Industry & Member News

The Community Financial Access Pilot (CFAP) is an initiative of the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Financial Education, endorsed by the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Literacy, designed to increase access to financial services and financial education for low- and moderate income families and individuals. Best practices learned from around the country will be shared with participating communities to help them build sustainable approaches to expand financial access among community residents. Lessons learned from the pilot communities will be shared across the country so more communities can develop similar effective approaches.

WASHINGTON — The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) today released the Spring 2008 edition of Community Developments focusing on the preservation of affordable rental housing.

This issue of Community Developments features an overview of the challenges facing the nation’s affordable multifamily rental housing inventory by Michael Bodaken, president of the National Housing Trust. An article by Debra Schwartz of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation describes how a variety of public, private and nonprofit initiatives have addressed these challenges. This issue also highlights the specific activities and investments of selected national banks, nonprofit organizations and state and local government agencies in supporting the preservation of affordable multifamily rental housing.

Following up on SJF's successful events in 2005-2007, this panel will demonstrate that well conceived cleantech business models can scale rapidly by reducing costs and improving quality for customers. The panel will consist not of policy advocates or analysts but of CEOs who are actually carrying out innovative strategies and growing venture-backed companies. These companies – with revenues between $1 million and $20 million or more – are all growing rapidly by pursuing innovating green strategies in mainstream markets. Companies featured in previous years include groSolar, Intechra, Zipcar, RecycleBank, IceStone, Gaia Power Technologies, Native Energy, ConsumerPowerline, and BioDiesel Solutions.

Delve into strategies some microenterprise programs are using to increase equity capital as a critical component of scale-up and sustainability strategies during a free Webinar hosted by FIELD on Friday, May 9, 2008 from 2-3:30 p.m. (EDT). Click here to register.

Goal: We want to better understand this issue in the practice of microenterprise development, and have a set of questions we want to explore:

• How can capital structure affect an institution's capacity for growth and sustainability?
• How does an organization get more "good capital"?
• How can an organization use this capital in a smart way to advance its sustainability?

Guests: Robert Boyle and Sheri Flanigan-Vazquez, Justine Petersen in Missouri; Lynn Trojahn, ACCION New Mexico; and Paul Quintero, ACCION New York and New Jersey.

Defaulting on the Dream: States Respond to America’s Foreclosure Crisis, a report from the Pew Center on the States and Pew’s Health and Human Services program, is the first-ever, comprehensive look at what all 50 states and the District of Columbia are doing to try to address the subprime mortgage fallout.

Read the summary
Read the full report

The latest edition of the FIELD Funder Guide Series explores how some microenterprise programs are using social enterprises as a vehicle for developing financially sustainable services and how funders can support such strategies.

While explaining that some microenterprise programs operate as social enterprises, the guide looks at other programs that have created social enterprises both to more sustainably help clients market their products and/or gain business skills, and in some instances create revenue for the overall organization.

Co-op America is holding its annual green business conference in May 14-15 in Chicago. The two day event will feature green learning sessions and networking with the top green business leaders in the country. For a complete program of keynotes and workshop sessions and all the speakers, visit www.coopamerica.biz.

GreenMoneyJournal.com has recently released its new Spring 2008 issue which focuses on socially responsible investing and the trends that are currently in the forefront of the industry. In particular, the "SRI Trends Report," has data that demonstrates that SRI expansion has led to new possibilities in sustainable investments for institutional and individual investors, university endowments, foundations and expanding SRI mutual funds.

The training program designed to teach CDFIs to work with entrepreneurs to achieve long-term sustainability in their businesses. The program, CORE FOUR®, teaches CDFIs about the process of building or growing a business, which in turn allows business owners to fine-tune and objectively analyze their business ideas to give them a higher probability of being successful.

On April 15th, a day most Americans associate with paying their income taxes, a Federal program that provides tax credits for investments in low-income communities has been recognized for its innovation and effectiveness.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) Program has been named today as one of the Top 50 Programs that will advance to the final stages of competition for the prestigious 2008 Innovations in American Government Award. The NMTC Program was chosen from approximately 1,000 programs representing all levels of government across the nation that applied for this award.