Our experience raising money to buy the New Communities land made us realize that in order for our work promoting community land trusts to succeed we needed available funds to purchase land when local groups were ready to move. We decided to organize a revolving loan fund called the Community Investment Fund. Applying our ideas on socially responsible investing, we primarily targeted churches, encouraging them to "put your money where your hearts are." Although this fund was not limited to purchasing land for CLTs, that was its primary purpose. We established it in the mid-1970s as a program of the Institute for Community Economics. With a current investment base of around $13,000,000 dollars, it has helped many CLTs get started.

Now we were concentrating our work in the New England region, where we could easily meet with local groups to help them organize and to provide technical support. Based on our experience in the South we developed a handbook that includes the details on how to establish a community land trust: how to set up a nonprofit corporation and its by-laws, how to write a lease, and how to arrange alternative financing. The lease is the key legal instrument in the CLT. In order to provide the greatest possible security to the lessee, the lease guarantees possession of the land to the individual or family for ninety-nine years, with automatic renewal and inheritance—unless, of course, a violation of the lease takes place. Perhaps the most important requirement is that the land be used for farming or housing, as specified in the lease itself and the attached land-use plan. If a lessee fails to use the land, leaving it idle, or tries to rent it, this is a violation of the lease.

The land trust movement has been well received across the country. Now there are over fifty CLTs in the United States. Both the Schumacher Society (see page ) and the Institute for Community Economics (ICE) promote and provide technical assistance to fledgling CLTs around the country. ICE has focused more on urban CLTs and the Schumacher Society on rural ones.