article thumbnail

Community Finance Alliance Launches Racial Equity Scorecard

NonProfit Quarterly

Community development financial institutions (CDFIs) have a mission to counter redlining and support lending in low-income and BIPOC communities. They should be more creative in how they finance projects.” Two years ago, the Washington Post analyzed some $49.5 Yet even among CDFIs, the track record is highly imperfect.

Finance 135
article thumbnail

Community Ownership of Real Estate: A Los Angeles Story

NonProfit Quarterly

At a recent professional dinner, I struck up a fascinating conversation with a woman who has spent her legal career working in civil rights, housing, and community development. I once heard a CDFI leader remark that when the borrowers we need in the community don’t exist, we as CDFIs need to go out there and create them.

Finance 107
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Trending Sources

article thumbnail

Making Policy Work for Rural Communities: The Value of Community Voice

NonProfit Quarterly

Coproduced by Partners for Rural Transformation, a coalition of six regional community development financial institutions, and NPQ , authors highlight efforts to address multi-generational poverty in Appalachia, the rural West, Indian Country, South Texas, and the Mississippi Delta. Again, the pandemic provides an illustrative example.

Values 127
article thumbnail

How to Close the Racial Homeownership Gap

NonProfit Quarterly

One driver of this ongoing inequality is the current federal system of financing, which largely depends on two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs)— Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A Community Finance Solution While barriers to homeownership persist for households of color, these barriers are possible to overcome.

Finance 129
article thumbnail

Making Food Systems Work for People of Color: Six Action Steps

NonProfit Quarterly

And in so doing we are challenging the community development field to do better—by creating new tools to support truly equitable food-oriented development. Many large community development financial institutions , credit unions, and foundations present themselves as community-based food financing leaders.

Food 118
article thumbnail

Ending Persistent Poverty in Rural America: The Role of CDFIs

NonProfit Quarterly

Coproduced by Partners for Rural Transformation, a coalition of six regional community development financial institutions, and NPQ , the authors highlight efforts to address multigenerational poverty in Appalachia, the rural West, Indian Country, South Texas, and the Mississippi Delta.

Poverty 129
article thumbnail

Beyond Pledges: Building More Inclusive Capital Ecosystems

NonProfit Quarterly

Even as the slow wheels of policy change grind away to address discrimination in the banking system through modernizing the Community Reinvestment Act (along with other initiatives ), allocators of philanthropic and impact investment capital can use tools they have at their disposal right now to change the field.

Finance 77