Next Step Network

Next Step's mission is to put sustainable homeownership within everyone's reach while transforming the manufactured housing industry through consumer education, energy efficiency, and affordability. Our social enterprise model comprises a parent nonprofit (Next Step Network), dedicated to education, training, and advocacy, and a subsidiary (Next Step homes) that facilitates the purchase and sale of homes from manufacturers and earns revenue from manufacturers, developers, etc. Next Step is a collaboration between social enterprise and private business that creates more value for the homebuyer than one actor alone. For more than a decade, Next Step has trained nonprofit organizations and mission-driven entities on the manufactured housing done right model, which allows them to reduce their construction costs, increase their production efficiencies, and increase their homes' long-term appreciation. They also support low-income homebuyers with education and access to quality mortgage loans. The Next Step homes' brand promises the industry's highest quality and energy-efficiency standard available today. We solve these three problems for our homebuyers: 1) increase access to a lower-cost home for homeowners locked out of the market, 2) lower the overall operating cost of homeownership through energy star+ efficiencies, 3) increase equity and resale value, providing a tool to break intergenerational cycles of poverty. In 2021, Next Step completed participation in the dela programme, a global accelerator to offer a space for scaling socially driven initiatives co- created by ashoka and ikea social entrepreneurship. The systems change principles taught as a part of this engagement informed our new five-year strategic plan to scale our impact in communities nationwide. Additionally, Next Step joined the underserved mortgage markets coalition - a coalition of housing advocacy organizations dedicated to better serving traditionally underserved housing markets, including manufactured housing.