Equitable Facilities Fund Issues $100 MM in Bonds to Support Charter Schools.
Equitable Facilities Fund (EFF) – formerly Charter Impact Fund will issue $100 million in A-rated tax-exempt bonds to further its mission to provide long-term, low-cost facility loans that allow high-performing charter schools to maximize the resources they dedicate to students. Through these bonds EFF will support 30,000 public charter school students by providing affordable funds for their schools’ buildings, equipment and other capital projects, thus directing more resources into the classroom and helping students realize academic success and a lifetime of opportunity.
EFF is supported by the Walton Family Foundation’s Building Equity Initiative (BEI), an effort to make it easier and more affordable for public charter schools to access equitable, affordable facilities funding.
EFF pools public charter school loans in an innovative manner to provide long-term, fixed-rate loans with terms that public charter schools could not otherwise secure. Adapting a revolving loan fund model that has successfully supported more than $100 billion in clean water projects for three decades, EFF is the first pooled fund of its kind for public charter schools. The fund’s team of finance and public charter school experts have formulated a best-in-class loan underwriting and monitoring system and plan to raise additional capital for a target near-term fund size of $600 million to benefit high-quality public education.
"Every high-quality public school deserves equitable, permanent financing,” said EFF Founder and CEO Anand Kesavan. “This is what we're striving to provide at EFF—with a proven approach that has the potential to positively impact thousands of students. That's the beauty of it. We're combining traditional investment structures and cutting-edge philanthropy and putting it all to work against educational inequity."
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