MN08 Stories and Data

Minnesota Entrepreneur Grows Childcare Business with Help of Local CDFIs
Braiding Business and Belief
Eagles Healing Nest
Viva Long Prairie

Mapped CDFI investment data (2005-2023), via CDFI Friendly America.

Want more state data? Check out CDFI Friendly America’s mobile-friendly CDFI Advocacy App for impacts from 2005-2023.

Testimonials

As an emerging CDFI serving the state of MN with small dollar consumer lending, this funding is essential to us to help combat predatory lending that strips wealth from low-income communities and allows us to provide stabilizing capital to communities to stay housed, employed, and (re)build credit to reach their asset building goals (e.g. car and home ownership) for the future.

-Anne Leland, Exodus Financial Services (dba Exodus Lending), Saint Paul, MN

CDFIs are a great, cost-effective way to support development in rural, suburban and urban communities in a public/private finance model heavily weighted to the private side. In our case in enabled locating our manufacturing plant in an area where people needed jobs.

-Don Leeper, Bookmobile, Minneapolis, MN

CDFIs drive economic mobility in a way that positively transforms communities in many ways. It’s relevant for folks with a business/economy-first mentality to know: CDFIs create small businesses, develop financially stable households, and increase low-come families’ spending power. These are metrics that are meaningful to people of all political views. Investing in the CDFI Fund pays dividends to the broader economy. This is not a politically divisive line item in the budget. Fund the CDFI Fund!

-Kit Fordham, Mni Sota Fund, Minneapolis, MN