Community development
ILI brings decades of experience in affordable housing, architecture, planning, and locally driven development to Atlanta work that helps neighborhoods realize the potential their residents already know is there.
Metro Atlanta
Community development in Atlanta
ILI works from an Atlanta office alongside Metro Atlanta organizations — funding story capture, running technology-transfer studios, and bringing decades of housing, planning, and locally driven development experience to the places that need it.
Legal status501(c)(3) tax-exempt corporation
Pilot funderCommunity Foundation for Greater Atlanta
National recognitionNASA 2024 Catalyst Prize winner
Local presenceAtlanta office, GA 30309
Our approach
How ILI works in Atlanta
Story capture with Mi Rialiti
During the 2025–2026 pilot, Mi Rialiti business licenses and story-capture technical assistance are granted to 15–20 Metro Atlanta community-based organizations, so residents' own accounts can shape the decisions that affect them.
Technology transfer studios
Ideation studios combine entrepreneurial training, community-based projects, and ideation to prepare publicly funded technology for market — with special emphasis on entrepreneurs traditionally underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
All of this sits inside ILI's Innovation Fund, a flexible funding model built around community-led ideas and the episodic needs of the organizations that serve them.
Pilot period · 2025–2026
Mi Rialiti in Metro Atlanta
Mi Rialiti B2B licenses and story-capture technical assistance are being granted to 15–20 Metro Atlanta community-based organizations. The pilot is made possible by a grant from the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta to ILI. Organizations outside Metro Atlanta can apply and be waitlisted, or license the platform independently.
September 2023
The Ideation Studio came to Atlanta
ILI ran the NASA Tech Transfer Ideation Studios in Atlanta and New Orleans in September 2023, opening a path from publicly funded research to local enterprise. That work earned ILI a NASA 2024 Catalyst Prize.
Visit
Atlanta office
ILI also works from New Orleans and Toronto. Write, call, or stop by — we answer interest from residents, organizations, and funders alike.
Institute for Local Innovations, Inc.
1164 14th Place NE
Atlanta, GA 30309-3505