Fortuity Calling

New Markets Tax Credit Financing Brings Social Enterprise Call Center to
Franklinton

Fortuity Calling, LLC is a locally owned and operated call center that provides
domestic inbound, overflow, and back-office support for corporate clients. As a
social enterprise, Fortuity’s mission is to attack the barriers that keep people
in poverty by providing employees with a defined career path, permanent
and portable career advancing skills, and other high-need services at the
employment site.

New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) financing enabled Fortuity to acquire
and renovate a 172,000 square foot former medical building on the Mount
Carmel West Campus in Columbus. Finance Fund provided $7,500,000 of
federal NMTC allocation and $2,564,102 of state NMTC allocation; and Capital
One, the tax credit investor, provided an additional $1,000,000 of federal NMTC
allocation to the project.

Designed as a “social-economic ecosystem,” the project’s ground level will
be occupied by non-profit organizations that provide Fortuity’s employees
and community residents with tools and services designed to increase job
readiness and retention, lifetime earning potential, and overall standard of
living.

Columbus Works, Inc. will provide pre-employment screening, job readiness training, job and life skills coaching, mental health treatment referrals, and
ongoing job retention support. Columbus Early Learning Centers will provide
subsidized early learning and childcare solutions for 80-100 children of lowincome
workers. To address one of the most significant job-retention obstacles
among low-income working parents, Sick Child Care Centers will provide
accessible sick child workday care services. Fortuity will partner with the
Mid-Ohio Food Collective to offer accessible, affordable healthy and fresh foods
for employees and other low-income residents of the neighborhood, which
qualifies as a USDA Food Desert.

“Our goal is to create a profitable, economically-sustainable
business platform that will offer low-income people an opportunity
to participate in the area’s revitalization and the potential to achieve
economic self-sufficiency and some measure of prosperity. Without NMTC
investment and Finance Fund’s vision and commitment, we couldn’t have
closed the considerable up-front financing gaps and this project simply
wouldn’t have come to fruition.”
– Fred Brothers, Co-Founder and CEO at Fortuity Calling

With the closing of Mount Carmel West’s inpatient Hospital, which will result
in the loss of 1,500 jobs in Franklinton, this project comes at a critical time
and perfectly aligns with the broader redevelopment goals of community
activists, city and state officials, and Mount Carmel Health System. The call
center business will create over 200 jobs for residents of the Franklinton
neighborhood, which is an economically distressed, underserved community
characterized by a poverty rate of 55%, a median family income equal to 29%
and an unemployment rate of 25%.

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