262 F s PRO A Community Investment and the Role of Non-profit Organizations: Present Conditions in the US, the UK, and Japan Takashi Koseki Abstract 1. The issue of SRI (Socially Responsible Investment) has been getting popular in Japan recently. However, community investment, which is an element of SRI, has rarely been mentioned in the SRI discussions so far. 2. Community investment is for enterprises, nonprofit-organizations and residents in deprived communities in order to regenerate local economy and to improve quality of life. So, community investment is different from grants or donations. 3. In the US and the UK, community investment has been greatly developed since the 1990s, partly by governmental support for community investment such as fund or tax relief. 4. In Japan, there aren't many cases of supplying resources to poor areas. However, new initiatives have been born recently which invest in civil enterprises such as fair-trade enterprises, natural energy and charities. They are co-operative financial institutions, and civil financial organizations. 5. But in Japan, the government hasn't made policies and laws to promote community investment, and local co-operative banks are now under severe competition. In 2003, FSA recognized local banks' proper role in communities, and announced new policy of "relationship -banking". 6. Community investment has a number of important roles, that it mitigates economic discrepancy, requests endogenous local development, and can bring in private resources through SRI. In particular, non-profit organizations and co-operative financial institutions have an important position in community investment. 7. But community investors must take on high risk. Capacity-building of community development financial institutions (CDFIs) and supportive governmental policies are also needed in order to degrade the risk of community investing.