For the past 3 years, I've been a member of Social Venture Circle.  Especially in the past year, there has been a significant rise in interest to understand CDFIs better.  It has been a pleasure to contribute my experience and knowledge of the field to my fellow impact investors.  Today we publish an original study providing the names of 60 CDFI Loan Funds that take investments from individuals.  

Opportunity Zones are a great "opportunity" for impact investors to deploy new capital into low income communities spurring economic development.  While most of the attention has been focused on real estate transactions, I am most interested in using the Opportunity Zone mechanism to invest in businesses that start, growth, and expand into Opportunity Zones. For instance, an angel investor could make an equity investment in a start up business located in an opportunity zone.  Perhaps the business is a spin off from a university, or operates in an accelerator or shared workspace, or has leased space in a warehouse.  By investing equity, the business can employee more people, buy more services, and offer great products to their customers.  Today, angel investors are doing this already.  But may deals that angels evaluate are "on the bubble" -- they are attractive but not overwhelmingly so.  The Opportunity Fund provisions put the thumb on the scale to do the deal rather than pass on it.  How?  
Here is a recently published primer from LISC on how to make Opportunity Fund investments
http://www.lisc.org/opportunity-zones/community-partners-playbook/
#OpportunityZones #ImpactInvesting 

It is always great to celebrate accomplishments....and today Healthcare Georgia Foundation announced their first Program Related Investment in CHC Capital Fund, a national CDFI specializing in financing Federally Qualified Community Health Centers (FQHCs). Stepping Stone Partners is proud to have worked closely with the great leaders and board at the foundation to bring this milestone to life!
This is a great example of a foundation seeking innovative approaches to achieve its mission of "Advancing the Health of All Georgians." Along the way, the foundation has investing in building relationships with local, regional, and national partners to learn and share best practices related to social determinants of health, mobilizing resources to improve rural health, CDFI investing, and foundations investing their corpus aligned with their mission. 
Read their recent announcement here.  
Case study coming soon.

Rural LISC publishes a must-read monthly newsletter for anyone interested in....rural America, funding opportunities, communication best practices....to name a few topics.  Rural LISC is focused on working with local partners to build healthier rural communities with more opportunities.  And their monthly newsletter is a great resource for any partner looking for a quick survey of the latest news from government agencies, foundations, and other partners.  The May 2019 edition showcases grant opportunities from EPA, HUD, Department of Justice as well as Best Buy and Andrus Family Foundations.  With so much information out there, Rural LISC does a great job pulling together all of this information.  Kudos!  Subscribe today here.