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Carl Sussman is
the principal of Sussman Associates, a Boston-based management and community development
consulting practice. With 30 years of non-profit management, community development and
development finance experience,  Sussman has an extensive track
record working with philanthropic institutions, government agencies, and non-profit
organizations on a variety of national, state and local initiatives dealing with
management, philanthropy, affordable housing, economic development, community planning,
family support, early-childhood education, among other substantive fields.An MIT-trained development planner, Sussman was the founding executive
director of the Massachusetts Community Economic Development Assistance Corporation
(CEDAC), a quasi-public technical assistance intermediary involved in housing and economic
development issues. During his 15-year tenure at CEDAC the agency pioneered the field of
predevelopment lending with a $9 million loan fund. It provided technical assistance to
more than 100 community development corporations, tenant organizations, and other
nonprofits, enabling them to develop 6,500 units of affordable housing worth $500 million.
CEDAC also managed a $30 million subordinated loan program to support innovative housing
-- principally service-enriched housing, shelters, single room occupancy housing, and
limited-equity cooperatives. Sussman was an appointee to the Commonwealth’s Housing
Policy Commission (1992), and served on the board of the Metropolitan Boston Housing
Partnership. He has consulted to many local and national housing organizations.
His work with community development corporations (CDCs)
dates back to the late 1960s, when he worked for the Center for Community Economic
Development, which provided technical assistance to the federally funded Special Impact
CDCs. He played a leading role in structuring Massachusetts' community economic
development programs as a long-term member of the Wednesday Morning Breakfast Group and as
a policy advocate for the state's Social and Economic Opportunity Council. As a member of
the United Way of Massachusetts Bay's Housing Advisory Committee, he helped shape United
Way's entry into the affordable housing and community economic development arenas, first
in Massachusetts and then nationally. In that capacity he was a principal designer of the
Neighborhood Development Support Collaborative -- a widely replicated capacity-building
program model. He has written and lectured extensively on issues related to
community-based development of distressed areas.
 Over the
past ten years Sussman has become more involved in community-based early-childhood
development and family support programs. He helped design and, for a number of years,
managed the Child Care Capital Investment Fund, a technical assistance and loan fund
supporting child care centers and Head Start programs. He is a founding member of the
National Children’s Facilities Network, a joint effort of development lenders from
around the country to influence policies affecting the quality of facilities housing early
childhood programs. He is the lead national consultant to the Local Initiative Support
Corporation’s National Child Care Initiative, and, for Trinity College, he is
planning a Center for Families in conjunction with an ambitious $175 million
revitalization plan for Hartford’s Frog Hollow neighborhood. Sussman played a key
role in designing Connecticut’s recently enacted bond-financing program for early
childhood programs. He has written about early-childhood facilities development and
finance for Progressive Architecture and Young Children.
Sussman has also provided
a range of services to foundations and other philanthropic institutions. For the Phillips
Foundation and The Boston Foundation he evaluated the Catalogue for Philanthropy,
an innovative direct-mail fundraising project. Along with Mount Auburn Associates, he
conducted an assessment of the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving’s economic
development grant-making. Sussman advised United Way of Massachusetts Bay concerning its
relationship with a financially distressed affiliate. He also assisted two collaboratives
of foundation and corporate funders to merge and strategic ally restructure programs they
had sponsored and incubated.
 Carl Sussman For the past five
years, Sussman has been a management consultant. Before launching his own consulting
practice in January, 1995, he was a principal at Technical Development Corporation, where
his clients included the Corporation for Enterprise Development, the U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development, the Ford Foundation, and the Fannie Mae Foundation, among
others. Through Sussman Associates, Sussman has been able to focus his consulting work in
two areas: nonprofit management consulting, especially strategic planning exercises, and
community development consulting.
Sussman is the author of a book published by MIT Press, Planning
the Fourth Migration, about the history of a regional planning movement during the
1920s and '30s. The book grew out of a ten-year correspondence and friendship with his
mentor, Lewis Mumford. |
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