Introducing CDFIs as a Way to Invest in Economic Inclusion

all right hello everyone my name is Micah Evan see I'm the director of growth and partnerships here at c-note really excited to have you all with us today for this joint webinar with ace access to capital for entrepreneurs of outstanding CDFI and c-note the financial platform that makes it easy for investors of any size to support CDF eyes and Financial Inclusion across America I'm only gonna be talking briefly I just want to introduce myself introduce the webinar and then give you all a few quick tips about how you can interact with us today throughout the process you'll notice there's a there's a polls tab so occasionally I'll probably ask you all questions like how familiar are with CDF eyes and things like that to get a better understanding of our audience and to engage you all a little bit as we're presenting and then please feel free if any of you have the way you can go to the questions tab on the right here in this webinar and ask us a questions and we've reserved quite a bit of time at the end for Q&A and we want this to be interactive and we want to answer your question so so please feel free to ask questions and we'll do our best to get to them at the end and if you see someone that asked a question that you really like or you want to see an answer to I believe you'll have the ability to vote that question and get that question answered so why don't we kick this off I'd like to introduce the two presenters today so first we have Martina Edwards from Ace and she's around two decades of experience in business and professional nonprofit leader and Martina is a amazing presenter really excited to hear from her today and she's also one of the first female stockbrokers so really interesting story behind her and she's kind of personified this building a more inclusive economy and then following her will be Katherine Berman the CEO and co-founder or my work with as well she's got an extensive experience in venture capital and she was a former managing director at Charles Schwab and she can really take you all through her vision for impact and why we've partnered with CDF eyes to do do the great work that they're doing and support that so with that said I invite you all to ask questions and interact with us I'm gonna hand it over to Martina once she gets her slides ready to go and we'll take it from there all right I'm gonna exit stage left I'll be back at the end and Martina and I'll pass it off to you thank you so much Mike can everyone hear me Mike I guess you'd have to tell me if you could hear me but um thank you for - Mike and c-note I'm excited to be co-hosting this webinar with Kath Berman and today as he mentioned I'm Martina Edwards from access to capital for entrepreneurs I am chief of strategic partnerships and today I'm going to hopefully demystify what CDFI SAR provide a bit of color into how the industry got started and share some insights into what and how my organization ace fits into the space so what's in a name CDFI is community development finance institutions community is we lead with community development references the fact that we develop people and places and we do that technically through lending and financial education so we're mission driven financial institutions that are dedicated to delivering responsible affordable financial products and services that primarily benefit low income low wealth and other underserved individuals and communities and we are not new we are 50 plus year old industry and CDFIs are actually in every state ace has three offices across the state of Georgia there are 1200 certified CDFIs and we are a hundred and fifty billion dollar industry it is my belief that we are critical and impactful component of the financial ecosystem financing urban rural and Native communities we are trusted we have a broad set of impact and investment partners including banks philanthropic institutions such as foundations impact investors and individual donors as well as government entities so that was a bit of an aerial view that gave 30,000 foot perspective of the breadth of our industry now I'd like to provide you with some context for how we got started the current CDFI industry began taking shape in the late 60s and early 70s it was really created out of governmental efforts to address poverty alleviation and racial discrimination there was a war on poverty during the Johnson administration and a big and I would say today we still are dealing with that tug of war delays of poverty there wasn't a clear solution but capital would that was definitely a part of the answer so that led to the development of CDC's Community Development Corporation's that were designed to work in both urban and rural poor communities interspersed within this timeline were a number of landmark civil rights bills which affected the financial industry from fair housing act to passage of the Community Reinvestment Act which meant it was meant to reduce discriminatory credit practices against low-income communities known as redlining and CRA was really intended to address decades of inequity against not only folks of color but also the places they resided that were deemed unsafe for mortgage capital I'm so you could I couldn't buy a home or achieve the American Dream that so many others were able to do and build wealth and assets from I'm also those neighborhoods suffered from disinvestment CDF eyes explained it dramatically in the 90s by way of three things which was the creation of the CDFI fund which is administered by the Department of Treasury and provides funding to individual CDFI through a very competitive application process which leads to capital grants equity investments and awards for what we call technical assistance in our with his business advisory services also a revision to the CRA started to promote economic revitalization through investments in CDF eyes and this was explicitly important an important measure for banks because it recognized loans and investments in CDI eyes as a qualified CRA activity last but not least a growing record of success also inspired confidence and new capital into our industry one thing that we do as CDF eyes is we lend prudently and productively in unconventional markets that have often been overlooked by conventional financial institutions and those practices allowed us to fare very well during the financial crisis I will tell you that there was a quote that I like to say it was from the CF CEO of ofn and that's opportunity faience network and that is an organization that aces a member of CF eyes exists to move money to people and places missed by traditional lenders so whether you are a corporation or a foundation or an individual who has passion about different issue areas from women's you entrepreneurs small business food deserts or agriculture economic development affordable housing transportation sustainability you name it city of eyes can be your vehicle for change and we are intermediaries the value add is that dollars go to work across a broad subset of investments we achieve social impact as well as quality performance I will say we're not one size fits all though ace is a CD on community development loan fun but we do not take deposits and we specialize in small business there are six different types of CDFI so you can have a community development bank credit union loan fund venture fund and micro enterprise funds I'm each have different specialty areas operationally CDFIs are not profitable but we are profit maximizing we borrow low interest patient capital that we have to repay who do we lend to individual just like you and I with dreams small businesses nonprofit organizations those who are developers and doing things around housing and commercial development and we offer flexible terms and longer amortization periods we provide innovative financing products that can also serve customers who cannot meet conventional collateral or underwriting requirements and we provide business advisory services through four basic as an example through our Women's Business Center so what's the result CDF eyes make real impact we don't see an abandoned building or a dilapidated alleyway we see a shopping center new schools and housing opportunities for business owners families and kids and thriving communities we transform people and places we also create economic opportunity in the form of jobs some through real estate fairly figuratively and literally change the landscape of what a community looks like from affordable housing to community facilities and just development in general we provide financial services for those who are under banked and unbanked and that leads to building blocks creating a borrowing history for those individuals and business owners to qualify for future capital at the end of the day what I'm saying is that CDFI is hope disinvested communities and people join the economic mainstream so that's a little bit about CDFI I love and now take some time to give you a little bit of insight into ace we at our core give people particularly small businesses a chance when others can't or won't because they seem risk versus the opportunity at Ace we know that capital is part of long term solutions to alleviate poverty close wealth gaps and begin to build healthy communities one of the best illustrations of this is a client named Alex cutter who he came to from Ethiopia to the United States at the age of eleven he moved to Atlanta in his 30s he had an entrepreneurship notion and expertise now all Alex needed let him tell you was capital for equipment space to hire one staff person and approval from the Food and Drug Administration but he only had thirteen hundred dollars in his bank account achieving his goals are going to be a struggle without capital lair on to that and in 2008 we were going through a financial crisis so many banks had closed their doors and lending had dried up lucky for Alex's doors were still open we gave him his first twenty five thousand dollar loan and speed laboratory was was launched Alex rented a thousand square feet of space he hired his first employee and that money let him get the business started doing quality control testing on pharmaceuticals chemicals and medicines the company paid off that first long got their second one to help with expansion now speed laboratories has more than half a dozen employees and a nine within a nine thousand square foot facility with contracts with several fortune 500 companies through their diversity supplier programs alex is our guidance and he is really our North Star and similar to Alex ace understands what it takes to be a start-up because we've been there we're mission driven nonprofit but the process is the same our CEO and founder Grace Fricks a social worker by trade spent many days and nights in the back of her mountain cabin pondering how she could impart change for Technical College students in north rural Georgia who were looking to start a business but often didn't have a family or friend to turn to that had the knowledge or even the resources to help them get started she sought in one a 50 thousand dollar grant and ace was born as a micro lender making loans up to five thousand dollars in about four different counties today we are proud that we have helped nine hundred businesses across sixty eight counties and loan just over sixty nine million dollars and that's a lot for us but we've kept the same business model we lend anywhere from 15,000 to a million dollars we have and we can lend to anyone but we do have a focus on low to moderate income women and people of color um often folks are referred to us or come to us because they know we offer capital but they quickly realize that we do so much more through a combination of coaching capital and connections which we believe is our secret sauce we hope to propel entrepreneurs to the next level and catalyze their growth whether they are an existing business that's poised to scale or a start-up that's looking to accelerate we help them to expand their business generate jobs and income for their staff and ultimately create wealth for themselves current clients in our portfolio like Alex and there are tons of Alex's Alex's in our portfolio they push us and they drive our thinking about who we want to be and where we want to go but we can't help them if we don't grow ourselves so we put together a high-growth five-year strategic plan to grow from 18 million to 52 million serve nearly 700 new clients and help to create or retain 10,000 jobs by 2022 our our portfolio excuse me the loan denial rate for African Americans Latin x community and entrepreneurs of color in general is roughly three times higher than that of other applicants and we know that there is some inequitable access to capital within our financial system our portfolio I can tell you looks a lot different a days we have a broad portfolio and we are geographically diverse within the state of Georgia and I like to say on this slide I'm super proud we don't use any stock photos these are all our clients who leave help along the way and in 2090 2018 we close out the year having lent 89 percent of our capital to underserved populations so now you might be asking yourself what's in it for you how can you help the value proposition of partnership really varies some folks have regulatory concerns policy concerns others are mission impact centric but I can tell you for a sour impact remains the same our efforts improve the quality of life of our borrowers they create more equity and they drive job and wealth creation as a social impact investor the value might be that you get to use the power of your own agency to invest in people and communities and businesses we serve create goodwill and have the opportunity to invest in a trusted credible organization ace is the largest small business focused CDFI in the state of Georgia we are affecting real change around meaningful key issues while also providing a social benefit and financial return access to capital we know is a pathway that allows entrepreneurs to create their own success and a lovely story that I'd like to share with you is about Clara and Cesaro league one of CI a CIC floors they came from Claire came from the Dominican Republic and she had a lot of different passions when she got here around music art and dance and but she quickly found a new one with floors after meeting her now husband Cesare whose picture they dream big they wanted to go beyond installing floors to actually having a showroom unfortunately they couldn't get bank approval ace hope CIC obtained a small business loan which allowed them to run a small - space for their showroom two years later they got their second loan from Ace that helped them to triple the company's revenue through product expansion it didn't take long before they outgrew that space and actually had the sex was so small they had clients kind of waiting outside they needed to expand and we help them get their news - thousand-square-foot location they hit their first million dollars and we are super proud of that and Clara will tell you that there were a lot of unknowns in the process but in addition to loans and capital is provided Clara and Cesare with coaching and connections along the way access to a marketing guru and a finance expert at no cost to them Clara participated in a program called Ace of Diamonds which focuses on helping clients within our portfolio begin to grow in scale we also help them with connections we help them acquire multiple business certifications and nominated them up to the Goldman Sachs 10,000 small business program which Clara recently graduated from so like CIC flooring we have laid a solid foundation we know that small business ownership is a path to love creation and we could not be where we are and making such impact without strong partnerships and collaborations like the one that we have with sino which supports our overall lending to folks like Clara and Cesare now you may be asking yourself how can I help we definitely appreciate introductions and knowledge share but certainly one of the most effective ways to support us as we drive towards our very high-growth satrajit plan over the coming years and to 2022 is through grant and loan capital grants and charitable donations really support the administrative and operational cost and in the high-touch services that we provide through our business advisory and patient low-interest loan capital helps us to fund future lending demand to underserved small businesses a fair and competitive rates so with that I hope that you have I've been able to at least that demystify a little bit about what CDFIs are provide you with some knowledge about how the industry got started and some insights into AIDS I'm going to wrap up my component of the presentation and turn it over to Kat burn but I will be back for Q&A so Phil please feel free to gather some of those questions cat over to you hello there all right well thank you very much Martina quick check and you can see me all right excellent so my name is Catherine Berman I am chief executive officer of c-note and as Martina beautifully alluded we are big fans of CDF eyes and big champions of ACE and I'm happy to share more about our work with CDF eyes so let me talk more specifically deep c-note no let's make sure there we go so quick disclosures and disclaimers c-note is a B Corp women-led impact investment platform and so we'd like to really like you to hear this as for educational purposes only and this is our disclaimer and disclosure and I'm excited today to talk a little bit about why we at c-note love CDF eyes Martina did a beautiful job sharing so much of the powerful and inspiring impact that CDF eyes bring to our communities and so what I'd like to share with you is more about why we consider CDF is not just a great story to tell but a really important and veritable investment opportunity so let me talk to you about the CDFI case or investment we often say it's you know CDFI Zoar we're strong performance meets inspiring impact there are four main reasons we believe this to be true and among others I will say number one is capital preservation so the majority of CDF eyes are very strong community lenders meaning they are conservative stewards of your capital the CDFI industry as Martina was sharing has over 20 year history and some very strong financial data to support the fact that they are excellent at both identifying borrowers and getting repaid so really wonderful rates and as it relates to repayment and very low defaults and lost races one reason for that if you're curious is the CDFI local and technical assistance model that Tina alluded to when a CDFI loans out dollars they are not just a faceless lender looking at just a credit score they actually know that community and those borrowers quite well and so their ability to really understand those to whom they're borrowing as really as well as really work with borrowers in terms of technical assistance to usher in their success are just a few of the reasons that CDF eyes have exemplified such strong performance as it relates to repayment and delivering that capital preservation and those solid returns so that's on the capital preservation side on the diversification side we love CDFI because as you can imagine they don't have the same type of rollercoaster ride that many of us have been experiencing in the stock market they're not correlated with the market they're a new source of alpha so a new opportunity for you to generate return within your portfolio and offer various layers of diversification and given the amount of types of products and geographies you can invest in as well as place-based and thematic a third reason we make the case for CDFI as as an investment option for individuals and for organizations is you have a lot of ways to express your values there are over a thousand C deifies across the country with myriad themes ranging from racial equity to women's empowerment to creating sustainable cities so if you're on the call right now and you're really hoping to align your or your organization's dollars with the your mission statement or your organization's mission statement CDFI provide a lot of opportunities to get very personal and very specific around how you can channel those dollars for good and finally it's really about impact you know when we think about investing most of us are very familiar with ESG investing and I think that C deifies and and these type of direct investments to begin with provide a different way to do values aligned investing you're not investing in a very large company that you hope does no harm or perhaps does so good what you are investing in is people you're investing mainstream in America and as the great stories that Martino is sharing you're investing in real life in the changing and the empowerment of individuals and communities often times in your own backyard and so that generates not only a deeper emotional connection to your investment but also an opportunity to really understand and measure the impact that you're having and so I want to start off with that first that first variable which is we talked about the capital preservation preservation and performance what you can see here is the net charge operates as you can see CDF eyes have been on par with FDI institutions as it relates with charge offs and I want to pay I want you to pay special attention to that range of the Great Recession where CDF eyes outperformed FDIC institutions and have been on par with them ever since there's another 4:1 wonderful graph we can share that talks about the default rates of CDF eyes that actually outperform FDI institutions as well so again a lot of data to support CDF eyes are strong stewards of our dollars and as we may have alluded to big banks have already been on board with CDF eyes for quite a long time as you'll just see in the first bullet point Bank of America itself has invested over 1.5 billion in CDF eyes and so we see a lot of already interest and support for the industry but what we're excited to do is really mobilize that support to the individuals and organizations across the country that also want to do something powerful with their capital and so the kind of wrap-up of the investment case is really about seeing CDFI is not just as kind of a nice-to-have nonprofit down the street but really has a capital preservation tool that each of us can be using in our portfolio whether it's our own investment portfolio or whether we are a steward for our donor-advised fund our institution or foundation you can think of cdf eyes as an opportunity to invest in a higher impact so something you can do more with your capital for your community at lower risk and still generate a strong return another really nice perk about CDFI that we haven't talked about is really what is what they do in terms of advancing the UN sustainable development goals I'm guessing quite a few people on the call are familiar with the SD and so in particular you'll find that when you start working and investing in CDFIs you end up really getting to advance many of these SDGs like no poverty gender equality decent work and economic growth reduced inequalities and sustainable cities and communities and I share this slide because I you know at the end of the day what we're so excited about is that this is a direct investment in people the individuals on this slide are real borrowers from CDFI these are individuals who most of whom were first-time entrepreneurs had an idea could not get a loan elsewhere or certainly could not get a fair cost of capital elsewhere turn to a CDFI and not only got that responsible capital but that technical assistance to see true wealth creation both for themselves and for their families in the future and so that makes us incredibly excited to get to invest in these types of organizations and so what am I doing here why does he know it exists well it starts with about five years ago I'm sitting with a friend of mine in a cafe I had been a fan of CDF eyes for over a decade and wanted to invest in them in my own portfolio and I remember speaking to a friend of mine about CDFIs and she said I love CDF eyes just give me a simple way to invest in them on my terms and I'll never forget that language that narrative because it made me think well why isn't everybody investing in CD fives and is there an easier way and so when I started diving into it what I found well there are some historical barriers that made it a bit more complicated for each of us or organisations to invest in CDF eyes and I imagine some of you listening in today may have experienced a few of these you may have a local CDFI that is tremendous but simply doesn't have an investment product that you can invest in so they don't have a note created you may have tried to invest in a CDFI and find that the return is not on par with what you're expecting or what what you need in terms of your fiduciary responsibilities or what you're looking for for your portfolio you may have found that the lock-up periods that in working with CDF eyes or were a little bit too long in terms of duration for what you were looking for one of the things we found was transaction and investor management the ability to invest in a CDFI and make it easy where you're not faxing a lot of papers or having to do a lot of mailings where it's pretty easy and seamless can actually integrate with the types of investments you're already doing some limits on customization we found as well despite so many wonderful themes CDFI is address the ability to say this is the theme I want to address or I want to align with and then actually be able to invest in that through CDFI was often problematic and the results of these historical barriers unfortunately is we saw a lot of capital flowing to just a handful of CDF eyes and given those over a thousand CDF eyes across the country on the front line doing tremendous work we knew we couldn't do better and so this is why we created c-note we really believe that financial innovation can play a role in closing the wealth gap in the United States and so we work directly with the CDFI industry to unlock the power of CDFI as for all the platform in particular which you can easily access at my cenote com has four central tenants and this is really getting back to those friction points we saw that we're trying to break out to make it easier for each of us to invest in CDFI is number one is we bring to the table expert driven diligence we know that it can be often problematic and sometimes a very long process to diligence one CDFI if not a handful CDFIs so we've created an expert driven technology and process to make sure we're only giving you access to the high-performing CDFI is that are part of that group of of capital preservation the second is market rate returns making sure that the investment CDFI products that we're delivering to you are in par with the type of competitive returns that you're looking for the third is customized placed or impact themes and so the ability to more easily say my organization believes in immigration rights here's a CDFI product that you can invest in to double down on your mission and drive those dollars that are currently invested in you know traditional fixed income assets in a hundred percent impact product that really aligns with your organization's or personal mission or place space mission if you want to invest in your own backyard and the last is operational ease making it very easy to transact and so that there's not a lot of paperwork or a lot of human capital on urine that has to be committed to this to make this work for your organization so are just a few of the kind of properties that we'd like to bring to the table one is play space so you know it has a network of nationwide cdf eyes really allowing folks who want to invest in specific city or community to drive those dollars into those cdf eyes as well as impact themes as i had mentioned raised ranging from racial equity to women's empowerment to sustainable communities and so forth this will just give you a few of the c-note products examples that we co-create with cdf eyes the one on the left is kind of our broadest portfolio of if you're interested in investing in cdf eyes and want a really nice diversified mix of CBF eyes kind of exposure to the industry as a whole we have the flagship fund which is a hundred percent invested in underserved communities via city of eyes the second is the wisdom fund very much focused about focused on creating more wealth for women of color through entrepreneurship and so we work with a group of cdf eyes to make sure that all of those dollars are advancing that effort through the wisdom fun the third is the promise account this is our fully insured CDFI product where you can invest in low in communities across the country and also have the Full Faith and Credit of the US government backing it through the FDIC and NCUA insurance and last is the racial equity fund focused on investing in more minority led businesses and racial justice efforts and so these are just a few of the types of CDFI products that were able to create through our platform and more importantly that these tremendous CDF eyes have at the ready in terms of being able to facilitate given the important work that they do and so just a quick note a little bit of what we do differently or how we think about unlocking CDF eyes I think one central tenant racino is it's important that we open this up to everyone if we're going to close the wealth gap of the United States it's important that each of us get involved and so we make sure that we have products open to everyone in credited and not a credit investor so that everybody can vests in CDF eyes we think impact in performance hand-in-hand are really important it's why we gave impact and returns not impact or returns and so really offering competitive returns assessing the whole network as I shared you know we have a nationwide network of CDFI is working from very small city advice to very large city of Phi's keeping the entry point very reasonable so we have products that have no minimums you can put a dollar too low minimums and so again really trying to reduce the friction to get involved in this industry measurable and transparent impact so the importance of impact reporting and knowing where your money flows and finally an incredibly important just a commitment to this industry working with industry partners and co-creating these efforts with CB Phi's to make sure that as these dollars keep flowing that this is capital is actually useful and innovative CDFI is empowering them to do the great work that they're doing in their communities and so if you're interested in learning more or interested in making a first or a subsequent of investment I wanted to share a few ways to get involved so you know is definitely not the only way we have several examples here of other organizations you can check out if you're looking to invest specifically in one CDFI there note or in a grant we encourage you to look at individual organizations like ace who you heard speak of today which is a tremendous organization live and trf or other ones that have individual notes that you can check out if you're looking to invest in CDFI this as a piece of a larger note meaning alongside perhaps international micro loans Calvert is a fantastic option they have a great pool of loans that give you exposure not just domestically but internationally if you're looking to invest in a diversified set of C deifies or customize your work with CD advise obviously C note we're happy to help you in that front and then I'd like to point out two fantastic resources and partners eros and opportunity finance network that have a tremendous information on their websites about the industry define industry and also if you need to locate a CDFI in your neighborhood so I wanted to end on a story as you could probably tell from this webinar we enjoy storytelling and it's because it really is the proof point and a wonderful demonstration of the power of CDF eyes and so I want to tell the story of Janine modem so Janine is a first-time entrepreneur based in Atlanta but she prior to be an entrepreneur was an athlete and very successful track star winning championships and and and a lot of awards on the hammer throw and when she decided to retire for the sports she still had that fire and so she decided to pursue entrepreneurship she realized in her community that there was a gap in the market that the types of security services that were being offered really were not great from a customer-centric of a cup of customer centric lens and so she decided to launch her business schuyler security the issue was now what's next she had a vision that Skyler was going to go grow very big and be one of the sustainable large businesses in the community but then how do you do that so what she did is a first time entrepreneur is she went to our partner who you heard of today ace and she went to ace for her very first loan for $35,000 the beauty of that is not only did you mean get her first-time capital fair cost of capital to get her off the ground but she also got a business coach and you can imagine for Jimmy she was very used to coaching being an instrumental part in her life in a way that she advanced her own success so when I showed up and said not only are we going to give you a responsible capital we're gonna help you grow this business with a free business coach she was beside herself and so I'm happy to say that Jimmy is off to the races she is on track right now to grow to 1 million in revenue with over 200 security providers and in 2019 Skyler security was actually selected to be one of the pervert preferred providers for the Atlanta Super Bowl and so just a wonderful success story of what happens when we invest in C deifies and entrust these amazing organizations to do and look good things with our capital and mobilize those exciting initiatives and on that I'll say thank you so much for your time and look forward to questions you all right everyone so I'm gonna invite mark we're back on stage and then as I'm doing that I encourage you all to to go through the questions and upvote any ones that you like or really want to see answered and I'm gonna sort the questions that we have today from you all by the number of up votes and we're gonna kind of try and democratically go through those questions and make sure we answer your most important questions first but we've reserved quite a bit of time here so we've got about 20 minutes or so I don't want to make anyone late for lunch or if you're on the west coast but we want to try and get through these questions so it looks like Emily's question is what are some of the impact measures that CDFIs and c-note are using that's the most uploaded question we have right now and it looks like Martina is about to join us but as Martina gets ready cat I don't know if you want to attack sure I'm happy to get started and you can provide even more specific information so seen up there a couple things that we do we try to provide a quantitative and qualitative impact measurement so we look at things such as where specifically has your doll have your dollars gone right whatever where it's the percentage of dollars flowing to women percentage that are going to minorities percentage going to low-income communities and then with the actual dollar value of that we look at things in terms of wealth creation and how many dollars of how many what's the increase of loan size that's happening we look at things as job creation and affordable housing units rated so depending on the type of CDFI because we do look at we do work with CE deifies across the nation that you know work on everything from food deserts to developing low-income schools so you can imagine how you measure each of those varies but we start by talking with the CDFI to understand how they're currently measuring impact and each one of them has their own system and then working with them as well on kind of aversion to to understand what's going to be most helpful for our investors to know what are the stories that are important for investors to read so that they can understand where their capital is going and then absolutely how do we move from an outputs to an outcomes-based impact measurement so that's a little bit of how we think about it c-note and Martina would love your thoughts in terms of specifically which you want to share about about ace absolutely I think had covered a broad spectrum of how CD of eyes generally do impact measurement we have a several KPIs on our side we're focused on small businesses so the one thing that we are able to quantify it be beyond the lending the capital that we're able to lend out to diverse communities as an example in twenty twenty eighteen we know we went 11 point 1 million dollars and 89 percent of that went to underserved communities we also track and measure the jobs that are created or retained through our lending to those individuals so we have those numbers as well we measure the counties that we do work in and impact around and then we're able I showed a slide earlier that illustrated our twenty nine million dollar loan portfolio which is the size of it today and all different sectors of the market that we're in so we have a diverse portfolio that cuts across auto transportation retail restaurants healthcare so it spreads the gamut and this from a numbers perspective last year of the eleven point 1 million that we lent out 5.3 million was to the African American community and of that 25% of that went directly to african-american female borrowers so we are tracking down to those levels of detail yeah and then I would say just to add on a little bit sino provides quarterly impact data and we always report jobs created maintained percent of capital to female entrepreneurs my origin ores and the percent of capital deployed directly to low-income communities so those are kind of like our core kpi's but you know as Martina and Canada hinted at there's a lot of nuance and you can really drive deep on impact and we try and do that when we can going on to the next question it looks like Emily is asking some of the best questions because we have another one from her that was the it's the one for me right now I'm saying is and I think this is more for Martina but it's our see deifies engaging communities and their capital investment decisions for instance our residents serving on boards are helping to set underwriting on loans etc well we definitely engage communities in many ways we've learned through our process that there was not only a loft gap and a trust gap but also a capital gap so we have different initiatives in place as I mentioned we learned from 15,000 up to a million we don't have residents set our underwriting practices because we have a team of qualified kind of subject matter experts who do that but what we do go do is engage that community as an example we do what some place face or cure Atlanta on the west side as well as in a employ calling neighborhood planning unit MPU unit within Atlanta that focuses on doing micro lending so I'm smaller lending to those community residents and we have lots of conversations we've been on the ground now for a couple years we have an employee of staff member who actually sits within those communities and it walks a foot beat so to speak and she goes around and she's had multiple sessions and we offer up to 20 hours of business services to those small business owners who are trying to figure out how do I just go from needing you know micro loans and some of them what we have found in this process is that again it's very high touch what we do that they're not ready for capital and when they are not ready for capital we refer them on to our Women's Business Center where they can actually talk to someone about the different things that they need to help them get capital ready so we've learned that there's also a knowledge gap with some folks by being in the community but we are very collaborative here in the Atlanta market with a number of different players as well as academic institutions like Morehouse College excellent so I'm gonna try to go to some of the more recent questions too because I don't want to only do the highest uploaded because I know a lot of you are kind of entering into the question asking phase now I want to leave you behind but one question I'm seeing is how a cenotes work similar and distinct from community Capital Management's so cat maybe you can take that one sure yeah so we love CCM I think they're a tremendous organization I think probably the first distinguished distinguisher is we are 100% focused on CDFIs and CDFIs of all sizes so we work a lot with small to medium size CDFI is really making sure that CV files of all colors of all leadership and of all sizes get access to capital and the second probably big distinguisher is its via technology so we are really using the power of technology to make sure that CDF eyes can be accessible to investors and so that investors have a variety of ways of working with CDFI pending on the type of return they want a type of values investment online but I think you can see as more as partners than competitors because I think they're tremendous organization and we're actually in conversations right now to do things together and I think you for thinking about investing in CDFI as you'll find with both organizations two really interesting ways to deploy capital but just in different ways excellent let me see here we got some new ones coming in which is great please keep asking questions so this is an interesting one and maybe both you can ask but brent was wondering are there any products that aren't loans through CDFI so I think he's asking you know the CDFI is only give loans or do they do other things in the community as well yeah so I'll kick that off most of our products and services are loans I decided that the F within CDFI is finance and so we provide that we do that through the lending arm but we do provide financial education again so that is something that is of no cost we run a Women's Business Center and Norcross Georgia that is open to its agnostic to what the women are men who want to come in and get help around thinking about how they grow their business we offer things on our site and this is where the great component of what we do comes into play because we also offer things on our site like the dream builder it's a module system that you go through 12 modules by the time you get to the end of it it runs you through a set of questions related to what type of business you want to do and at the end it helps to kick a business plan that's of no cost other things that we offer include it's more of a lever that we use is through the tory burch kind of bankamerica program we have an interest buy-down program and so we have that and we can utilize that when someone comes to us and they are collateral light we partner with community advantage loans a program a government kind of program that helps in services the loan guaranty program for some different types of borrowers so we utilize different innovative and yes services and products to help at the end of the day the borrower excellent yeah I think it's CDF is do a lot more than just give loans out and they don't get enough credit for often so it's it's always good to put a little air time to that looks like I have to kind of highly uploaded questions here both I think for cat one is what is the and I'm gonna ask you both because I think they're related and try and knock them out at the same time what is the minimum capitalisation investment threshold for c-note specifically how small of a CD if I will see you know invest in and then the second part of that same question because how does the CD if I become part of the cenote network or offering sure so I'm gonna start with that yeah so in terms of threshold so we work by but we've worked with CDF is as small as five to ten million in portfolio size and so again we are trying to be very inclusive we actually we know some of the hardest work happening in our country is in happening in very specific small and rural communities quite frankly or urban communities that aren't doing as much love and so how do we make sure that us you know we as a community of impact investors just don't go for the big guys or the most obvious guys that we're really shining a light on the communities that needed the most and oftentimes as you can imagine those organizations don't have the marketing budget or the technology budget to say hey invest in me so this is a really important bridge that we're trying to use technology for it so you know just make sure that those CD files get just as much love and capital and attention of the important work they get as some of the larger CDFI that are very very lovely so there's that so that's kind of into this to the house you know the small size see deifies you go and then in terms of getting involved with c-note please reach out to us I would say if you send a note to support at my c-note calm we can channel it to may have a fantastic CDFI ambassador part of our organization that just spends all of their time working and loving on the CDFI community and it's all about understanding what are your needs how are you going as an organization what kind of capital do you need what are the constraints of your community and then what we can connect with you one of the things we didn't talk about is you know a couple of the things we do at c-note are outside of the investment so not only do we try to bring new investment to see deifies we also try to bring visibility in terms of storytelling and public public relations and really trying to shine a light on this incredible industry and connections and then opportunities to engage new partners as well so so as a new CDFI partner you know hopefully that's that's what you experienced in partnership with us is not just kind of a transactional have some new dollars but how do we grow as an industry really and make this an investable opportunity for everybody that's answers your question yeah I think sorry I give you a couple tough ones but I think it's a so two people we're very interested so another question I'm seeing it's kind of two similar questions is you know RC deifies and c-note collectively do they have any environmentally focused offerings and maybe we can talk more broadly about sustainability or the kind of offerings or themes that c-note and CDF eyes can address yeah I love that question because I think that's one of the myths at the CDFI industry when I talk to people about CDFIs and often folks unfortunately don't know about the industry if they do know about the industry they often think that we're only working on job creation and small business lending or maybe affordable housing and that's it and as most of us who've worked or CDF eyes know you work on so many more things than that including the environment so we actually work with some tremendously if I is doing really hard work just to give you some examples one city if I that we're working with is really working with communities in the Midwest to move them from extractive communities to sustainable communities so how do you take an entire workforce who's been dependent on coal and mining and move them into sustainable jobs those are the frontline work these CDFIs are doing and those are the types of investments that we want to be making and so the answer your question is absolutely we work with a number of CDFI is doing really cool work on the environment and sustainability all right going through so another question actually I think is an interesting one and it's back to themes but homelessness this this person asked Allen asked any focused on reducing homelessness specifically so maybe through affordable housing initiatives or anything like that I was wondering maybe Martina do you have any ideas or suggestions about how ace is addressing that issue yeah you know I think when you think about a CDFI in general there are a lot of ancillary benefits to the work that we do so when an individual gets a loan from us they're not only it empowers them to start their business and improves their life their life but it can proves the life of their family they're able to hire individuals which generates income for those individuals and then they usually you know set up within a community and now they're increasing the tax revenue and the tax basis for that community so you know whether it's a food desert or something like that now they're they're putting revenue back into the community as it relates to homelessness I think as I think that that's one example of how you can by investing in a community that's been invested in you will bring in different services there we focus on small businesses but there are other CF eyes who are focused on building communities so that sinners and mixed-use development we have some collaborations where we've worked with in neighborhoods around making sure we support the business and then the other CDFI brings in their affordable housing and then the third CDFI I will focus on mixed-use development to ensure that they are daycares and educational centers or services like the Human Services for homelessness gotcha great um cat I don't want to cut you out but I was gonna go the next question if that's all that much I think your mightiness speak to me so yes I got a question for you from Stuart asked and I think this was during your presentation cat so I think it was aimed at you as he saw you share some of your investment products and I think he was wondering how you benchmark and how you compare your returns and offerings to other other products no it's a great question so for majority of those products you saw and I think the majority of products we create with CDFI they are fixed income instruments so we are usually comparing them to short duration instruments that you can get on the flip side we have that fully insured product right and so the comparison we make are similar depository products in this example would probably be a 90 day CD so that's what we're trying to do is use you know duration and industry examples in the fixed income and cash space and we actually have some good performance metric information that actually shows the graph of how we compare so if you're interested please send us a note and I'm happy to share all that information with anyone who's on the call great so this is interesting question kind Valerie asked my organization is a place-based investor but there's only one CDFI in our state we'd like to diversify is there a resource or do you have information on you know how I can get involved working with CDFI as in other states absolutely and there's a bunch i think obviously we're big fans of opportunity finance network ofn so they're an amazing resource in terms of you know a landscape of Sidi advise you know clearly the Treasury Department CDFI fund obviously has the right listing of all the CBF eyes and then from an inter connectivity piece I think elephant or cenote would always happy be happy to make those introductions um because we work with the nation night of network if it's easy for us to be a first stepping-stone for you or happy to do that so if you know that you want to invest in you know the adjacent state or you want to invest in you know ten new states they're nowhere near you we can usually give you a pretty good sense of who are the CE deifies what they're investing in and also give you some performance pricing as well so there's a lot we can hopefully be helpful with is you into that but that's great to hear and I think either s or definitely ofn hopefully can help you step into that yeah and I'd like to add to that Aires is a good option too they are ended third party auditor of CDF eyes and you can go to their site and for it cost called the downloads and information about CDF eyes in terms of our impact reports and what we're doing and they do it very very you know deep dive into all our books our loans and we're excited that we are an area Trade Organization as well great I think I have a contact slide up I don't know I'm having some trouble seeing on my screen out of know few it's not showing on my side I'm gonna take that down and just let you know that if you want to visit seen out and learn more it's wwic know calm and then a Stallone's is WWE sloan stock and we're almost out of time I see one question here Alan was asking Calvert and Capitol impact partners have Q sips and I think he's talking about maybe buying these financial products to see now have any plans or ability to do Q sips and what you know the operational ease piece of that slide I shared you know we're really trying to meet folks where they're at and so we've heard that from the folks so we actually launched our first Q sip I think it was if not 2017 2018 so yes to the Q sip and yes to using this for further products to if that's helpful so we always like to have that conversation with folks of what do you need if we don't have have it is there way we can make it happen so it's more easily accessible with your current systems awesome okay well I think we've hit the meat of everyone's questions and it looks like we've got about three minutes until we're at the top of the hour so unless Catherine or Martina you want to add anything I think we can wrap it up unless that's Martina you know I would say first of all thank you for taking time out of your day that was into what CDF eyes are and if there's any takeaway it is that we do make real impact we change the face of communities we are investing in people in places and we provide a social benefit as well as a financial return to those who provide us with capital so that's one good piece of and it's not an and/or situation you can provide a grant as well as capital for us to lend out I thank you both Mike and Kat for posting this thank you everybody for coming and thank you Martina for driving this change absolutely yeah thank you thank you everyone I'm gonna close the webinar in just a second here really appreciate all the attendees we had a lot of people join us and I hope we got to all your questions if you have follow-up questions you can reply to any of the webinar emails you got and we'll make sure we get back to you so thanks everyone and you have a you have a great day