2016 FIR Summary

Over the past fifteen years, the Financial Innovations Roundtable (FIR), located at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire and hosted by the Division of Consumer and Community Affairs at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, has worked with a range of community development and other types of financial institutions, government agencies, foundations and trade associations to address and solve problems related to access to capital for low-and moderate-income consumers and communities. The FIR does this by tapping the expertise of thought leaders from the institutional investment, banking, philanthropic, and community development industries.

The 2016 Financial Innovations Roundtable focused on “Addressing the Disconnect: Linking Impact Investing Dollars with On-the-Ground Community Development.” While social impact investing is capturing the imagination of investors, community development organizations such as CDFIs have largely depended on government grants, bank debt driven by the Community Reinvestment Act, and (to a lesser extent) grants and program-related investments from foundations for their capital.

This year’s Roundtable brought together impact investors and community development practitioners to explore the barriers and opportunities to scaling impact investment in community development. Conversations focused around:

• Understanding the diversity of impact investors with interests in community development impacts – including private wealth managers, investment advisors, family offices, Donor-Advised Funds, community foundations, and institutional investors such as banks – and the unique investment parameters and challenges that each investor segment brings to the table when considering an investment in community development finance;
• Refining the messages and the marketing strategies that the community development sector must employ to reach these investors;
• Building more standardized products and/or aggregated platforms to more efficiently raise capital for the field;
• Exploring recent innovations where community development practitioners have raised or are planning to raise capital for new sources;
• Communicating the impacts that community development finance is achieving for people and communities, including the role of community development finance institutions themselves as agents for transformative change; and
• Providing feedback to the Kresge and MacArthur Foundations on a proposed syndication platform, as an applied exploration of the key event themes outlined above.