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Banking Organizations Channel Funding to Distressed Communities

By Lisa Hagerman, January 13, 2010

Two national organizations -- the Community Development Bankers Association (CDBA) and Promontory Interfinancial Network, L.L.C. – announced in December 2009 that they will work together to channel more than $10 billion into America's most economically distressed communities over the next five years. The announcement was made during a signing ceremony to renew the organizations’ Banking on Communities program. Initiated in 2004, the program channels funding into underserved communities through US Treasury certified Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs). Under the initiative, socially motivated investors can receive up to $50 million of federal deposit insurance coverage when depositing funds in a community development bank that's a member of CDBA and the Promontory Network. The $50 million of federal insurance protection is made possible through a service offered to banks by Promontory: the Certificate of Deposit Accounts Registry Service®, or CDARS®. “Banking on Communities enables deposits to flow to underserved communities to finance housing, to launch new businesses, to fund child care centers – in short, to open the door to a better life for millions of Americans,” said Robert M. McGill, Chairman & CEO of Neighborhood National Bank, a CDFI located in San Diego, CA. “It stimulates economic growth, so we all benefit.” Dowload PDF to see the press release.

On a related note, More for Mission foundations are taking on mission-related cash investing, that involves investing CDs with community development financial institutions (CDFIs) or credit unions or placing a foundation’s operating cash in community development banks. See the mission related cash investing presentation (Download PDF) with examples from More for Mission members the Edward W. Hazen Foundation, Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
 

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