CIM partners with responsible lenders to finance small businesses in line with the Small Business Borrowers’ Bill of Rights and to effect economic, environmental, and social change. Since fund inception, we have provided financing to 4,200 U.S. small businesses which represent $4 billion in total revenue. These businesses have created 6,000 new jobs from loan proceeds with 45,000 jobs maintained and 131,000 lives affected. CIM also tracks impact metrics that are derivative of the core impact objective: to increase access to capital for underserved demographics and support impact businesses. Across the portfolio, CIM funds 2-3x more women-, minority-, and veteran-owned businesses than banks and financial institutions with an aggregate figure of 50% of the loan portfolio lent to WMV-owned businesses. CIM has additionally built an Impact Assessment system to identify and report on impact businesses across 8 areas of impact with 79 unique tags. These impact businesses expressly seek to create a positive social, environmental, or economic change in their community. 21% of the CIM portfolio (>800 loans) are lent to impact businesses in 8 categories: community health and safety, education and youth development, social justice, environmental sustainability, financial inclusion, healthy food systems, and clean energy and efficiency.
Connect Humanity is a nonprofit impact investor. Our mission is to ensure every community and individual has the internet connectivity needed to thrive in the digital age. We provide financing and support to connect underserved communities to affordable, high-speed internet, with a focus on low-income and rural populations.
CFNE’s mission is to work for economic, social, and racial justice by advancing community based, cooperative, and democratically owned or managed enterprises with a preference to assisting cooperatives in low-income communities by:
● Providing financial products at reasonable rates;
● Developing business skills; and
● Offering an investment opportunity that promotes socially conscious enterprises
Our vision is of economic justice for all through thriving cooperative enterprises.
CFNE was founded in 1975 by cooperative developers to address the need for debt products suited to the shared ownership model of food co-ops. Food co-ops were thriving, as communities across the northeast embraced a community-owned model for healthy food access. However, the shared ownership structure that provided so many benefits to workers and communities also posed barriers to accessing capital from conventional sources, a dynamic that remains true today.
Over the decades since we launched, CFNE has grown to a staff of 15, located in 6 states across the northeast. In 2021 we changed our name from the Cooperative Fund of New England to Cooperative Fund of the Northeast, reflecting our staff expansion into New York state. Our borrower portfolio expanded to include co-ops beyond the food sector, such as housing, resident-owned communities (ROCs), worker co-ops, consumer and producer co-ops, and a small number of nonprofits and land trusts. And we have increasingly incorporated a racial justice lens into our work, resulting in Racial Justice becoming the North Star (key strategic goal) of our strategic plan in 2020.
Dalberg Advisors is a mission-driven strategy advisory firm, working to build a more inclusive and sustainable world where all people, everywhere, can reach their fullest potential.
We are known for a focus on global development - and have nearly two decades of experience advising foundations, development finance institutions, and impact investors on a range of issues across the developing world - but are increasingly serving clients to achieve impact in the US. This includes market research and analysis, investment strategy development, opportunity identification, due diligence, and impact management. Aside from our strategy services, we help our clients build new initiatives and thrive in multi-stakeholder settings.
Our talented staff combine experience in top-tier professional services firms and leading academic institutions, with experience in social impact settings. Our diverse staff is representative of the people we serve: 50% women and 50% men; more than 50 nationalities; more than 90 languages spoken; two-thirds of our full-time staff are based in Africa and South Asia. We are a global partnership, with 27 partners and 25 associate partners globally. Our leadership includes a diverse set of backgrounds: https://dalberg.com/who-we-are/our-leadership
Founded in New York in 2001, Dalberg has a global footprint with 22 offices located in Abidjan, Abu Dhabi, Addis Ababa, Brussels, Copenhagen, Dakar, Dar es Salaam, Geneva, Johannesburg, Kigali, Lagos, London, Mexico City, Mumbai, Nairobi, New Delhi, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Seattle, Singapore, and Washington, D.C.
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation is a family foundation guided by the enduring business philosophy and personal values of Lucile and David, who helped found one of the world’s leading technology companies. The Foundation works on the issues our founders cared about most, including improving the lives of children, enabling the creative pursuit of science, advancing reproductive health, and conserving and restoring the earth's natural systems.
