When a treasury team evaluates a new place to put operating cash, yield is only part of the equation. A more fundamental question comes first: Where are the funds actually held, and how are they managed at each step?
Impact Cash® is a cash management solution that places institutional deposits with federally insured community financial institutions. Organizations can achieve strong returns and flexible liquidity while gaining greater diversification and directing deposits toward strategic geographic, community, and corporate priorities.
But the value of Impact Cash is not simply access to a network of institutions. It is the infrastructure behind that network.
Where your deposits are held
Impact Cash deposits are placed with a vetted network of community banks and credit unions that have passed CNote’s review process.
Participating institutions hold a Community Development Financial Institution certification, Minority Depository Institution designation, Low Income Designation, or have a comparable, verified record of serving communities that have historically had limited access to capital. Learn more about what those designations mean.
CNote distributes deposits across the network, allowing organizations to receive up to $100 million in aggregate FDIC and NCUA insurance coverage without establishing and managing relationships with dozens of individual financial institutions.
CNote itself never holds client Impact Cash funds. Impact Cash funds flow through Northern Trust before being deployed to selected community banks and credit unions in the network. CNote determines where deposits are placed and monitors them after placement, while Northern Trust supports the custody and movement of funds through the structure.
One relationship. A distributed network.
Recreating this structure independently would require a treasury team to identify suitable institutions, conduct due diligence on each one, complete multiple onboarding processes, open and maintain separate accounts, track insurance limits, monitor each institution, and consolidate reporting.
Impact Cash centralizes that work.
Clients complete one coordinated onboarding process, including only one KYC/AML review, and receive a consolidated view of deposits across the network. CNote manages the underlying relationships while treasury teams work through one portal and one service team.
The result is the benefits of a distributed network without having to manage it institution by institution.
Due diligence that continues after the deposit
Eligibility is not a one-time checkbox.
Before an institution can receive Impact Cash deposits, CNote reviews its financial condition, regulatory standing, reputation, and community impact. Community credentials alone are not enough. An institution must also meet CNote’s financial and risk requirements. See how CNote’s due diligence framework works.
That oversight continues after an institution joins the network. Financial health and regulatory call reports are monitored on an ongoing basis, alongside legal, regulatory, and reputational monitoring through CNote’s proprietary AI-powered Partnership Intelligence Platform.
Portfolio controls also address risks related to market conditions, interest rate changes, and concentration in any single institution, sector, or geography.
For treasury teams, that means the network comes with ongoing oversight that would otherwise have to be performed institution by institution.
CNote’s role: matching, monitoring, and reporting
CNote is the layer treasury teams interact with day to day.
It coordinates onboarding, allocates deposits across the network, monitors participating institutions, handles withdrawal requests, and provides access to balances, transactions, statements, and impact reporting through a self-service portal. No treasury management system or accounting integration is required, and clients also have access to a dedicated account management team.
Behind that experience is the matching process itself. CNote determines which institutions receive a client’s deposits based on financial standing, available capacity, diversification needs, and the client’s stated impact priorities.
For organizations that want deposits directed toward a particular geography, community, or cause, those preferences can also inform allocation. See how impact preferences are matched with eligible institutions.
CNote then tracks where deposits are held and responds as circumstances change, centralizing work that a treasury team would otherwise need to perform across multiple direct banking relationships.
A track record you can measure
Since inception, CNote has deployed more than $1 billion to support mission-driven community financial institutions nationwide.
According to CNote’s 2025 Annual Impact Report, institutions participating in the Impact Cash program originated more than 961,449 loans totaling $30.6 billion, including:
- $8.5 billion in home lending and affordable housing
- $3.25 billion in lending to rural communities
- $2.7 billion in small business loans under $1 million
- $741 million in green financing initiatives
- $247 million in healthcare lending
These are not projections. They represent lending activity conducted by institutions participating in the Impact Cash network.
What this means for your cash policy
Ultimately, the structure has to fit the way your organization is permitted to manage cash.
Impact Cash deposits are bank and credit union deposits, not securities or investment fund shares. For treasury teams, the relevant considerations include whether the underlying deposits, participating institutions, concentration limits, liquidity terms, and account structure align with existing cash policy.
Insurance coverage is one example. Standard federal deposit insurance generally covers up to $250,000 per depositor, per insured institution, per ownership category. By distributing deposits across multiple institutions, Impact Cash can provide up to $100 million in aggregate FDIC and NCUA insurance coverage, with the underlying placements and coverage available for verification.
The same principle applies to the broader structure: the institutions holding the deposits, the diligence behind their inclusion in the network, the monitoring that continues after placement, and the resulting lending activity can all be examined directly.
CNote manages the infrastructure so the client experience stays simple: one relationship, one portal, and one team connecting treasury teams to a distributed network they do not have to manage themselves.
*Impact Cash® deposits are eligible for FDIC or NCUA insurance, subject to applicable coverage limits and the terms of the Impact Cash agreements. CNote Group, Inc. is not a bank, credit union, or other depository institution, investment adviser, or broker-dealer and does not provide legal, financial, accounting, or tax advice. Impact Cash deposits are not securities or investment products. Interest rates are set by participating financial institutions.
