used to assess community and economic development projects focused on any topic and are not specific to any single funding or financing source. The readiness framework is outlined in more detail below and is available to download as an easy multiple-choice assessment tool.

1. Purpose

Highly "ready" projects address clear needs and are backed by data, plans, and community input.

Criterion 1: The project addresses a clear need for a specific area or group.
Criterion 2: The project is informed by data and plans.
Criterion 3: The project is informed by robust and inclusive community engagement.

2. Impact

Highly "ready" projects use best practices to create value for all community members.

Criterion 4: The project’s proposed outcomes promote a resilient, healthy, and thriving community for all.
Criterion 5: The project’s proposed activities are low-risk and effective.
Criterion 6: The project benefits priority communities (i.e., communities with characteristics prioritized for aid by the project team or funding agency. This can include communities with active main streets, communities with high levels of pollution, communities with a history of fiscal hardship, etc.)

3. Feasibility

Highly "ready" projects proactively address potential technical barriers.

Criterion 7: The project site is prepared.
Criterion 8: The project team has prepared a detailed and persuasive project summary that can be shared with funders, partners, or others as needed.
Criterion 9: The project complies with or can change policies and permits as needed.

4. Governance

Highly "ready" project teams are complete, inclusive, and collaborative.

Criterion 10: The project team has the members it needs for success.
Criterion 11: The project team collaborates effectively.
Criterion 12: The project has a partnership(s) that includes another municipality or county.

5. Funding

Highly "ready" project teams can access and manage diverse forms of funding and financing to support their work.

Criterion 13: The project team is aware of funding and financing opportunities.
Criterion 14: The project team has assembled a capital stack.
Criterion 15: The project team can manage project costs and funds.

Why Assess Investment Readiness?

All project teams who work with the Hub use our readiness assessment to identify their project’s strengths and access no-cost technical assistance to address their needs. There are many benefits to assessing your project’s readiness for investment:

For your team: Assessing your project’s readiness allows you to identify and highlight your project’s strengths and strategically address its weaknesses. When you partner with the Hub, the readiness assessment will help you access no-cost targeted assistance that allows you to build a more investment-ready project. Ultimately, your team can access more investment, implement more projects, and achieve more of your vision when your projects excel in these criteria.
For your community: By assessing investment readiness on a project-by-project basis, change-makers can gain insight into broader opportunities to strengthen their community’s networks and practices in ways that support more robust, impactful, and investable project pipelines. Leveraging lessons learned and innovative solutions from one project to another can also build your team’s momentum and increase your impact.
For the Hub and region: Our readiness assessment process helps the Hub learn about best practices and needs across the region and develop tools, resources, and programs that strategically address these. We aim to provide each project team with the most impactful forms of assistance while also highlighting success stories and uncovering common challenges across the region