CDFIs (Community Development Financial Institutions) are essential for ensuring access to capital in underserved communities. These institutions are not just important; they are vital to the small business ecosystem and represent significant assets for our local and national economies. By supporting underserved entrepreneurs, we actively create opportunities for all and empower individuals to achieve the American dream of growth and prosperity.
I represent Northwest Access Fund, a CDFI serving Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. NWAF offers people with disabilities customized loans, financial coaching, and other resources to promote access to assistive technology, independence, financial resilience, and life opportunities. We are helping people with disabilities and seniors who lack the ability to secure financing to afford crucial assistive technologies and modifications – hearing aids, dentures, wheelchairs, adaptive vehicles, and home modifications. We could not to this vital work without the investment from the CDFI Fund.
CDFIs are critical to our economy. They step in where banks can’t – or wont – go. They leverage hundreds of millions of private dollars every year and invest them in underserved businesses and communities, based on need and impact. This is an effective, efficient public-private solution to pressing social and economic issues throughout our country.