CDFI Fund Prospects Brighten - National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions

More Funding in Store; CDCU Applications Up

(December 24, 2007 – New York, NY) The U.S. Treasury Department’s Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund, long a major source of growth capital for CDCUs, has received a major boost in funding for the current fiscal year. A total of $94 million has been appropriated by Congress, a sharp rise over the $55 million of FY 2007.

“We are gratified and excited about this increase, which responds to the advocacy of the CDFI Coalition,” said Federation President and CEO Cliff Rosenthal. The Federation sits on the board of the coalition, which it helped to organize more than a decade ago. “We’ve fought a defensive battle for years, and this increase will bring us much closer to the level of funding of some years ago.”

Applications by credit unions for the 2008 round are up considerably, according to CDFI Fund data. For the funding round currently underway, the Fund reported that:

11 credit unions (21.1 % of all applicants) had applied for “Small and Emerging CDFI Assistance" (SECA)
15 credit unions (12.7%) had applied for the larger, Category II or “Core” assistance
10 credit unions (18.2%) had applied for technical assistance only

Assuming all these applications are unique, the total would be 36 credit union applications, up considerably from the 22 applications in the preceding year.

In the hope of the larger appropriation, the Federation conducted extensive outreach to encourage credit unions to apply.

“We were also pleased that Donna J. Gambrell was appointed Director of the CDFI Fund recently,” Rosenthal added. “We worked closely with Donna when she was an official of the FDIC in the New York area, and recently, she’s done important work in coordinating government response to the Gulf Coast disaster. She’s an accomplished financial professional, who has been a great friend of community development.”

Ms. Gambrell will be a featured speaker at the Federation’s upcoming Latino Credit Union Conference and Conference on Serving the Underserved (Dallas, June 11-14, 2008). For more information about the conference, please click here.