Why spotlight this nonprofit?

In response to my recent Cardus essay on Value, Values and Valuation, one reader challenged one of my examples:

Perhaps Charlottesville Investment Collaborative is not the example you are looking for. I find the website indicates the cooperative concentrates on training, and is willing to lend money.  How effective the cooperative actually is will depend on the successes of the values created by the participants. Nothing on the website is dedicated to explaining and expounding the new found values, [but rather to] providing 'free advertising' for the participants.

Why did I choose CIC as an example if it has these apparent shortcomings?

1. Value Creation: CIC is creating value by doing something that no-one else in our community is doing by enabling the marginalized to start new businesses. Training and lending IS the value provided. The participants have no other access to such opportunity or resources, and therefore could not otherwise start new enterprises.
2. Participant Success: The reader is right that success hinges on the entrepreneurs/participants' value creation and values. The proof will be in their flourishing.
3. Free advertising? Providing 'free advertising' for participants is also value creation. The poor - by definition - don't have the social networks we do. Getting the word out about the value that they're creating is mission critical for their success and the flourishing of our city.
4. What values? The reader is also right that "nothing on the website is dedicated to explaining and expounding the new found values." CIC is not a Christian organization. I have the privilege of collaborating with my non-Christian neighbors who, by common grace, are doing good and creating value for their neighbors. Into that good work I speak these words. Indeed, I think that is precisely the value that we as Christians need to bring to the table - the embodied and spoken values of the Kingdom. That, I truly hope, is public theology for the common good.