Randy Rice

Overview
Opportunity Finance Network (OFN), formerly the National Community Development Loan Fund, is the leading network of private financial intermediaries identifying and investing in opportunities to benefit low income and low wealth people in the U.S.  OFN members include community loan funds, community development financial institutions (CDFIs), community banks and credit unions.

OFN’s vision is “a world where all people experience social, economic, and political justice and so have the opportunity to act in the best interests of their communities, themselves, and future generations. Our mission is to lead the opportunity finance system to scale through capital formation, policy, and capacity development.”

Programs
To transform community development finance into a high-volume financing system OFN finances CDFIs directly with an eye toward identifying and financing the systems that alter how the CDFI industry works. This enables scale and productivity involving hundreds of CDFIs. Within the OFN Financing Fund, the Manufactured Housing Communities (MHC) Fund is designed to preserve and expand the supply of affordable housing options available to low-income households. The MHC Fund makes financing available to CDFIs for manufactured housing communities that are converting from investor-ownership to resident-controlled ownership. As of September 30, 2009, OFN’s Financing Fund had $53.8 million in loans and investments outstanding and an additional $2.9 million in financing commitments. OFN’s investors, who have provided the resources for the Financing Fund, include banks, foundations, and religious institutions.

As part of its core business model, OFN acts as an information and networking conduit between community investment stakeholders in the U.S.  OFN hosts an annual community investment industry conference, which Trillium Asset Management Corporation (“Trillium”) regularly attends.  The 2009 conference’s core curriculum on stabilization and growth featured more than 30 sessions designed to help CDFIs and investors navigate in these “best of times, worst of times,” and emerge from today’s challenging market prepared to seize opportunities in “the new normal.”  OFN collects industry data and publishes a quarterly “Market Conditions Survey.”  The organization also hosts conference calls and regional meetings.

The CDFI Assessment and Ratings System (CARS™), the only rating system of its kind for CDFI investors, is a program started by OFN. CARS™ is a comprehensive, third party analysis of community development financial institutions that aids investors and donors in their investment decision making. Trillium was one of an inaugural group of sixteen CDFI investors, including banks, socially responsible investors, and foundations, to use CARS™ in our due diligence process. As of September 30, 2009, CARS™ had completed 65 ratings on 50 CDFIs (15 of those were re-ratings) with 11 additional reviews in-process. Twenty-one CDFIs are scheduled for review in 2010, with nine more pending and 44 more in the pipeline for 2010 or 2011.

OFN’s policy division is actively engaged in the core issues and programs that advance economic development resources for CDFIs at the federal level. Overall, OFN members received almost two-thirds of the total funds available to CDFIs in both the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and its supplemental funding rounds. OFN recently worked on appropriations legislation for FY2010 in which President Obama proposed to double last year’s appropriation for the CDFI Fund.

Impact
OFN has 173 members at work in low wealth urban, rural, and Native communities in all 50 states.  With more about $20 billion invested through FY 2008, these funds have financed approximately 43,000 businesses, 578,000 housing units, and 9,600 community facility projects — generating or maintaining over 191,000 jobs.

Trillium’s History with OFN
Trillium is proud of our long association with OFN, which traces back to the organization’s inception as the National Community Development Loan Fund.  Trillium clients were early investors in the Fund.  For more than two decades Trillium has partnered with OFN and many of its member organizations, investing our client’s assets for a high social and environmental impact with a modest financial return.

^back to top^