 say, top challenge, the top area of opportunity, and both our economic development strategic plan and our small business ecosystem analysis, which was completed in 2019. Now, back when this pandemic started, the city took on an aggressive effort to get almost $55 million in CARES Act funding now to our small businesses. But even though over 30% of that funding with the minority on businesses, we realized there were still a significant gap that needed to be overcome. If you look at the data, if you look at anything about how small businesses are faring these days, you'll find that minority-owned small businesses have been disproportionately impacted by this pandemic and have historically had issues with getting the appropriate level of funding for their business operations. Now, there are several trends that show why it's harder for minority-owned firms to run and scale successfully. Minority-owned firms are significantly more likely to show signs of limited financial health by factors such as profitability, credit scores, use of retained earnings as a funding source, and that limited access to loans and credits is just a compounding factor that hurts that underlying health. And even if you look at successful mature minority-owned small businesses, they are still 30% smaller than the average non-minority-owned small business. So in addition to this lack of credit issue, minority-owned firms are also more likely concentrated in industries that have been most infected by the pandemic. So service industries, including accommodation, restaurant, retail, which have the highest share of minority ownership have been the most highly disrupted in the near term. So I can tell you all this, but you don't need to look at the data, look at trends to understand that businesses in our underserved areas are not thriving as well as they should be. Now, you can take a simple drive around Fort Worth, I do this all the time, and you can see that there are areas that still need assistance. So in looking at the challenges we have, we really wanted to see how we could focus our efforts in enhancing Fort Worth support for small businesses and help them grow through these challenges and present some opportunities. And there are some good opportunities out there. Out of the 10 benchmark cities across the country that we looked at as part of our ecosystem analysis, Fort Worth and Tarrant County has the highest rate of minority self-employment in Fort Worth and Fort Worth breaks second for overall minority business ownership. But that lack of pool of capital, which I've been talking about, is targeted to minority businesses and entrepreneurs is not there and it's hampering our investments and the opportunities to grow scalable companies. So when Christina Brooks brought forward this program that she had worked on in Indiana, we were all over trying to get this launched. Equitable growth is critical to the long-term health and economic success of Fort Worth. And there are specific areas of town where investment is needed now. Our underserved communities have historically not experienced the kind of economic impact that we've seen in other areas of the city, even though there have been many significant efforts to drive investment into those neighborhoods. So we're doing great work in our targeted impact areas, projects like Evans and Rosedale, Cavill, Stop Six and other parts of the community. But we need more catalytic projects, particularly in the East and Southeast Fort Worth. But when I talk about catalytic projects, we don't necessarily need those from outside of the community. We need support from people that live and work in these neighborhoods to grow their own businesses. And by doing that, we can then attract new development and generate excitement about the area's potential. But supporting small business growth alone isn't enough to fix the larger issue of redevelopment. There's a critical need for affordable housing and other redevelopment activities in these communities, which is where the CDFI-friendly financing model comes in. So I am really, really excited about what we're gonna talk about today and launching this program. I think this is going to do some great things for the city. And while local government can't fix all of these issues I've talked about alone, these types of creative public-private partnerships can go a long way in ensuring more equitable development across the entire community. So thank you again for being a part of the program today. We have a lot of good information for you. And I will turn the podium over to our esteemed Mayor, Maddie Parker to give some comments. Hey, Parker. Good morning, y'all. How are you doing well? We were actually in here last night to celebrate or mourn Jay Chapa's retirement from the city of Fort Worth. But before I get started, everybody needs to thank Jay for all his leadership in the city. A lot of you in this room have gotten to work with him in a lot of different capacities. And this is just another project that he helped Greenlight at City Hall. So really appreciate you, Jay, very much. Jay also loves the spotlight and all the attention. So he's ready for this week to be over, I think at this point, for sure. The first thing I wanted to speak about is how important it is when the city decides to take on new work, specifically with our diversity inclusion department led by Christina Brooks. It's one thing to talk about it, and it's another thing to do good things. And I have been so impressed with Christina's work. Thank you, Christina. An important part is that she immediately partnered with other doers in our city, like Robert Stern's Economic Development Department. Today's opportunity would not have been possible without those two thinking in the middle of a pandemic, how do we make Fort Worth better and really utilize these federal dollars in a lasting capacity? And it was that $3 million allocation of ARPA funds that otherwise you would have never known the city had it or used it. And today we know it's a catalyst for significant change and we are all so excited about that potential into the future. I mean, estimations as much as $200 million, $250 million are gonna hear about today, and CDFI funding. I also see a lot of our banking community in the room. Thank you for coming today as well. You recognize the importance of that partnership on the private sector side, and we are incredibly encouraged. Fort Worth has really for a long time struggled, frankly, to focus in our communities that need us most, especially our black and Hispanic communities that have amazing businesses that really teeter every month to month to just make it. And that's frustrating because we know that their capacity is so much bigger. And thanks to the smartphones in your pocket and this digital economy that we're living in, they really can compete internationally with the right support from their hometown here in Fort Worth. And so I'm so encouraged, not because we haven't figured out in Fort Worth, but because we're gonna use national best practices and leaders across this country to make these things possible in our community, which is incredibly encouraging. We knew in the city's disparity study how significant the gaps were for our small businesses and really financing entrepreneurs of color, which is really what the impetus of this work really got us started. We have to address those gaps. And jokingly, if you wanna do anything to get people in Fort Worth motivated, you just talk about Dallas. And if Dallas is beating us with CDFI friendly funding specifically, then we gotta beat them at least. And so sometimes you just use the things that motivate people a little bit more so. And our neighbors to the East, they have focused in this space. And we can learn lessons from cities like Dallas and across this country. You're really in today for a treat to hear from national experts to learn more about this practice. But just no trust assured that your mayor and city council, Michael Cranes here as well, Gina Bivens, we're committed to letting our department heads that are leading this work green light and move forward. Because I think this is really just a start. And there are so many of you here that we're really gonna help push us further, share with us what's working, what's not working. And importantly, help us highlight and spearhead the entrepreneurs of color in this city that have long been ignored. And so now really is the start of that work. I'm so impressed with the staff that's made this possible. Over the next six months, we know that CDFI friendly Fort Worth will provide opportunities for everyone to participate. And you're gonna learn more about that today as well. Again, today is just a starting point. So if you feel confused, you won't, I think after this morning, we'll have more details and then continue to work together into the future. And then we're gonna bring us back together in July to really kick things off again and take stock of where we've come in the last six, seven months when your mayor time kind of runs together. So I have no idea how many months that is. I can't count anymore. In closing, I'll just say, again, as elected officials, it's really easy to stand up here. Do not let me take the credit. Don't let Michael take the credit or Gina. We had really wonderful staff that came to us with ideas during the pandemic and said, what can we do differently with these ARPA dollars? Cause we do have flexibility. And so if you leave here today, please thank those leaders, our city manager, Jay Chapa, Robert, Christina and their staffs that are here as well. Thank them for putting this forward and for recognizing the importance of bringing national leaders in this space to our community. You're about to be greeted by Mark Pinsky. I got to meet Mark a few months ago in my office. He is a breath of fresh air. He's so knowledgeable. We are truly fortunate to have him working here in Fort Worth. And I get to tease up a big announcement he's gonna make today that Bank of America has put $10 million forward towards helping us get started. And so Mark's gonna share it's absolutely. So Mark's gonna share more about that effort as well. And I have a favor to ask, especially those of you that are entrepreneurs or businesses here in the room. Us on council, we like to know your story. We wanna know what you're doing right now. And importantly, we wanna follow you through this process to see if what we're telling you is gonna work actually does work. And so please, you're gonna find ways from our office to reach out and tell your story a bit better. We all have a great network of people that we communicate with, but we wanna make sure also helping you grow your business as well. Thank you all for letting me be here this morning. A very exciting day. And I guess I get to invite Mark Pinsky to the podium. Thanks, Mark. Good morning. It is, it's great to be here with you. It's great to be in Texas. I'm from Philadelphia and I thought, how am I gonna get people from Texas to accept me a little bit, especially Fort Worth? And my claim to fame is that both my mother-in-law, my father-in-law from West Texas, from Odessa and El Paso. So that's where it's something, right? But, but, but today, this morning, I got pinned by David Cuck. I also was told that I'm gonna move here, but that's, let's see what happens with that. So what I wanna do in a minute is explain about CDFIs, help you understand more about CDFIs. And I'll be explaining tomorrow and next week and next month again and again, because it's CDFIs require you to think, to sort of forget some of the things you think you know about how the financial system works. And so I'll do a little bit about that. I'll explain a little bit about how the CDFI-friendly strategy works and how we think it's gonna bring, we think a quarter of a billion dollars in financing over five years to this community, maybe more, we'll try. I'll explain all the players are and how we put this together. And then I wanna sort of walk you through the work we've been doing, the work we're gonna be doing and how we're gonna get from here to July as I'll talk about it a little bit. Thank you, Mayor Parker. And I will talk a little bit about your role in this because the most important thing I want everybody to take away today is that this is gonna happen because all of you are gonna make it happen. Because everybody here, the several hundred people that are on Zoom joining us who couldn't be in the room today are gonna be part of this. And it's gonna take a community effort on everybody's part to really make this successful. I'm confident we'll do it, but know that you're part of it and we can't do it without you. So before I do this, I should say thank you. Thank you, Mayor Parker. Thank you City Council for deciding to take this leap into CDFI friendly world. Thank you to all, to Christina and to Robert and to Telemachus and to Veronica for their help in helping me get acclimated and learn a lot about Fort Worth. And thank you to all of you. We've talked to, in the first three months of our effort so far, we've talked about a hundred folks from all different sort of approaches to what's going on. Learned a lot. We're gonna learn a lot more. We'll talk to hundreds more as we go forward. But thank you all for making us feel welcome for making this possible. So I come from, my background is in the CDFI industry. I've worked in the CDFI industry since the late 1980s. My partner in this business, Adina Abramowitz, has worked in the CDFI industry even longer than I have. She couldn't be here today. And we have a team of folks who are CDFI professionals. One of the things we know about CDFIs, which we'll define a little bit better for you in a minute, one of the things we know about CDFIs is they can do amazing things where they're working. One of the things we also know about CDFIs is if they're not working there, nothing's gonna happen. And so this has been a big challenge for the CDFI industry for the past 10 years, since we sort of identified it as a challenge. And so a few years ago, we developed this notion of CDFI friendly America to, as we say here, is to connect underserved and under-resourced communities across the nation to the $220 billion CDFI industry. And so it's a simple concept. There's a need here. There's a demand here. There are CDFIs with financing and the capacity to provide it. We just need to connect them, right? And it's a simple concept. It's a lot of work. So let's talk about CDFIs. CDFIs, Community Development Financial Institutions, are private sector financial intermediaries that come in a bunch of different shapes and sizes and types and emphasis and types of lending that they do. But the thing that holds them together is that they are, by definition, they are committed to underserved and under-resourced people in communities. That's what they do. That is their market. And they look at that market a little bit differently than other folks. We talk about CDFIs and say that CDFIs realize opportunities in places where people only see risks. We talk about CDFIs as building assets in places where people only see liabilities. That's our worldview. That's what we do when we look into communities and we realize what the people in the communities together are capable of doing. To do that, we provide financing and we provide technical assistance. By technical assistance, it might be helping a small and entrepreneur develop the bookkeeping system that they need in order to be able to run their business. It may be helping a developer find relationships and people who can work with them in order to be able to get a multi-family housing development done. It could be all sorts of things. But what's different is we do that pre-credit before we make a loan. We do that after post-credit. We do it after we make a loan. We stay with our borrowers because one of the ways that we manage the risk of lending is by working with them one-on-one, staying close to them, helping them solve problems, helping them find solutions. Now, one of the things, one of the impact of that is that costs money. So the model of CDFIs as financial intermediaries, the business model, is to be profitable but not profit-maximizing. What that means is that the money that we might otherwise put in our pockets as an institution, we're instead using to provide that technical assistance. We're instead using to convene people and do some community building. We're instead using to address public policy issues that come up. So that's the simple model of it. There are today about 1,250 CDFIs working in all 50 states. CDFIs work in urban, rural and native communities. They've been successful in all those types of communities. And they are today, because of what's happened in the last few years, when COVID came, CDFIs became sort of the financial front lines for under-resourced communities in many ways. The PPP programs, CDFIs were helping to provide PPP financing to businesses that couldn't get in the door otherwise. And when the summer of, what was it, May of 20, when George Floyd was killed, and a lot of folks realized that we needed to provide more investment into black communities, into Latino communities, into minority communities across this country, CDFIs became sort of a go-to for private corporations, for banks, for non-bank financial institutions, for governments, local governments. And so CDFIs have seen a tremendous influx of money. And it's money that's dedicated to trying to help the communities that we care about here today. What's really important about that is to recognize that CDFIs today are sitting with a lot of money and trying to figure out where do we lend this money. What we wanna do is wave our hand and say, lend some important work. What you'll also find out today is that we have some CDFIs that are interested in doing that. And you'll get to meet a few of those. The basic model here is that CDFIs intermediate between those who are investors, regulatory-motivated investors, generally banks, mission and impact-motivated investors who might be faith-based. The history of CDFIs comes out of faith-based investing. It's another whole story. But it might be faith-based investors who might be impact investors, socially responsible investors. And then there are some young motivated investors. CDFIs do bring in some of their money through market, traditional market mechanisms. We take that money, we invest it then in, and this strategy will invest not only in small businesses from micro-businesses to growth businesses. It'll invest in affordable housing, whether that's multifamily or rental housing, single-family home ownership, supportive housing, transitional housing. CDFIs do all those things. There's a CDFI somewhere in this country who's gonna be willing to do that here. That's what we're betting and that's what we're confident of. And also the nonprofits. CDFIs provide financing to the nonprofit and not to leave them out to individuals. One of the things that we've done in the last really week and a half is we posted on the CDFI friendly Fort Worth web page a form where people in Fort Worth were interested in borrowing money. They had a need for money to let us know. We have, last I looked this morning, we had about 85 requests for financing. Not all of them are gonna get financed. Not all of them may fit, but we're gonna talk to all of them and I'll talk a little bit about how we're gonna do that as we go forward. So I talked about CDFIs and I said I'd introduce you to some. We'll see who actually made it here. But if you look up there, we have 15 CDFIs that are participating today. 15 CDFIs that say they wanna work in Fort Worth. We had before two or three, right? So we're successfully bringing together that supply of capital to meet with all of you and to be part of this conversation. So I'm just gonna, I want you to actually see them. I'm not sure who's here. So I'm just gonna go through some names of the eight CDFIs that we think are in the room today. So James Stokes, I think you're here from Alliance Lending. James is here. So what we're gonna do later, thanks James. What we're gonna do at the end of this at 11 o'clock, all of these CDFI folks are gonna have a chance to chat with all of you. So we're gonna invite you to stay around and learn from them and ask your questions more directly. Rosa Rios Valdez from BCL of Texas is Rosa. I didn't see you, I'm sorry. Marla Balonic is here from the National Association of Latino Community Asset Builders and you'll hear a little bit more from Marla about what CDFIs do in the next part of this program. Julian Mensa, I think is here from Alliance Lending. No, no, I thought I saw him. Gustavo Lasala is here from People Fund. And People Fund's had an office in Fort Worth for some time but what Gustavo allowed me to tell you is that they operate a BIPOC Small Business Accelerator and they will be opening a cohort in Fort Worth in 2022. So a resource that they're bringing with them and we're excited about that, thank you. Martice Mills from The Change Company. Martice came in from California, figure out how to do mortgage lending in Fort Worth. Well, you know how to do mortgage lending in Fort Worth. Kailin Peebles is here from William Mann Jr. CDC and many of you know Kailin and William Mann. It's the only CDFI that is headquartered here in Fort Worth. And LaShonda Renee from True Fund Financial Solutions. True Fund is, I don't know if you're national, based in New York, national, based in New York with an office, couple offices here in Texas. It's great. And I just want to run through some of the other CDFIs that are on the call that we're not able to, they can stand up if they want, we won't see them. Stacey Rohn is here from Big Austin. Eric Donnelly from Capital Plus Financial Mortgage Lender. Nick Mitchell from CDCB. Come dream, come build. Amber Connie from Dream Spring and Jermaine Mitchell also from Dream Spring is here. Isaac Elizondo is on the Zoom from Lyft Fund, which is based in San Antonio, but works I think national. Fern Ory and Florence Ludka from Oesta Corporation. Oesta is a national network of native CDFIs. So we're bringing resources focused on native populations as well. Dan Villegas from Texas Mezzanine Fund and Lenwood Long from the African American Alliance of CDFI, African American Alliance of CDFI CEOs. And you'll hear from Lenwood as well on the next panel along with Marla. So I just want you to know, these are the folks, they're here, they're showing up and they're gonna be part of the solution as we go forward. So having said that, having said about CDFIs, we heard a little bit from the mayor, we heard a little bit from Robert about Fort Worth and the opportunities it has and the challenges it faces and realizing those opportunities. I wanna explain to you in one chart why from a CDFI perspective and from a CDFI friendly perspective, Fort Worth is an obvious place where we should be working. So this chart, if you look at the bottom, you'll see that from 2005 to 2019, which is the most recent year we have, CDFI has did a little over $34 million in financing in Fort Worth. But what we're interested in, oh and if you look at the top number, the 61%, it tells you that 61% of the census tracks in Fort Worth are CDFI eligible and I won't go into the technical aspects of that, but it means that there's a significant level of economic distress in those 61 communities. So the 34 million says, oh, maybe everything's great here. There's no need for financing and we don't need CDFIs. The 61% tells you the other. And what it adds up to is that CDFIs have done $39 per person in CDFI financing in Fort Worth over those 15 years. You jump, I hear there's a little competition with Dallas, so you can look at the Dallas figure if you want, 71 to 39, bad number, right? And but look at the national level, $235 per person. So there is a lot of upside here. It's not hard to conclude that. Our job is to figure out where that is, what the priorities are, and how do we meet that? Who do we need to have around the table to do that? That's the process we're gonna go through. So we have a four stage process that we're a four phase process that we take you through. We are at the end of this first phase outreach. We will work from now through the end of July and I'll go through this in more detail, educating and organizing the community, a lot of extended outreach in the community, a lot of extended outreach with bankers, with CDFIs, with government folks, with community folks, we'll figure that out. We do a business plan, I'll explain that, and then we implement. And implementation is an ongoing thing. Part of implementation is doing financing and part of our goal is to start the financing today. We're not waiting, the goal isn't to build something so we can do financing later, the goal is to do financing. So we are looking for opportunities right now. We have a number of entrepreneurs who are already in contact with CDFIs and we have, as I said, we've heard from 85 developers, entrepreneurs, nonprofits, individuals who are looking to borrow and we are this week making connections between them and CDFIs and starting that conversation. So we expect to have some real traction around that sooner rather than later. So let me go through these phases a little bit. There will be some Q and A time later, I don't talk, oh, we'll do that. There'll be some Q and A time so please make note of your questions. The outreach phase is really, what we wanna do is introduce ourselves which we've done a lot of, as I said, we met with a hundred folks, explain what we're trying to do here, answer questions and get us to this point, get us to the point where there's enough knowledge and enough familiarity that people are willing to get together in a room which takes a little bit of extra these days to get together in a room or get together on Zoom and say, let's put our hearts and our brains together and let's figure out how to get this done. So what we're doing from a CDFI friendly perspective, CDFI friendly American perspective, and I should say, thanks for the nice words about our team. We have a team of eight people, a few of us are here today, the rest of them you'll see over time and we work hard and we're committed to sort of making ourselves sort of walk alongside you as we work in Fort Worth. So one of the things we wanna do is assess community readiness. If we go to a community as we've done and we have the opposite response to what we heard from Mayor Parker, we get a response from a mayor who says, there's no problem here, we don't need you. We don't need that, right? I mean, we'd like to help the people in the community there, but that's not the kind of environment where we're likely to be successful, right? We wanna identify key issues and challenges. We wanna understand, for example, a big question here is, well, why is there only one CDFI headquartered here and only a couple others that are working here? Why is that? Look at those numbers, why is that? And the answer tends to be that CDFIs get really consumed in what they're doing and it's hard for them to look in different geographies. We're gonna try and make it easier for them to look in different geographies. We will make it easier for them. And we wanna introduce CDFI friendly to Fort Worth, which we've been doing and we'll continue to do. What we've learned, the potential is real. We came in here thinking, maybe we'd find out there was some explanation for those numbers that didn't make sense to us and that would tell us, isn't gonna work here. We think there's enormous potential here. We think it's true in the room. We can feel it as we go around and talk to people. We just have to put it all together. We also could confirm without a doubt that there's demand for all types of financing. I said we do business, housing, nonprofit, individual, the full range of financing. There are 1,250 CDFIs out there. If somebody wants to borrow money, there's probably a CDFI who's done lending for that somewhere in this country. The CDFI industry is one of the best things about it is it's an incredibly collaborative and sharing industry. And so we know that if we have a question about something, we can go out and find the answer from somebody who's doing that. And the commitments here have been really inspiring and overwhelming. Again, we heard from the mayor, we've heard, we know city council, which was kind enough to allocate this money. We know from Christina and Robert, but everybody we've talked to, people are really committed to making this work because it's the right thing to do for the community and the court work. So that ends really today. And we go into the second phase, which will get us through July, right? And this phase, we call it education and organizing for two reasons. The first is we want to develop CDFI literacy here. I said, I joked a little bit earlier, I'm going to be explaining that CDFIs again and again and again. I'm going to be explaining CDFIs again and again, and we all are. Because it's different than what you think it is. Your mind goes back to other things you've heard about finance. So we will spend a lot of time just making sure people understand what CDFIs are and what they are. At the same time, we're going to be building coalitions and we'll build coalitions within sectors. So for example, I'll talk about this a little bit later, we're going to bring together all the bankers who are willing to join us in a sort of, I can't call it an organizing meeting because bankers may not like that, a briefing meeting where we can get them together and see how they can work together. And I'll tell you a little bit more about Bank of America's commitment. Their commitment is to get this started so that other banks have some place to participate and join with, right? That's what we're trying to do. But we also want to make, we want to, in the process of doing deals, there's a magic thing that happens where you get bankers who care about their community together with people in the community who are trying to get something to get done together with CDFIs who sometimes sort of bridge gaps and they close loops that people can't get through and suddenly things become possible. And that conversation, which will happen, we hope hundreds of times between now and July is really sort of the magic sauce of what we want to get done. So we'll build coalitions. We want to agree on priorities. When we come back together in July, the number one thing we'll be able to test what we've heard from people as we think the priorities. Are the priorities entrepreneurs of color? Are the priorities nonprofits? I can make a guess at that, but we want to hear that from the community. We want the community to buy that and own that as a way of going forward. And of course there's capacity and with breath to do all those things, but we need to give some direction to this. Can't be just do everything, right? We'll try, but can't be just do everything. And we will be in this period very aggressively trying to match borrowers or people would like to borrow or businesses would like to borrow with CDFIs and vice versa. We have 15 CDFIs involved now. We hope they all find ways to do transactions here. They wouldn't be doing this if there weren't transactions here that they wanted to do, but there'll be other CDFIs as well. We know there are others that are interested. And there are some of the largest CDFIs. This is just in case anybody knows something for me who do really large commercial real estate deals and they call me every month or two and say, you have any deals, $30, $40 million commercial real estate deals? Well, I'm hoping for it where it has some fun because I haven't found them yet. So we will come back together in July and that meeting and Christina remembers when we did this in South Bend, that meeting is really an exciting meeting because that's where it all comes together for everybody. They get to see the deals that get done. They get to understand them. And we will literally have conversations around tables about deals that no one alone can do. And they'll figure out together around the table how those financing is gonna get done. And everybody will leave with a much deeper personal understanding of why the CDFI friendly strategy matters. So we haven't scheduled that yet, but we're working on it. We do business planning and we think business plans are essential. We're in the finance business. You need to know where the, not just where the dollars are, but where the pennies are. We wanna think this through in a way that we know exactly how this is supposed to work. And anybody who's ever done a business plan knows it never works the way you think it's gonna work in a business plan. But we wanna have put the thought and the effort, not just CDFI friendly America, the community working on this. And so we use business planning as a very iterative process. We go round and round to different folks. We go around to investors and to funders. We go around to community, to businesses, to borrowers, to the city and say, this is how we think it's gonna work. These numbers make sense to you. This is what it means. It means we're expecting you to do this or we need these folks to do that. Is that realistic? Is that gonna happen? And it's an exhaustive process, but it's exactly what it should be. We want people to feel like this plan is something they're ready to act on. We need everybody around the table to feel like this is a plan they're ready to act on. We need them to affirm their support. If we're getting a lot of lukewarm support, we know we're gonna have trouble going forward. And we wanna be transparent, not just because this is public money and the city's entrusted us to do this, because everybody in the community has a right to know how this is supposed to work and what's gonna happen because it isn't gonna happen exactly that way. And we're gonna have to go back and look at those numbers and say, where do we get this right? Where do we get this wrong? And what are we gonna do about it? So there will be a business planning process while we're doing deals, while the conversations continue, and implementation. And implementation really starts, in a sense, today and tomorrow because we will be doing financing. But let me be really clear. Right now, CDFI-friendly Fort Worth is a commitment and it's a brand. By the middle of this year, and we expect to seat a board for a new nonprofit called CDFI-friendly Fort Worth, we will hire an executive, the board will hire an executive director, we'll work with the organization to set up the right kinds of policies and the right kinds of procedures so that it can operate the way it needs to. One of the things about that organization, which I'll be glad to talk about in Q&A, I'm not gonna, otherwise not gonna go in a lot of detail, is we will set up as part of that entity, as part of that nonprofit, basically a small revolving loan fund, like a CDFI, but a small fund that we call an enhancement fund. And the main purpose of that enhancement fund is to be able to lend a long side for bankers' parry pursue, to be able to lend a long side of CDFIs who don't have a full-time presence here. And the simplest way to explain why that matters to a CDFI that's somewhere else is that if you're a lender from, say, Boston and you're lending for a cooperative development, cooperative housing development, for example, and the lead developer has a life event of some sort, has a sick relative, has get sick themselves, has to do something, it's gonna be, that could knock the project off the rails. And if you're a lender, it matters a lot, if you know about that on day one, rather than day 31. On day 31, you've got a big problem and you're gonna have to try to figure out how to work this out. On day one, you can, as a CDFI, you can make adjustments and say, okay, this happens. We're just gonna suspend payments for two months or we're gonna bring in the developer we know from somewhere else to keep it going or whatever it is. But that lost time is a huge risk. And so the idea is that if there is, if CDFI friendly Fort Worth is investing alongside that CDFI in Boston, they're gonna know much sooner than Boston's gonna know. And they're gonna, and their money is at the same risk position as Boston. So they're gonna have the same reaction. Oh my gosh, gotta do something about this, right? All we want them to do is to call the folks in for the CDFI in Boston or wherever the CDFI is. Because CDFIs are really good, they do this all the time. But that enhancement fund is really critical. It has plays another role as well, which is the enhancement fund allows the board to set priorities. Suppose the board says, we really need to work. I'll use the same example. We really need to prioritize entrepreneurs of color. We're gonna use our enhancement fund in 2023 to go to support lenders who are CDFI lenders who are financing entrepreneurs of color. 2024, maybe we want to do affordable housing, right? And so it gives the board in the community a measure of control. And that's really important because this organization has to be, the community has to be in control of this. And we can talk more about that as we need to, but that's a critical thing. So this is a timeline really, just so you can sort of play out how things are fitting together. Our agreement is that we work with you through April of 23 just to make sure everything's up and running and you're gonna hit some speed bumps and we'll work with you on that. But the truth of the matter is from a CDFI-friendly America perspective, we're only as good as our CDFI-friendly communities that we've worked with. And it's your pride, it's CDFI-friendly Port Worth is yours, it's not ours. But we care a lot about how it does. So we'll keep working with you. We're still working with some of the CDFI-friendly communities we worked with years ago. Not, you know, we're not gonna get paid for that. We're gonna work with you because your success is our success. So that's a timeline. All right, as I said earlier, it's really important that everybody be able to participate in this and that everybody participate in this from every perspective. Maybe some that we're not even thinking about, but let me summarize this. Community residents and organizations, this is critical. We don't know what we don't know. You know what's going on in your community. You know what your community needs. City council members know what your community needs. We need to know that, right? We need to hear as much as we can. So we need to be in the community. So I wanna be really emphasized. We said the outreach period ends today. Outreach doesn't end today. Outreach goes on just like it's been going on. Marvel Williams here from the CDFI-friendly America team is leading our outreach efforts and we'll be reaching out on April 30th of 2023. We'll still be doing that. But you can also think about whether you wanna organize events. You wanna bring people together in a bite event. I just mean bring people together in a room, bring people together on Zoom. We're not, we're here a lot. We're not here all the time, but keep us talking to folks, keep us hearing what you're hearing. That's what we really need. And you'll hear about deals. Now you may not be in a community, you may not know what's a good deal or bad deal. We don't care. We wanna hear about the deals. We'll figure out whether we can find a way to do it. We like to say, CDFIs don't say no, they say not yet, right? And so we wanna figure out, we wanna talk to people who are interested in financing or think they need financing and bring that expertise to bear and try and figure out how to help people get across the finish line. Public officials and educators, outreach events, we wanna meet with anyone you think we should be meeting with, small group, large group. And we know, we know that you hear about opportunities for financing. And again, they can be unformed, they can be just an idea. We wanna know about them. The more we know, the more successful Fort Worth is gonna be. Banks and bankers, banks and bankers are really critical. It's really important to note that banks are the primary source of financing for CDFIs. Anymore, the CDFI industry is $220 billion. Banks are major partners. And then we're talking about the biggest banks in the country. We're talking about small banks, community banks, regional banks, super regional banks. Thank you, Mayor. No, no, no, thank you. And so we need to figure out how to come together. We will be having a February, in February, we will have a planning session to sort of talk about how that can work. There are opportunities to refer deals. There are deals that bankers try a long time to make work and just can't make work. That's time to come to the CDFI. And maybe they can be, the CDFIs can do it together. And there can be a collaboration. When I talked about the enhancement fund, we need banks to invest in the CDFI, the Fort Worth CDFI enhancement fund. And we hope that there are ways that we find for you to partner with CDFIs that we haven't yet envisioned. So there is absolutely a role for all the banks and we look forward to working with you. Same thing with philanthropy. Philanthropy often finds that CDFIs can bring a whole nother dimension to align with their philanthropic strategies and what they're trying to do. So we wanna make sure we're engaged with you and understand what you're trying to do. We may be able to help you connect with other things we're hearing about in the community, but we probably most likely can connect you with CDFIs who can work with you and you can find a collaborate. And I should be really clear and upfront, CDFI-friendly Fort Worth, it's a one-time investment to set this up. There's a little bit of carrying cost we need to cover. We'll earn a little bit of money off the enhancement fund. It's a small amount of money, but we are gonna need to do that. And we will do a separate session with philanthropy to talk about how we can work together and what your priorities are so we can understand that. February is gonna be a time for a lot of planning and gathering, to figure things out. So prospective borrowers. It's all about prospective borrowers, right? If we're not lending money, CDFIs don't belong here, right? And so that means we need to talk to everyone who is interested, thinks they may be interested, wants to be interested, wants to find out what it would take to qualify. That engagement is really, really, really critical. And as I said, we put something up. We've had a couple of mentions in the media which has been helpful, but we put something up on the website inviting people to tell us what they needed. High demand for mortgages, high demand for small business finance, but demand for all sorts of other kinds of financing as well. We'll keep that up and we'll keep that coming, but more and more our referrals, our deal flow will come because we're out talking with you or you're reaching out to us to be able to sort of make that happen. But I would say to potential borrowers, this is what we need from you. We need you to have any financial information you have. Not everybody has CDFIs routinely financed folks who don't have monthly financials. That's not a concern. What we want you to do is bring what you have, we'll meet you where you are and we'll help to figure out what it takes to get you into financing, assuming it's the right thing for you. Bring your questions. I'm sure you have a lot of them. We want to know them. That's what we do. We answer them. We'll figure out whether we can help you with them and bring your dreams and plans. One of the things that CDFIs face a lot is people are discouraged. They're discouraged because they haven't been able to get their ideas going, right? They haven't been able to get, maybe they've tried it with a bank, maybe they haven't even tried with the bank, but they feel stuck, right? And CDFIs want you to succeed. And so they want to know what you're really, what you really aspire to do. Whether it's owning a home, whether it's starting a business, whether it's, you know, lots of things don't go into all the details, but so that's really important. Let me actually use, I'm going to go off a little bit now just to talk about CDFIs and what we, so far the 15 CDFIs that have come together and we've reached out to about 50 CDFIs so far. The 15 CDFIs that have come together, come together because they understand, they see the numbers, they get, there's a potential market here. They see that it could fit with what they're doing. They're willing to be part of this and figure out how to make it happen. Some see big opportunities, some just see some opportunities with some questions. There are two things that are going to be incentives for CDFIs to get into the market, to play in the market, if you will, to lend in the market in 2022. The first, which I'll talk about is what the mayor mentioned. Bank of America is very CDFI, puts a big emphasis on CDFIs in its strategy and today has a $2 billion portfolio of CDFI loans. They make two CDFIs and that's what they're interested in. And so in talking to them about this, in fact, before I didn't have to go out to them, they watched CDFI friendly and they liked to be in those communities, they reached out to us and what a couple of days ago, what they told me was, they are gonna commit as a start and they emphasize as a start $10 million of 10 year, that's long-term, 1% that's cheap debt. Up to 10 years, but 10 year debt, two CDFIs, not to CDFI friendly and forward, two CDFIs for each dollar they loan into the community. So if a CDFI makes, say $100,000 loan, right? If they're a customer of Bank of America, theoretically the next day, after they close, they show they close, the next day Bank of America will wire them $100,000 with the legal papers to follow. And it's money that because it's longer term and because it's cheaper than most of the money they're currently managing, they actually are, they have a better balance sheet. They're stronger the next day because of the loan they made, besides the fact that they have a good loan that they made. So that's the model. We'll be briefing CDFIs about that when we get CDFIs together for another. The second thing we're gonna do, city council had the foresight when they approved the financing for this to include in there some money to create incentives for CDFIs to lend in Fort Worth in 2022, because again, we wanna get off to a fast start. We wanna make sure that the needs are real and current. We wanna make sure we're responding to them. So what CDFI friendly America is gonna do is provide an origination fee to CDFIs of 2%, origination fees are usually 1%. 2% origination fees for each loan that a CDFI makes in Fort Worth in 2022. And we'll do that for roughly the first $20 million of financing. So we're doing everything we can here to make it easy for folks to be successful here. Let me just sort of wrap up and then we'll go to Q&A. I wanna really be clear. This is what I said before, this is because this is the end of the outreach phase doesn't mean it's the end of outreach. We're just gonna ramp up from here. And we have more ways to do it now. We've now been in contact with all of you. We're gonna be doing more outreach. We want your help. You invite us, we'll find a way to show up. We'll be there, we'll listen, we'll talk, we'll explain. We're gonna do these information sessions. I call them different things at different times with bankers, with philanthropists, with CDFIs, with community organizations. So a number of the community organizations we've met with have said, will you come back and talk with our broader membership? Of course we will, right? So we wanna explain this now and we wanna get people working together in deals and transactions with each other. And we will be doing lots of networking, not just us. I know that some of the CDFIs that are here who can get to Fort Worth relatively easily will be back. They'll wanna come around. They'll wanna meet with folks, right? So we're gonna use them. We'll leverage the fact that they're interested in doing transactions here. And again, I wanna say we introduced some CDFIs before. They're gonna stay at, when we're done here at 11 o'clock, they're gonna stay and answer questions for you. And for everybody who's on Zoom, we're gonna do virtual networking sessions. So you can meet with your CDFIs as well. We're sorry we couldn't include everybody. So this is what we're gonna be busy with in the next few months. We'll come back together in July. And I'm gonna stop there, hoping I've given you a broad overview and still have your attention. And we'll open this to questions. I think we have a couple of mics if people have questions. And it can be about anything that I've talked about. CDFIs, CDFI friendly, Fort Worth. I can't answer questions about Fort Worth. But the mic. Oh, it's on the channel. Thank you. Marva, are you doing questions? Oh, Marva. We're gonna take questions from the Zoom as well. Do you have a question from Zoom? So yes, I have a question from Zoom. So they would like to know how philanthropy can play a role in CDFI friendly, Fort Worth. What is the role of foundations? That's a great question. Foundations and philanthropy generally, they can work alongside CDFIs. In other words, there may be things that the foundation is trying to achieve in a particular community where their grant funding would be aided by the fact that there's a CDFI coming along and lending alongside them. That's one possibility. They can provide grants to CDFI friendly, Fort Worth, both for the city has invested a million dollars in helping to capitalize the enhancement fund. The more grant money we bring in, the more we can grow that fund and the more we can do with it. So there's an opportunity to do that. And some foundations make either mission related or program related investments where they make the low market loans and they can be part of that. They can lend to CDFIs. They could lend to CDFI friendly or they could learn to do that alongside CDFIs where instead of making grants in the community, they may be able to make loans into the community. And there are different reasons that different foundations like to do that. There's a lot of interest in the philanthropic sector nationally, certainly, in using their resources to provide creative lending and flexible lending. Thank you. Yes. Regarding the average loan amount. So you said you do all types of financing. So specifically for real estate, what is your average loan amount and what type of criteria do you look for for those type of borrowers? So if you would ask anyone CDFI, they'd give you an average amount. When I talk across many CDFIs, I'd say, there are lots of different averages, right? So I would worry less about that. Whatever amount it is, there's a CDFI that can do it. Whether we can get them here is our challenge, but if it's a good project, I think we can get them here. And you can talk to individual CDFIs in the networking later and get their specific numbers. But CDFIs will do loans, you know, as I said, there are CDFIs that are willing to do loans of 30 or $40 million for real estate. So a lot. Generally, I think real estate lending, I don't know, CDFIs may tell me otherwise. Generally real estate, depending on what kind of real estate it is, there'd be anything from a few hundred thousand dollars to several million dollars. But the most important thing about that is you should figure out what you need. Your job isn't to figure out how they're going to fund it. Your job is to figure out what you need. Our job is to figure out how do we find someone who can meet you with what you're trying to do and invest in your sort of dream and your aspiration. So criteria, they're going to look for any financial information they can get. If it's a complicated development deal that, you know, for real estate, the demand, the need for pretty refined numbers gets bigger, you know, or higher. But they want to find out where you are. And if you're not sure what they need, then let's talk to a CDFI first and they can help you identify what you need. CDFIs generally land on cash flow. But what I mean by that is, they want to know if you're able to repay the loan. They're less, you know, credit score. They might look at credit score. That's probably not the main thing they're going to decide on some day. They're going to look at your balance sheet and how much your net worth is. They're probably not going to land on that. They're going to look at how the deal actually works and whether it's going to, whether you're going to be able to make payments. That's ultimately what CDFIs are focused on. They recognize that different people have different capacity for different reasons. So they don't generally get hung up on that. Some may be more particular than others. Again, you know, we can talk more, depends on the particular type of deal and the particular thing that you're trying to do. And we can try to find the CDFI that can match that. But that's our job is to match you. Our job isn't to try and fit you into a box. Is that helpful? Great, thanks. And other CDFIs may have more to add on that later. Dropping things in. We have another question. There is another question from Zoom. So what kinds of services can CDFIs provide to small businesses in addition to loans? Are there also technical assistance support? In small business lending, in particular technical assistance is a really key part of what CDFIs do. And so CDFIs will, again, similar to the answer I just gave, will meet the small business where it is and figure out what they needed to do in order to be successful as a business. And if they can be successful as a business, we can figure out how to be successful as a lender to the business. So it could be, as I said earlier, it could be just basic bookkeeping. It could be business operations. There's one of the interesting things that's happened in the CDFI space over the last 15 or 20 years is lenders who lend to medical practices and help them revamp entirely their procedures so they can see more people more quickly, higher quality. And so they can be that kind of intensive involvement, but generally, what are the few things that a startup business or a growing business needs in order to be able to be successful? Or what are they stumbling on? Maybe they've been in business for a few years and they're really struggling. And CDFIs will work to find the solutions to that. Do we have time for another question? Oh, in the back here, please. I generally wouldn't. I like it when philanthropy gives away money. And so I'm all in favor of that, but it may be that there's a part of a deal that someone is looking for both grant money and debt and the foundation says we can come up with some or all the, the grant fund part gets funded and they wanna lend money. Sometimes borrowers wanna do that. A lot of times borrowers wanna do that. In addition, there are foundations who want to do that. There's a big movement in this country among foundations to do program related investing, mission related investing. So they're looking for opportunities, do that. I'm always in favor of giving the grant if you can, but if they wanna do it differently, that can be a useful tool. But it's a good question. If I suggested make loans before you make grants, I don't mean to. So thank you. Yeah. Mike. Just say thank you. So question, having served as a board member on the CDFI local CDFI, will you man for a minute? The motivation and support and encouragement to our local banking community is CRA Community Reinvestment Act, something that they get credit for those banks who serve as partners in CDFIs. Do they get credit for CRA credits to support and encourage them to be partners in this program? Great question. Thank you. Yes. In going back to 19, when the bank regulators changed the CRA rules in 1995, they joined CDFIs and CRA together. And so an engagement, whether it's a loan or a grant or whatever with the CDFI qualifies as an activity. So yes, that's right. And there are a lot of them. A lot of banks do it for CRA purposes. A lot of banks do it for purposes beyond CRA purposes as well. So there are lots of ways for banks to work with CDFIs. Thank you for that. Yes. For nonprofits that serve distressed neighborhoods, we noticed that businesses that aren't successful in a distressed neighborhood will cause more distress. How can nonprofits be part of this process? How do you see our operations being able to make sure these businesses don't fell in these neighborhoods? When you said cause more distress, you mean fail? Is that what you mean in business? A lot of these businesses are small businesses when they fail to cause more distress inside the neighborhoods. And as a nonprofit in these neighborhoods, we don't have the exact way of addressing that particular issue outside of working with the city and working with the chamber. So how does CDFI play a role? That's a complicated question because it depends a lot on what's happening there. I mean, I could assume things, but I don't know. CDFIs that wanna lend to small businesses in the community are gonna wanna work with anchor institutions, a nonprofit could be an anchor institution to figure out what they need. So I don't know what kind of nonprofit you may be with or you may be talking about. But if it's a nonprofit that does credit counseling or something like that, there's a real tremendous sort of synergy that you can put together in doing that. And it also may be that a CDFI because it's working across the city, knows of someone else in another part of town who can bring something into that community can help sort of foster sort of a relationship to provide that. But that's probably a question I at least from my perspective, I'd love to talk about more and hear a little more detail. And again, I welcome all the CDFIs in the room to help me with that. But thank you, let's talk some more. What would be CDFI strategy for financing social enterprises? What's the strategy? There are CDFIs who do that every day. I mean, they love to do that, right? And so there are CDFIs who finance businesses that are profit-maximizing businesses that are, right, and that's all they're focused on. There are CDFIs that focus businesses that have a social purpose as well as a financial outcome. And we're very, we are businesses like that. That's what CDFIs are, right? I mean, again, they're profitable, but not profit-maximizing. And they give up some of their profit in order to sort of create a social benefit of some sort. So again, we just need to meet them. We find the CDFI that's interested in doing that. That's not a big reach for us. If that's, I'm not sure what more I could say about that other than that's a sweet spot for a lot of CDFIs. So we'd love to know more about it. If we haven't heard from you, we'd love to hear from you. So maybe one more question, if not, I'll wrap up one more. So how is CDFI-friendly Fort Worth funded? I heard you speak about the investment that the banks will make into the fund, but will that cover all of the funding requirements for the nonprofit? Not going forward. CDFI, the city council provided $3 million. None of that is directly operating support. A million of it is for capital into the enhancement fund. So that will generate some earnings that's depending on interest rate environments and how active the CDFI is. And it will have to raise a little bit of money on top of that from philanthropic sources. And generally, we find that banks are eager to do that once they realize the benefit they get out of this. I mean, banks will see a lot more deals and have a lot more opportunity to participate in a lot of things for CRA purposes, but also for non-CRA purposes, because CDFIs are there. So the concept has to prove itself out, but I think my experience, bankers are really smart about this and they begin to see how this happens. I literally can remember the call I got from someone, it was actually a city banker in like 1996, who said, I suddenly realized like how good you are for our business. It was the first time a banker ever said that to me. And you're basically what she said was, you're serving our under-business so that they can graduate and become our customers. That's a great thing. And that's great for Fort Worth. That's great for the entrepreneurs or whatever. So let me just thank you all for the questions. I'm around and love to talk more than anybody has questions. I just want to end with a reflection on a quote that was written almost as far in the early 90s by a financial writer, a guy by the name of James Grant, if anybody knows of him, it's because of how conservative he is. But he said something that stuck with me for a long time. He said, the credit is a financial transaction with a moral lineage. And what he meant by that is that no one makes a loan to someone unless they believe in that person's future. No one makes a loan to a business unless they believe in that business's future. No one makes a loan in a community unless they believe in that community's future. And that is what CDFIs are trying to bring to Fort Worth. So thank you. I look forward to talking more and learning more with you over the coming year. And I'm now going to turn it over to a creative panel, Veronica Villegas from Diversity and Inclusion is going to lead this panel and I'll hand it to her. Thank you. Thank you, Marge. Hello everyone, I'm Veronica Villegas with the Diversity and Inclusion Department for the city of Fort Worth. And I'm delighted to be here with you this morning to help shed a little more light on exactly what CDFIs can do for Fort Worth. And to do that, I'd like to welcome two very special and knowledgeable guests who live and breathe this work every day, Marla Balonic, president and CEO of the National Association of Latino Community Asset Builders who joins us in person and Lenwood Long Sr, president and CEO of African American Alliance and CBFI CEOs who joins us virtually from Wake Forest, North Carolina. So let's get right into it. Mark did an amazing job of explaining CDFIs and kind of giving us a one-on-one on that and then walking us through the CDFI friendly process. But I would like to hear from each of you exactly why do you think CDFIs matter in Black and Latino communities? And Marla, we'll start with you. Thank you so much. And first of all, thank you to Mark for having me here. I'm really, really pleased to be a part of this. And I got so, so excited hearing about the initiative in greater detail just now. Having dedicated my life to this field, I think there's such an important place for this work, not only in Fort Worth, but across the United States and beyond. So just wanted to preface with that. But in terms of why CDFIs are important in Black and Latino communities, I will speak just from my own personal experience working primarily in community-based CDFIs and now running a national CDFI is representation matters. And so I think CDFIs, unlike commercial banks, are deeply entrenched in communities they understand in a different way the needs and the pressing urgent issues in a community. And I think it's so, so important for an entrepreneur or an individual to walk in and see someone that is reflective of them and their experience and have the cultural competency to serve them in a comfortable way, in a way that includes sort of every aspect of the person's life experience. And I'll just give sort of a more pertinent example. I think cultural competency as it pertains to the Latino community is not having someone at the reception desk that speaks Spanish. It's really much deeper than that and it's having individuals on staff who have lived the immigrant experience, have lived the experience of growing up in an urban or rural setting. And the exact example that I like to give is that if a Latina were to walk into a CDFI and be requesting a loan, there would be a chair next to her for her to put her purse onto because in the Latino community, we don't put our purse on the floor. That means that your wealth is going to escape out of the purse and no longer be in your possession. And so that little nuance while it may seem frivolous is just indicative of all of these tiny little details that make someone feel at home, make someone feel like they're being cared for and all of us, no matter what our background should have access to that type of treatment. Thank you, Marla. Lenwood. Sure. Thank you. I hope you can hear me well. I apologize for being a virtue but I really enjoyed what I appeared and want to commend the city for one, taking on this daunting task of working to ensure that CDFIs are that you become a CDFI-friendly community. And I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to Texas, Mesa, Maine, Victor Elmo who is right across the street in Dallas. Oh, by the way, is not a couple of projects in Fort Worth. One being Rhino and then the other one is the Union Gospel Mission Project in Fort Worth which is obviously a new market-type transaction. But also, I stationed Roan of Big Austin who are Stan Tolles, Caitlyn People, certainly a man from the Development Corporation and Marla Mitchell and Houston Development. And so I am within our membership where Texas strong, as I would say. But look, I think it's critically important that Black-led CDFIs be engaged in this effort in this area of inclusion is more than just being at the table. But I think it's important that one word that Marla used and I like is representation but I take it to another word, and that word being trust. It's important in transaction that there'll be trust between Dylinda and Dabara or the organization and Dabara and the organization has knowledge of the community because it is within that community that trust build and develop. So many times that lack of trust is because of lack of personal relationship which brings to the other word and that is relationship. So I think in Black-led CDFIs as well as Latino-led CDFIs you will find that relationship and that trust coming from one knowledge of the community, knowledge of the people within the community. And more importantly, knowledge of the needs and this travel of the businesses within those communities. And so I think all those factors are very important when you're looking at how do you make sure that communities that are underserved, are served and are represented more than just at the table but also have the slice of the pie and the allocation of resources because we suffer from the lack of resources. So that's my response to that question and thank you so much again for having me a part of this panel virtually. What's different about how CDFIs engages communities and applicants? Can you hear me? Yeah, okay. So I think the main difference is that CDFIs really look at a full picture of either an entrepreneur or someone who's putting together an affordable housing deal or the myriad other ways that CDFIs engage with communities. Typically banks have hard and fast rules and so if you don't fit into that credit box there's not a lot of room for exploring sort of how you might work together. And so I was trying to think of analogies as in preparing for this and the analogy that I thought of was if you were to be judged on your ability to run a household by your teenage son's bedroom. That is what the difference is. So a CDFI would kind of look at your whole household. They would look at your kitchen. They would look at your bedroom. They wouldn't just judge you from that one aspect or that one kind of blemish on your household. For anyone who has a teenage son I have the wonder of having two and regardless of what I do it's really kind of out of my control and it is an extraordinary circumstance that I don't believe to be representative of my personal ability to manage a household. And so I think all of us can relate to the fact that we have had instances in our lives that may have affected our credit profile may have affected how we've managed our businesses or even our households. And so a CDFI unlike a commercial bank that is held to sort of more stringent restrictions may not be able to be looking at that full picture or have as deep as a relationship to Lenwood's point earlier with the borrower that a CDFI can have is just a much closer, more intensive, more broad viewpoint. And I think also this idea of meeting people where they are, this is not very grammatically correct but I think that CDFIs meet people where they are and meet people where they're at. So it's not only sort of where you are in your credit lifetime but it's also sort of physically where you are. They are based deeply, deeply in communities. When I worked for a community-based CDFI we actually would go into businesses to provide services not expect a business owner to step outside of their busy business to come meet us at our offices that might not be convenient for them. And so I think that distinction is really important as well. It's not a nine to five business that we're expecting people to come to and put their best face forward. We will come to where the individual is. Excellent analogy, thank you so much. Lenwood, do you have anything to add or expand about? Yeah, yeah, I... Engaging with CDFIs engaged differently with communities and applicants. Sure, I think Marlowe nailed it really, I would add. First of all, let me say I just saw a chat where the question was raised about Native Americans. And certainly they are very much engaged, very much to be included. And we are always advocating for underserved communities which is a transaction nature of CDFIs. But I may add that in terms of looking at there's always say that the phrase personal banker was not really a banking term. It really came about a description of the way CDFIs approach to dealing with customers are borrowers, are potential borrowers, are those that are working with them to get a loan. But there are two C's that are very important. And one of them, obviously it's credit but they look beyond the credit and sort of do a deep dive to find out what's happening within the credit that may have impacted credit score. But I think there's another important word that important word is character. And I think when they began to look at the character piece they began to really get in to get to know you and began to become more comfortable with saying why that perhaps given credit score are some other factors, of course, the ability to pay back the debt is very important. But just looking at the fact that doing that deep dive they found out why perhaps there was an issue with the credit. And so it's that complete picture that personalized touch, that detouch, greater than the Midas touch that CDFI gives in looking and assessing loans. So that's what I would add, but it is a great question. Final question, and Lynn, if you don't mind I'll ask you to respond first. What would you like to see CDFIs achieve in Fort Worth based on what you've heard today? Well, that's a great question. First, obviously one of my great concerns and I'm not apologetic in saying it is that I want to make sure there is inclusion of all aspects of the community, specifically black and brown communities and businesses that there are opportunities when you look at who's around the table that is really a picture of Fort Worth, a picture of Texas, demographically, social and economically. And that if we're gonna be about the business of change of the economy of this nation, then we're gonna have to really come to grips of understanding that there is a racial wealth gap. The pathway to dealing and addressing that racial wealth gap is the ability to put resources in the communities that are impacted by the issues and problems that we know too well, too long and it's time for us. I think Fort Worth can be a model, can be a place where you can send a message, hey, this is the way we do it. And so that's what I hope with that at the end of the day, the spotlight will be on Fort Worth for the great thing that's done and bringing capital and people together in a very inclusive and dynamic manner. Thank you. And Marla, what would you like to see CDFI as a chief of Fort Worth? I would love to see this momentum continue and kind of spiral out of control. So I think any of us who have worked in nonprofit fields know that money begets money. So when you're fundraising, you need kind of that initial validation from a funder that then all of a sudden, everyone wants to join the party. And I think you all are in that position right now having CDFI-friendly America come, having your elected officials come to the table, having your nonprofits, your entrepreneurs, your developers all here in cahoots to move this forward. And so I would really love to see more investment come in. I commend Bank of America for coming in. And I think you'll see hopefully more sort of copycat experiences coming through with other banks and other philanthropists wanting to become a part of this movement and this initiative. And so really that's what I would like to see. I think the collateral effects will be that there will be an incredible impact on the local economy and incredible impact on communities where there hasn't been typically an infusion of capital and that will trickle down in the best ways to individuals. We always, when I was working in entrepreneurial lending and small business lending, you focus on the entrepreneur but there are ripple effects to the individuals that that entrepreneur hires all the way down to the child of that entrepreneur. And so really, really wanna see that happening over time and I'm very interested and excited to see how it plays out. Thank you, Marla. Now we'll take a few minutes, see if there's any questions in the room and if we have any questions online. Okay, we have a question right over here, great. Hi, good morning everyone. My name is Elisa Stibbage and I'm with 713 Enterprises. And this is really, really nice but I'm a numbers person. So I want both your entity as well as the other entity from the gentleman that was speaking. What is the current state? Like where are we in terms of entrepreneurs? How are we meeting those goals in terms of lending? I mean, it's nice to come out and say, hey, this is what we wanna do but if we don't have execution and make people be accountable for those numbers then how are we gonna get there? So I just wanna ask the question, how are we gonna measure, engage the process in progress? I don't mean to punt but that might be a better question for Mark. I'll just speak for my own organization that I'm representing today in the sense that and I wanna clarify this for anyone who wants to network later that we actually lend to nonprofits. So my past career experience has been in small business lending but the entity that I'm representing today helps capitalize loan funds for nonprofit CDFIs to then lend out. So I'm kind of a step removed. I can just say, I'm committed and my organization is committed to support CDFIs or even aspiring CDFIs to lay down roots here and to lend here but I will sort of have somewhat of a more indirect participation on behalf of my organization but I don't know, I'm assuming that part of the business planning process is projections as to the number of loans that are gonna be made, the dollars that will be lent and I think part of CDFI friendly engagement is going to be around holding people accountable to those commitments. And Mark, I'm happy to work with you to even project our own now cabs investment here in terms of time and results. I don't know if Len would have anything to say. Yeah, yeah, I do. I think it's a great question, but two things. One is that this effort, this initiative just beginning and I'm quite sure that at the end of the day when you began to crunch the numbers it would really mirror the national pattern. For example, the last data I saw that was the data that was in 2018 but CDFI's across this nation had really invested $75 billion in lending and housing creating over 1.56 million jobs. So if you just look at investments there's a trite record of doing investment in communities. If you look at the job creation is there too. So what I would, I'm encouraged that the field is set that you have a number of CDFI's here that would come to Fort Worth who are really some are doing business here but with this infusion of cash you'll see I think increased businesses you will see increased employment and there'll be other data metrics that will come from this. So I'm excited about it and I would be really surprised if a year from now given where we are starting from that Fort Worth would be able to say look because of the partners we were able to bring together and the infusion of cash that multiplied probably four to one has done great things and Fort Worth. So that would be my response to that question. Sure. Do we have any questions online? We do. Great, Donna. So you've talked about alternative credit underwriting for CDFI's. Can you talk a little bit more about that and if you don't use credit scores what do you use to evaluate the credit of small businesses and others? I'll take a first crack and then, okay. Unless Lenwood if you wanna go first you're welcome it's I don't wanna. And you got the fact, go ahead, I'm good. So I'll say, you know, Lenwood made a point earlier that part of it is character based lending. So over time working with a borrower a relationship is built, you know there are several opportunities across the process of underwriting a deal where a borrower can be, you know as forthcoming and honest as possible. And I think sometimes when there's a breakdown there that, you know, could result in an alone not materializing because it is about that trust between the borrower and the lender. I think also, you know, we will be looking at a full picture. So if there is an issue with a credit score maybe it was kind of an extraordinary event that no one anticipates happening knock on wood again. So a medical emergency, a divorce, sort of one of these lifetime events that, you know, aren't recurring but that's still put a blemish on a credit score. Also they'll be looking at the performance, you know if it's a small business I'll just use that as an example the performance of the small business over time as one of the factors, you know a lot of CDFIs do startup lending to small businesses that commercial banks typically don't have an appetite for. So working with that entrepreneur to develop projections and see, you know how that business might perform over time and be able to repay the loan. We also have kind of creative collateral. So if the loan is going to be used to purchase a piece of equipment, for example that piece of equipment itself could serve as the collateral for the deal. We accept co-signers, you know it's just kind of, I think the general answer to that is that it's a more creative process a more artistic versus scientific process. Of course, numbers come into play heavily but it's a more complete and comprehensive picture of the overall borrows capacity to repay. Great. Linda, do you have anything to add to that? Yeah, I think Maul has done an excellent job in saying there's a whole listed approach, you know when you look at the five C's of credit you're obviously credit, collateral capacity and character. And I think if what sets everything's apart is that given you have the capital, right? That is whatever investment you have to put into it because I think every business should have some skin to put in the game. That's just a personal observation of mine that if you have some skin in the game that you are more likely to really take it serious and move to ensure that the business is a success. But when you begin to do that deep dive around character you begin to find out a number of things. And I think that's what really sets CDFIs apart in the underwriting process. One more question. Samala and Linwood, you talked about, the lady may reference to what are the measures? How are we gonna do this? Locally, we're here because there's a need. Banks, traditionally industry conservative. So now we've got a CDFI, kind of like a bank. How do we support banks in the meeting, in the boardroom? Locally, we have Texas Capital almost, make a shout out. They have a local advisory board made up of diverse people who know the community because we talked about the bank, we talked about the underserved community. Who's the vehicle? Who are the ambassadors? Where have you seen it working for banks to support them to get to the community, to get the money? How can we create a vehicle of people who know the community to make sure the bank knows it? Because the banks, big banks don't know the community. So we have that void. So how can we help ensure in the boardroom that the inclusion, Linwood, you talked about, the diversity that there's somebody speaking on behalf of those folks who are not getting these loans and into the community? Maula, you are. Linwood, you can think about it. Okay. Well, I think one, actually three dynamics. One is the representation of the bank itself that if it has an advisory board, that advisory board reflect the community that it serves. It is really sensitive to that need. The second is what I call intentionality and that is the bank is intentional about making sure it put resources into underserved community. And the third thing is about the capital. And here's my pitch about the capital and that the capital needs not be peanuts. That there's significant capital put in the community that would help grow and to sustain because I do think that financial institutions, they have some responsibility to help build, grow and sustain communities, as well as the organization that they serve. So that was sort of my take on it. And I think I may use another word and that is accountability. And that is how do you begin to hold banks and all financial institutions as well as government? How do you begin to hold them accountable to make sure they do the things that's what I call the heart. And that is serving people and serving organizations and communities that they know underserved and yet somehow unelected. And so this is a new era that if we don't demand, I usually word demand, if we don't demand, Douglas said years ago that power comes not by asking about it, but it's by demand always has been and always will be. And so I think we have the demand accountability and most leaders can respect demand because the way you count it is a way that saying, I'm looking for respect and for you to do the right thing and put in resources and to the communities. I'll just quickly add two points to Lynn with very excellent points. I would also say appeal to the bank. To Mark's point from earlier, you are cultivating a group of individuals that will ultimately hopefully become customers. So that's sort of one very obvious bottom line pitch. And the other thing that I would say is we need to capitalize on this moment in that there is a real drive for corporate responsibility in terms of racial equity. And so any way that you can spin it from the bank's point of view that this will be personal interest story opportunity or a media coverage opportunity as lame as that may sound, that is gonna bring bankers to the table and you can get them some sort of exposure in that light. It is a motivator for better or worse. So I don't necessarily wanna end on that point, but I do think that that is a way to motivate and connect the bank into this movement. Yeah. If I could just say just one word. I wanna thank both of our guests for joining us and sharing your insight. And we look forward to bringing all those CDFIs from all over the country here to Fort Worth. So again, thank you. Thank you so much. I'm sorry. I think Lynn, would you add one more? Oh yeah. Yeah. And so my challenge about the moment is, we saw this infusion of cash after the horrific incident of George Floyd, but I don't want the moment to be a moment. I want it to be a movement, right? A moment can be a monument. And all we have is a monument of remembrance. What I wanted to be be a movement that because we had this infusion, we understand that we found out that if we do the right thing with the capital infusion, then that we can really make a movement of real change in America around underserved communities of color. And so I like the word moment, but I don't want it to be a moment. I want it to be a movement. Thank you, Lynn. Sure. Did y'all get something out of this today? Yeah? Is that a yes? Okay, great, great. I'm excited that we were able to come together today to give a formal kickoff to CDFI-friendly Fort Worth and that all of you decided to join us. This conversation isn't new. One of the first times in this country that this conversation took place was during reconstruction. In 1870, there was a group of African-American innovators and entrepreneurs that came together. And they said, you know, we're struggling to get our dreams and ideas to the public. And they put together a list in the 1870s of 10 things, 10 barriers that were present. On that list was access to capital. And here we are, January 26th, 2022, and we're still having this conversation. And so when we think about those conversations that took place in 1870, they were thinking about the future. And today, I heard a quote earlier this week that defined the future, not as a destination, but a decision. The future is not a destination, it's a decision. And the decisions that we're making today are going to define what Fort Worth is gonna look like in the next three years, the next five years, the next 10 years, into the next 20. We're making a decision that CDFI-friendly Fort Worth is going to be community-led. It is going to be community-driven. The people in this room have to make a decision. The banks and the financial institutions in this room have to make a decision. There's CRA opportunities here, accountability and outcomes, partnering with CDFI-friendly Fort Worth to look at all the opportunities that Robert started this conversation with this morning, all the investments and development opportunities that are happening all over the city of Fort Worth, all of the entrepreneurs that are looking to start a business, keep and maintain a business, create legacies for their families, and putting all of those opportunities in a list and basically handing it to banks so that they can meet their CRA requirements by targeting specific projects right here in Fort Worth in areas of need. We're making an additional decision to partner with Fuse Corp. Or Fuse Corporation. We're bringing in a fellow that's going to be with us for a full year as Mark and his team work with the community to get this off the ground, stand it up and put it in a stable position so that this has long-lasting implications far into the future. We're making a decision to continue the conversations. We've had over a hundred. We're going to continue those conversations with people in this community. We're going to ask you to help us identify people on a steering committee that will help plan these next steps. Tell us who needs to be at the table. Who needs to be in the room? Who needs to be a part of these conversations? Because again, that's what it means when we say community-led and community-driven. We're going to be having information sessions with financial institutions and bankers, making sure that they are clear on what this means and how it can be a benefit to them. One of the ways that we've talked about this morning is the CRA process, meeting those qualifications through this type of model. And immediately following my remarks, you'll have an opportunity to network in the room, get to know each other. Fort Worth is one of those places that it's a big city with a small town feel. People want to get to know who they are working with. And we're going to be providing those opportunities over the next couple of months. So I know everybody has their mask on and feel free to keep yours on because I know I've had mine on all day. But the truth is in the eyes anyway, right? You get to see people through their eyes, have conversations, start thinking about what Fort Worth can be. Start to dream again. That's what this is about. Because that is the decision that we're making today about our future. So I want to thank everyone who came out today. Again, all of the elected officials, Mayor Parker, the city manager and all the assistant city managers that were here today, all of the staff that worked so diligently and so hard behind the scenes to make this day a reality, Veronica Villegos, Telemachus and all of our staff in both the economic development department and diversity and inclusion that had the insight to bring this dream that the city council approved several months ago to life. So thank you so much and we invite you to begin the networking and continue the conversations. And again, if you run into either Robert or myself or Mark and you have ideas about who you believe would be a good candidate for the steering committee and ultimately the board for Fort Worth friendly, CDFI friendly, Fort Worth. And we're gonna be trying to identify an executive director. So all of those things still have to be done and we need your help to do it. So thank you and have a great afternoon.