Category: Impact Investing
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Advancing Our Impact: How CNote Has Deepened Our Understanding of Investor Contribution
When CNote first engaged with Impact Frontiers’ Investor Contribution Pilot program in 2025, we were exploring a crucial but often overlooked aspect of impact investing: How do we know our investments create change that wouldn’t have happened otherwise? Today, I’m excited to share how that initial exploration has evolved into a comprehensive framework that now
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Stability in the Shift: Why Community Banking can be the Anchor for Corporate Treasury
In a financial landscape where headlines often highlight market volatility, corporate treasurers are increasingly focused on the core fundamentals of capital preservation and security. While size is often equated with safety, stability is more often a product of discipline, transparency, and local integration. At CNote, we work with a vetted network of community-driven financial institutions,
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Beyond the Balance Sheet: How Bespoke Group Redefines Impact for its Clients
Research from McKinsey & Company points to historic wealth shifts underway with important implications for impact investors and the underserved communities they support. By 2030, U.S. women are expected to control much of the $30 trillion in Baby Boomer financial assets, recasting who makes wealth decisions and how those decisions are made. As this wealth
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A Safer Cash Play: How Community Banks Diversify, Secure & Protect Corporate Cash
When markets turn volatile, we’ve seen a similar cash management playbook: Pull back.Consolidate cash.Lean harder on the biggest banks. It feels like the responsible thing to do. Big logos, long histories, familiar names, all of it signals “safe” when the headlines are noisy. At the same time, anything labelled impact often gets mentally filed under
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From Idle Cash to Local Impact: Stories of Communities Strengthened Through Impact Driven Deposits
When treasury teams talk about cash, the focus is usually clear:safety, liquidity, yield. But there’s another, quieter story playing out in the background. Across the U.S., community banks and credit unions are using deposits to support financing affordable housing, small business growth, and neighborhood revitalization often in places traditional finance overlooks. Community-driven deposit administration platforms,
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From Community Investment to Disaster Resilience: David Parker’s Journey of Entrepreneurship and Impact
Growing Up in Summerville: The Roots of Innovation David Parker’s journey from small-town Summerville to running a thriving business is rooted in his hard work, ingenuity, and the unwavering support of his community. Growing up, he wasn’t just a curious child—he was a natural problem-solver. Raised on a family farm, David learned early that when
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Expanding Access to Pediatric Care: How Samuel Rodgers Health Center and Central Bank of Kansas City Are Building a Healthier Future
In Kansas City’s most low-income neighborhoods, families face growing barriers to accessing consistent, high-quality healthcare—especially for children covered by Medicaid. For decades, Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center (Sam Rodgers) has been a cornerstone of care for the community, offering comprehensive health services to patients regardless of income, insurance status, or background. In 2024 alone, the
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Social Determinants of Health and Community Finance
By Tamra Thetford The social determinants of health (SDOH) are the non-medical factors that influence health outcomes. They include the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age, and they shape overall well-being just as much—if not more—than medical care. Community Financial Institutions address the social determinants of health by investing in
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How Genesis Helped Shalom House Transform a Historic Property into Supportive Housing for People with Substance Use Disorder
In 2018, the closure of Serenity House, a long-running sober living facility in Portland, left a critical gap in housing and treatment resources for local individuals experiencing homelessness and substance use disorder. The historic property at 30 Mellen Street had been a beacon of hope, but, empty, it highlighted Portland’s pressing need for supportive housing
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Bridging Impact and Investment: Insights from 2024 Investor Engagement and Annual Reporting
Understanding what resonates with investors is essential to directing more mission-aligned capital to mission-driven depository institutions (DIs) making a difference in underserved communities. To deepen this understanding, CNote recently analyzed investor engagement across multiple channels to identify the impact themes that consistently drive interest and investment. There is a key opportunity to build on this