Category: Community Banking
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Watch Me Grow Daycare: Expanding Opportunity for Children, Families, and Community Through Access to Capital
For more than a decade, Hazel Gardner has dedicated her life to helping children learn, grow, and thrive. A longtime educator with the Mobile County Public School System, Hazel understood firsthand the critical role that early childhood education plays in shaping a child’s future. She also recognized the challenges working families face in finding safe,…
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Where Your Deposits Are Held: The Infrastructure Behind Impact Cash®
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…
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First Eagle Bank: Advancing Community-Led Housing Solutions in Chicago
Across the country, CDFI banks and mission-driven financial institutions are helping address one of the most persistent challenges facing U.S. communities: the shortage of affordable housing. In Chicago, First Eagle Bank offers a compelling example of what this work looks like in practice, and what it takes to do it well. First Eagle Bank, a…
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Protecting Family Property Is Housing Justice: What Heirs’ Property Teaches Impact Investors
By Tamra Thetford, VP of Impact Evaluation For many families, a home is more than a place to live. It is the foundation for stability, a source of family memory, and one of the few assets that can be passed from one generation to the next. But for families with heirs’ property, that foundation can…
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Inside a Place-Based Strategy: Lessons from Southern Virginia
Place-based investing is gaining renewed attention among impact investors. For some, it reflects a shift toward geography as a way to target impact. For others, it signals a deeper recognition that capital alone is not enough to drive durable outcomes. What is emerging is a more grounded approach to investing, one that starts not with…
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Scaling Clean Energy Access in Low and Moderate Income Communities
Locus Bank’s partnership with Redball Energy illustrates how well-structured credit can unlock scalable clean energy deployment while expanding access to underserved markets. Redball Energy, headquartered in Washington, DC and founded in 2021, provides financing solutions for residential and commercial solar projects that often fall outside traditional underwriting models. By partnering with developers and installers, the…
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Why Down Payment Assistance Can Change the Homeownership Equation
For many families, the hardest part of buying a home is not the monthly mortgage payment. It is getting through the front door. Down payment assistance is designed to address that barrier. These programs help qualified buyers cover upfront costs such as the down payment, closing costs, or both. Assistance may come in the form…
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How CNote Uses Impact Data to Match Deposits with Community Impact
Every participating bank and credit union in CNote’s network provides core impact data that helps us understand the scale and reach of their lending. At a minimum, participating institutions report the total number and dollar amount of loans they originated along with the percent originated into key under-resourced communities. That baseline information is important. It…
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Business Consortium Fund: Financing the Businesses That Power America’s Supply Chains
For nearly four decades, Business Consortium Fund (BCF), has operated in a part of the small business ecosystem that many lenders overlook but that is critical to how the U.S. economy actually functions: the supply chains of large corporations and government agencies. Founded in 1987, BCF was built to expand access to capital for small…
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Shining a New Path: How Rural North Carolina Is Harnessing Solar Power With Community Capital
Shining a New Path: How Rural North Carolina Is Harnessing Solar Power With Community Capital In Scotland County, in the heart of rural North Carolina, the challenge of building a cleaner and more resilient energy future has been quietly mounting for years. Like many rural communities across the Southeast, the county has faced limited access…