 Jonathan, maybe we'll start with you as you talked about this report that the Fed just published. So why don't you kick us off? Yeah, happy to do it. So we published this paper which looked at sort of sizing the industry for CDFIs and particularly around the growth of the industry. So we were able to estimate in August of this year that the CDFI industry is over 450 billion in total assets, which is a substantial amount of growth from five years earlier. And so it was growth not just in terms of the asset size of the industry, but in terms of the number of certified CDFIs. So whereas five years ago there were around 1,100 CDFIs, now there are closer to 1,500 CDFIs. And then by institution type we were able to kind of figure out that within the CDFI space the certified CDFIs, the loan funds are the largest in terms of number of institutions followed by credit unions and then banks and others. But what's interesting about that is of the 450 billion plus in assets, credit unions are actually the largest, credit unions that were certified as CDFIs. So those weren't necessarily new organizations that had started within the last five years, but they were organizations that had been around but then sought the CDFI certification at some point. And so it was just for us to be able to publish this paper and really see the data around credit unions representing now 300 billion in total assets, banks are somewhere in the 115 billion in assets range and then loan funds which are predominantly nonprofits somewhere in the 35 billion range and to see sort of that growth over time was something we were able to include in our paper. And I think also something for CDFIs that I learned stepping into this session is these institutions range at the top end of having portfolios in the billions to on the lower end, tens of thousands. So while we're all classifying them under the CDFI label, there's a huge disparity within this industry. Yeah, just to add to that also not only in size do they vary but the types of loans that they specialize in vary dramatically. A lot of CDFIs focus more on affordable housing, some do small business loans, some do a spectrum of loans, charter schools, community development. So there really is a lot of heterogeneity in the market which makes it an interesting story to tell investors. And so kind of tagging onto what Jonathan said as it relates to kind of the scope of the sector from a capital market standpoint, the CDFI is the larger ones, a lot of the larger, a few of the larger ones have accessed the capital markets directly. And they've gotten ratings from S&P mostly. So about 13 CDFIs currently have ratings, eight of which have actually accessed the capital markets. Those issuances have been mostly geo or corporate unsecured financings. Kind of the median rating currently is A plus. There's been a little bit of volatility in the ratings because it is somewhat of a new sector. They just started getting rated about six or seven years ago and S&P being the only rating agency that really is dominant in the sector. There was a bit of criteria changes that caused some kind of changes within changing of ratings as it relates to criteria. And that's never a good way to build goodwill with investors in an emerging sector, but it feels like that's behind us. But still we often talk to issuers about seeking two ratings to kind of give investors another voice as it relates to kind of credit quality in terms of it being an emerging sector. Some other pathways as I mentioned, there is a variety of loan types which also opens the door to a few other capital markets tools in addition to securitizations. We've worked with CDFIs on kind of affordable housing project related issuances which allowed them to access the tax exempt market. So that's another creative tool for CDFIs that are looking to, that are affordable housing focused. And then you have this securitization side of things. You have, we've seen some securitizations in kind of more established markets like the small business loan 7A guaranteed market as well as agency backed affordable housing loan. So Freddie Mac backed securitization. So these are tools that are used broadly and it's kind of a well established market. So CDFIs have been, some CDFIs have been able to take advantage of that. So the topic here is securitizations and a way to scale CDFIs. It feels like CDFIs have some momentum in terms of becoming a presence in the capital markets and building a name for themselves that kind of helps feed into building some momentum towards other types of securitizations that are kind of less standard because typically CDFI loans since they are mission-driven lenders are targeted towards underserved communities and often are not standard. And that is something that's very difficult to securitize. So I'll kind of stop there and pass it on. Jonathan, you want to add? Yeah, I mean, I guess I'd build off that and we could have underscored that at the start that, you know, CDFIs are truly mission-driven lenders. They're chartered to focus on a specific community that is otherwise not being well-served by the mainstream financial markets. And for that reason, they've long been a really attractive place for impact investors to work with. And I should have said, you know, in my introduction at the Alliance, we work with a range of investors from foundations to corporations, from high-net-worth individuals to family offices, from folks who are looking for, you know, market rate and even above market rate returns through to folks who are willing to accept concession. And I think what you hear from both Jonathan and from Kristen is that CDFIs, for someone who is pursuing impact, provide just this range of options, range of entry points, whether you have grant capital to deploy or PRI capital as a private foundation or depository assets, whether your focus is affordable housing or small business lending, there are a bunch of different opportunities for impact investors. And the ones who have been in this market for, you know, many, many years now, decades now, can tell you that, you know, they have seen consistent performance from the CDFI industry, both in terms of, you know, meeting the sort of financial commitments of the investment, but also meeting the impact objectives of the investor. And we've seen this steady growth of interest from the impact investing community. I think in the early days, it was maybe a few small or a few large private foundations that really led the way or some regional foundations like Winthrop Rockefeller that works in the southeast. But especially after the events of 2020, the health and social and economic crises, we saw really just surge in interest from impact investors in deploying assets through this, you know, really vital pathway. And it's important, you know, looking at this market that these CDFIs play a key role in the ecosystem because for many businesses, if you're a small business and you're looking for a loan of let's say $75,000, CDFI is really your only option to get that loan. Because if you go to a traditional commercial bank for small business lending, generally they don't like to go below $250,000. So these CDFIs play a key role in providing that kind of first loan to a small business who potentially doesn't have the credit history or doesn't have the assets or needs, you know, growth capital to get on that journey. So this is an absolutely essential piece of our ecosystem and growing it will only help more small businesses. So yeah, I just want to come back to the point that John was making, I mean, you know, talking about the industry and, you know, one thing that we looked at in this report was just the equity and the amount of equity that the institution types have as of the time we were able to publish it. So I mean credit unions alone are, we estimated somewhere in the $30 billion range and, you know, call it net assets or net worth, bank credit union, loan fund, what have you. And so between credit unions at $30 billion, banks that maybe, you know, call it $15, approximately $10 to $15 and loan funds maybe in the 5 to $10 range, I mean, that's, you know, close to $50 billion in capital that much of which, you know, in the way we think about it in terms of that growth, I mean, there are a lot of new sources of funds, you know, to your point, John, that have come into the sector that represent a, you know, a significant portion of that, you know, that close to $50 billion, which I think that's, you know, it's just something to highlight. So we're here in an impact investing conference and we've heard about impact VC, outcomes-based financing, private credit in the impact space. Chris, I'm going to turn to you. Why should an impact investor consider this asset class to deploy their capital and what makes it special? And, you know, you mentioned one of these things. Institutional ESG versus impact ESG. I would love to hear your views, you know, sharing with the audience this. Sure. So most of the work I do kind of operates more in the institutional space. So kind of more publicly offered transactions or bond issuances, which captures really strong demand in terms of ESG investors, institutional ESG investors. Now, we've seen increasing demand. We've seen a lot of funds closed. We've seen a lot of funds open as it relates to ESG strategies, but I think at the end of the day, it's clear that there is ongoing demand and growth in the ESG sector, whether you're talking about on the corporate side or on the municipal tax exempt side of the market. So, you know, there are strong tailwinds in terms of, you know, the institutional demand and all, as I mentioned before, there are eight CDFIs that have come to market with unsecured general obligation issuances, corporate issuances, and they've all had some label associated with them, whether it's green or sustainability. Most have been sustainability because they really do bring together both social as well as a lot of more real estate driven or affordable housing driven lenders have some kind of lead certification embedded in kind of their building standards. So that would kind of cover the green side of things. And so, you know, the market standard for the institutional side of things is the ECMA standards, which a lot of investors kind of have their own demands. As I don't have to tell you all in this room, especially in the impact space, there's a lot of diversity and lack of standardization often in terms of metrics and disclosure and things like that. But at the end of the day, the ECMA standards are kind of what everyone hangs their hat on in the institutional space. So, you know, that's kind of one set of pool of capital. And then we have, you know, the impact pool of capital, which I view as, you know, has more opportunity to be game changing as it relates to being catalytic, taking kind of the first loss position in the capital stack, you know, having a variety of more concessionary capital that can really get things moving, especially in a market like we're seeing now, obviously, the rapid rise in rates and the, you know, the kind of scarcity of subsidy for some of our, you know, most important objectives as it relates to affordable housing, you know, banking the underbanked, building, you know, economically vibrant communities, and there's often a lack of subsidy where it really matters. And so, whether it's, you know, foundations providing grants, technical assistance grants, or, you know, a variety of type of support, it really can help catapult a structure into something that would kind of dip into kind of the more scalable, you know, institutional side of the market eventually. I mean, I see this, and I see kind of the structures that are being bandied about as kind of stepping stones to potentially a broader more to tap into that institutional market. Often things start with kind of, you know, a bank, more loan facility of some kind that has some kind of concessionary capital or equity involved. And then, you know, as loans might get seasoned, then potentially there could be a public market takeout. And so, you know, the life cycle of these transactions, early on, often hinge on impact or catalytic capital to kind of get it off the ground, especially when you're talking about new structures in a very dicey market to say the least. Great. John and Jonathan. I was, no, I didn't have any comments. Great. Well, looking to you, John, you know, the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance is really a market builder. And from your perspective as, you know, a market builder, how do you view this? How would you recommend to impact investors to look at community finance to broaden their investment portfolio? Yeah, it's a good question. And I mean, I think Kristen was touching on a lot of it here. So much of what's needed, especially as we've had the growth in number and sort of scale of CDFIs over the last couple of years, there's a tremendous need to invest in the technical capacity, the back office capacity of these CDFIs to make sure that they are sort of prime to scale. I think putting in that first loss capital or long term patient capital, catalytic capital is also always going to be essential. You know, you think about the lending or the business model of CDFIs as a lender, anything you can do to drive down their cost of capital. You know, that's impact because they'll be able to do more with that. They'll be able to better serve the community where they're focused on. I think the other thing that we're especially focused on at the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance that we did want to touch on is the role of public policy. And that has been tremendously important to the CDFI industry from the beginning. Really, it was in 1994 with the RIGLE Act that the CDFI fund was established to begin certifying these institutions to legally define the phrase. And to also begin putting federal capacity into these institutions. And that has been essential and it's also been a bipartisan issue over the years. Through the Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, the now Biden administrations, the CDFI fund has remained a bipartisan issue that the Trump administration did propose zeroing out its budget, but that was roundly rejected by bipartisan majorities in Congress. And that's because every representative and senator has a CDFI and their district or in their state and knows the impact that they're having on the ground. And they want to continue to feed this industry. We want to continue to build it up. We want to continue to strengthen it. And so I think we've heard actually really encouragingly across this conference and all credit to Valentin and his colleagues at the Sorenson Impact Institute that there's been a lot of discussion about the role that impact investors can play in partnership with government, which hasn't always been sort of a natural partnership. But this is a really great example where, you know, if you can demonstrate the positive impact on the ground, you can build these bipartisan alliances and then you can have government come in as a partner. So really essential for impact investors to be telling this story as well. This is why these are essential partners for us to be able to put our capital to work in the kinds of communities where we might not otherwise have the sort of opportunities. We won't have the on the ground expertise and connections to the community to be able to make a $75,000 loan directly ourselves. But we can work through these vital intermediaries and do so. So I think that messaging and bring your friends too if you've got if you can get a co-investor that's always great too. So again, telling the story. And I think this is something important to highlight that this is very much still a nascent asset class industry whatever you want to call it. I mean, there's you mentioned eight securitized eight CDFIs have securitized part of their portfolios and that's mainly probably at the upper end, right? What about all those that are doing, you know, with the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands? You can't feasibly securitize and sell that kind of portfolio. What are some options for kind of those that middle layer or those smaller CDFIs? Yeah, and that's a great question. You know, and also just to piggyback on what you said as it relates to kind of the federal involvement, we've seen a fair bit of federal dollars flowing towards CDFIs that are worth noting. First, we have the State Small Business Credit Initiative that was as part of the American Recovery Act. It's about ten billion dollars flowing through states over eight years in support of small business lending of which is targeted towards underserved communities. So as you can imagine, CDFIs are going to play a large role in this program. Those funds have already started to go out. And so every state who has put in an application has their own program and the SSBCI has several tools that they can use and one of which or that each state as part of their plan can use, one of which is a loan participation program where it's actually basically a vehicle for smaller CDFIs or CDFIs, not just smaller CDFIs, but CDFIs writ large to kind of get first loss capital or sell kind of 80% of the loans off their balance sheet. Now it's up to the states and other entities within the capital markets or elsewhere, intermediaries with the intermediaries within the sector to kind of come up with ways to kind of invite in smaller CDFIs to participate in kind of structures like that. You know, we've seen kind of CDFIs do participate out their loans with each other on a one-to-one basis. But again, that's not kind of a capital markets avenue. So I think, you know, first and foremost, you know, getting CDFIs rated, the larger ones has helped move the needle in terms of getting them more prominent within the capital markets, but then also leveraging those ratings to allow smaller CDFIs who aren't eligible for a rating due to their size or just balance sheet or it's just not worth it because they're not going to directly access the capital markets, a way to kind of have them the bigger CDFIs to kind of lend that credit rating in some way, shape, or form. You know, whether it be, you know, in a securitization structure, having a master servicer who kind of works in cooperation with smaller originating CDFIs. I mean, there's a lot of ways to think about it. Of course, you know, capital markets acceptance and institutional investor acceptance is, you know, it's not easy at this point because it is a nascent sector and it's growing. I'm not overselling that this is easy to accomplish but I think, you know, watching it long term, there's a fair bit of tailwinds as it relates to federal capital. And I just mentioned the SSPCI but, you know, the elephant in the room is the IRA and the greenhouse gas reduction fund which is $27 billion, $14 billion of which is targeted towards kind of two to three hub nonprofit or kind of maybe a green bank or something like that who will get those funds and, you know, applications were just due a couple of weeks ago on that and so, you know, the Justice 40 element of that program provides that 40% of those funds need to go to underserved communities. Again, CDFIs make the most sense in terms of being the channel for those funds to target the communities that they operate in and it hasn't been said yet but, you know, CDFIs, it's kind of shocking when you look at the loan performance history now. I'm speaking to mostly the rated section, a contingent of the CDFIs but loan performance is actually quite strong especially if you look at other kind of financial institutions. Their loan losses are, you know, relatively low and, you know, the secret sauce so they say for CDFIs is that they know their communities, they know their borrowers, you know, they're able to kind of hold the right amount of loan loss reserves to offset the perceived risk and, you know, that being said, on the equity side as Jonathan mentioned, you know, they've had strong equity ratios in part because of their strong loan performance in addition to all the public and private capital and it's kind of flowed into the sector post-pandemic. So, I think I answered your question but... Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just looking forward to the future, we talked about nascent asset class and looking forward. What are some potential challenges that would hinder the development of this market and, you know, some potential remedies that you would offer to these challenges? I guess... Go ahead, John, you want to start or...? Yeah. Well, I didn't have a good answer. I can start. I can't use that time. Because I am well versed in the naysayers. So, basically, I think a big barrier to this is the lack of standardization. Investors in products, especially buying, you know, securitized products, want standard loans. And, you know, that is an issue. But, you know, a way around that could be a structure where you're kind of underwriting to securitize. So, creating a product, a box at the onset that a CDFI can underwrite to, that can then be packaged, seasoned and sold. I feel like that is a... You know, it's one tool and, you know, a big complaint amongst the CDFI community is that, you know, they are creating products that are tailored to their communities, which is so important. But this could be one product on the shelf for them that could serve their communities and then could be marketable in securitization. So, that's a big barrier. You know, I mentioned the market is obviously a big barrier. You know, investors will pick their heads up for a good story and... But, you know, there are a lot more discerning and a lot more protective of capital. And so, and especially, you know, the politicization of the ESG market and, you know, all of these kind of, you know, the noise around it. You know, investors, at least in the institutional ESG space are, you know, thoughtful about what they commit capital to, which I think in this case, you know, CDFIs are a very easy sell in terms of it being a social or sustainable or green investment, you know, easier sell than others. So, I think that that's kind of a mitigant to all of this. But, I guess... Yeah. You know, I think when we've talked about it and we've talked about it and, you know, really in terms of three issues, data, volume, and standardization. And at various times in my career, I've been in touch with CDFIs and worked with CDFIs and, you know, this kind of push and pull, Kristen, that you described between wanting to make those kind of loans that are responsive to the types of borrowers that CDFIs serve, right? Those bespoke, sort of types of collateral or underwriting terms, but also wanting to do things at the scale that would lead to some kind of capital markets activity. That's kind of the challenge, I think, that you're describing. And I think that, you know, that kind of speaks to how do you get to that standard set of underwriting terms that would lead to some kind of securitization? How do you get data around that? What does that data look like? How does the market kind of understand that data? And then how does that volume kind of grow and lead to sort of further interest within the industry? Yeah, I guess I would pick up on something Kristen was saying earlier, which is that I do believe in the secret sauce of CDFI is that their connection to the community, their knowledge of the borrowers is really important to that historical strong performance in terms of lending. And so, you know, we've seen this, I know when the Sorenson team has been examining the securitization issue, it comes up how do you maintain the relationship between the borrower and the CDFI? Is there a participation, a servicing agreement, something like that? It came up when we were looking at some of the pandemic facilities that the Federal Reserve set up that was trying to buy on loans and could you maintain the servicing relationship between that CDFI who again knows that borrower and can understand, you know, how to work through, you know, extraordinary times like the pandemic, the lockdown and things like that. And I think that looks a little different than typical securitizations where it is or just selling of loans at where? Yeah, you borrowed your mortgage from one bank and all of a sudden most bargain was your servicer and you don't have much say in it and I think it needs to look a little bit different for the types of borrowers that CDFIs are working with. Great. And so none of us are investment advisors here but to the, to the institutional investors in the audience, how would you advise them to, you know, potentially consider this asset class to invest in and what type of institutional investors or impact investors are most suitable to invest in this? Whoever wants to take it? Well, I can talk about the credit strings as I kind of alluded to. You know, I've been surprised at how well the CDFI sector has performed, especially in the broader backdrop of, you know, regional bank stress. You know, CDFI loan demand is quite high from what I, you know, hear from clients and the challenge is just figuring out how to meet that, that demand while still preserving kind of strong equity positions and not over-borrowing and maintaining, you know, profitability as it relates to kind of this escalating rate environment, adjusting their own rates while not to be punitive on their, on their communities but also to make sure that they're, you know, profitable enough. So, you know, I admire kind of the CDFI's ability and the creativity that they have among their finance staff in terms of collecting a variety of resources to kind of make the math work as it relates to their loan portfolios and also while being responsive to their communities. I mentioned before that, you know, that there were several CDFI's or there are several CDFI's that have borrowed on an unsecured corporate basis in the capital markets and, you know, they, they were for, you know, right or wrong that S&P's response to them getting ratings and then going into the market and borrowing with rating downgrades which, you know, is kind of counterintuitive because that was the intent of getting the rating but that was the response and so I think that, you know, once you get a rating and you're kind of in that sphere, you have to manage to it a little bit and so that, you know, that does kind of alter behavior a little bit with respect to kind of having your investors in mind. And so, you know, I think that, you know, the sector, you know, is, I think it's not for everyone in the sense that you do need to dig into kind of the loan portfolio, you know, the underwriting standards, the management team, you know, what kind of what's their capitalization and kind of, you know, just the embedded kind of risks within the markets they serve and this is, you know, kind of your standard credit analysis but, you know, CDFI is, it's a broad market, lot of sizes and shapes and also that goes with some vulnerabilities in terms of, you know, being an investment choice. Great. That's your question. Yeah, and I mean, in addition to actually investing in their portfolios, what are the roles can investors play to support CDFIs and to help this nascent market mature and become real institutionally investable? I mean, I think I touched on some of this earlier but again, to the extent that you're able to support through technical assistance and capacity building in these institutions, especially newer CDFIs, those serving, you know, more historically underserved communities, rural communities or the like, I think that's a really important role, especially for the impact, investing community to play. And again, that can be, you know, through grant capital or it can be through the patient capital. So if you have the ability to, you know, go deeper down the capital stack, that's always going to be helpful and that builds it up. You know, this growth in the equity of the CDFI field at large is really a tremendous development in recent years, fueled both by public policy and the interest of corporate and impact investors in recent years. So, you know, that has really given, I think, more buffer than the industry has had since its inception, which will also help to mitigate some of the risks that Kristen's speaking to. Yeah, earlier this year, I mentioned this paper that we wrote about affordable housing, which was interesting, you know, to be able to survey investment managers of private capital investment vehicles that are investing in, you know, U.S. multi-family affordable, be it NOAA or expiring tax credit properties at the end of their extended use or compliance period. Anybody who is familiar with the low-income housing tax credit program or project-based Section 8. And so we asked these investment managers about the affordability, targeting for the properties that they invest in. And we asked them how much capital that they've raised in the last X number of years, how much they plan to raise. And we also asked them about their LP mix, their investor mix. On a percentage basis, what did their investor base, what does their investor base look like by investor type? Institutional insurance company, bank, you know, impact investors, what have you. And what was interesting was two-thirds of the capital that was committed to the respondents to our survey. And again, it's not a state of the market. It's just these were the folks who responded to the survey. This was the case study. This is what we found. But two-thirds of the capital was from non-bank investors. And a third of the equity was from banks. And what was conclusive for us was this is really, that was really an example of where this sort of confluence of impact investors and bank investors who may or may not have the same motivations, but they're clearly looking at the same assets and the same types of underlying investments. And that's interesting. And it's not too dissimilar from the conversation we're having here. It's sort of, at least somewhat analogous to sort of thinking about the types of products and the underlying loans and what would be needed to kind of bring this same confluence about. So I'll just point that out. Great. And just to kind of close on this, let's look 10 years into the future. Where do you think, A, where do you think will be in terms of the securitization market? And then B, what do you think would be a metric of success? Like, how would you define that this is going in the right direction? Maybe we'll start with you, John, and go down the line. Sure. I'll maybe flip it because I think an important way to succeed in getting to a really robust securitization market would be to continue to lean on the federal public policy lovers. And so there's legislation that's been introduced in the Senate by Senator Warner and Senator Crapo. So bipartisan legislation which would activate a part of that 1994 RIGAL Act that's never been tapped before that would allow the CDFI fund to put funds into CDFIs or non-CDFIs that are providing credit enhancement, liquidity enhancement or securitization products to CDFIs. And so that would be a way to try to get the flywheel going on this market or to at least test out if this is viable, if this is something that CDFIs want to participate in and if it has the impacts that we think it would in terms of increasing the liquidity, increasing the scale of the market. And I think if we were able to get that through and then it was successful, we would see access to the capital markets for a wider swath of the CDFI market. It still wouldn't be for everyone but we'd be beyond the large estate and we'd be, you know, deeper into the market and that would be really exciting. It would open up again the capital markets to more regional CDFIs, CDFIs in different markets and could be a really promising sort of growth mechanism. So. Absolutely great. Yeah, I think you raised a lot of good points. I think from kind of my perspective, I think, you know, with all of the strong support from the federal government with respect to the SSBCI, the IRA, you know, I think that we're going to continue to see kind of the CDFI market grow and more CDFIs get rated with respect to a securitization structure. You know, I think there are a lot of 10 years long time. So that's a good window of time. I mean, it's going to be a dicey market maybe for a little while with respect to elevated rates, which might hinder, you know, new structures to make economic sense for the near term. But, you know, in 10 years, you know, I would like to envision, you know, hopefully some securitization of CDFI loans, non-standard kind of here. Like not the ones we've already kind of discussed that have already been executed. Something new that kind of leverages a lot of the federal subsidy and support that's kind of floating around out there. But I think ultimately the goal of all this is to kind of see impact on the local level in underserved communities. And I think, you know, we talk a lot about vehicles and financing structures and tools, but ultimately it's about impact. It's about seeing communities thrive, whether it be affordable housing or small businesses. And, you know, the tragedy would be everyone kind of, you know, don't see the forest from the trees in the sense of, you know, actually making this trickle down and measure kind of the impact that these funds, whether governmental subsidies or whatever, what kind of impact they've actually had, you know, and that it's met its purpose. Yeah, I'll just kind of piggyback on what these guys both said. I mean, I think, you know, I was on a panel earlier this year talking about the community development ecosystem and all of the different entities and actors, be they affordable housing or CDFIs or what have you, they're sort of active in low-income communities providing financing in low-income communities. And what's interesting about that is just sort of thinking about the growth of the CDFI space, but also the folks who are attending a conference like this and, you know, whatever those numbers look like in terms of attendees five years ago and the number of people who are in the impact space who are asking questions about CDFIs then versus now. And so you kind of see the, you know, rise in the CDFI space but also that there is a conversation happening about that world here in a conference like this. So I don't have a good answer for what the 10 years from now looks like, but I do think that, you know, to the extent that there is some network building to be done. I mean, that seems like those things are happening sort of correlatively, right, that the CDFI industry is growing, the impact investor industry is growing. Absolutely. I think, you know, as you guys said, this is a growing industry. When I was doing some research, I saw 1,300 CDFIs speaking to you earlier today. I saw that that's increased to 1,500. So this is something that's growing. And you know, when we talked a lot about securitization and all these things and we always have to frame it and as to what's the ultimate objective. This is to create liquidity for these CDFIs so that they can continue to, you know, loan out to more small businesses, more affordable housing. And that's really where the impact is. So one question we have, we talked a lot about affordable housing and small business loans, but we have one question from what kinds of community development pro programs or projects would you like to see CDFI support? So I'm guessing this is beyond the traditional avenues. I mean, you spoke to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund earlier and that's going to open up a lot of opportunities for CDFIs to not that they haven't already done community facility work, but to do more on clean energy retrofit and the other goals of the IRA implementation. Yeah. So that was the first one to come to mind for me. Yeah. I think we're going to be seeing a lot more of that. I mean, we have a huge decarbonization agenda in this nation and you know, CDFIs are kind of going to be offering products that are kind of geared towards that. I mean, you know, what's as we've kind of keep reiterating like CDFI is kind of tailored their programs to their communities. So, you know, if this, it's a charter school, you know, communities, the charter school, you know, they're going to gear their loans towards providing charter schools and underserved communities. You know, I think, you know, a lot of the agenda kind of emerges out of the need. And so, you know, I kind of like that aspect of, you know, how kind of CDFI's plan from a strategic standpoint. It is very real and they're kind of trying to solve for what's missing in the community. And then we have another one that this seems to be kind of adjacent to CDFIs. Could you speak to neighborhood owned or kind of community development projects? Are you seeing growth in that space? And we have certainly at the Alliance looked at the emergence of more participatory investment models as well as some interesting crowd funding programs that present the opportunity for, you know, residents, workers in place to be able to invest in these projects. And that's certainly very exciting. I think those are still small and especially the oftentimes sort of designed to remain subscale or small scale because you're trying to target a neighborhood, right? You don't want to sort of go nationwide with that. You might want to replicate it. But it does make it a sort of different question for how you would sort of grow that type of investment activity and those opportunities for stakeholders to take part. I can't think of too many examples off the top of my head, but one that comes to mind is we hosted this conference on affordable housing in March in our building and one of the panelists, as I recall, mentioned a project in Philadelphia that had, you know, X number of sources of funds, but one of them was community sourced equity. I don't remember the neighborhood in Philadelphia, but there are examples of this where it is happening and there are players who are kind of developing these nuanced models for how to do it and how to do it at, you know, some scale. So we have a really interesting question here for something I haven't heard before, CDFI deserts. So seems that there are certain pockets where there aren't any CDFIs and, you know, I guess this is more from a policy angle. How would you suggest to address these CDFI deserts or to promote the development of CDFIs in areas that don't have them? And I think it's a longstanding priority of the CDFI fund to try to address that. It's certainly true there. Many communities that still don't have access to many or any CDFI sort of institutions that are serving them. I think there's maybe you know the answer one or two native CDFI certified. It's not many last I looked and so in indigenous communities there's a need to grow that. And so I think there's definitely a need for ongoing sort of targeted investment and building those up. And those are going to be you know, you're nascent institutions that really need that early catalytic capital be it from the government or private investors to make sure they can get established and really grow a lending base to serve those communities well. Yeah, also you know sometimes not not always the efficient answer is to start a new CDFI. Maybe the efficient answer is to get a bigger CDFI to kind of come in. They have some more economies of scale with respect to you know their infrastructure and whatnot and partner with others. And you know from what I've gathered from my covering the CDFI sector there's a fair share of cooperation amongst CDFIs with respect to this and I mentioned loan participations but it doesn't and there there's you know a network of well I've seen it from the affordable housing side of things with respect to non-profit affordable housing developers and CDFI is working in tandem as well as kind of the network of CDFI is kind of coming in you know co-lending on a project or something. So you know there are opportunities for kind of the bigger more established CDFI to kind of help kind of fill in some gaps. And the other thing that you know we've seen as examples where it wasn't necessarily a new organization newly started organization right the Chris's point about an existing organization moving into a new market it could be a organization that's already working somewhere that just seeks the CDFI certification. Yeah so you know those are examples. So great point certification expansion indigenous a lot of solutions kind of more along those lines rural rural America appears to go to regional banks for small business loans why not CDFIs is there is this an issue of marketing or kind of accessibility. I mean I think that does come to the historical coverage of CDFIs and as I was saying rural areas have traditionally had less coverage from certified CDFIs but again to Jonathan's point we're seeing you know some established institutions seek the certification and so there's a way to blend the two answers. Building coalitions aligning with you know you're bigger by the numbers right in terms of building a coalition and trying to get federal subsidies and what not to try to bridge that gap is essential. You know trying to figure out how to layer in private capital on top of that is kind of the the goal but you know you as you well aware are well aware it's it's it takes time I think probably for all that to get accomplished but I'm optimistic given all the resources that are out there that hopefully that there's more more that can kind of flow towards those who need it the most. Yeah I mean I think one big piece is naming the problem and naming that it is a problem and it needs to be addressed and that and it is well documented and you can look at the flows of major philanthropy it doesn't go to rural communities and certainly not to indigenous communities and at the scale that it's needed. I think continuing to name the question but then also think about sort of new pools of capital and so we've looked at opportunities to engage donor advice funds as you know the fastest growing charitable asset class in the country right now and a very flexible wine if you're able to access the donor advisors which is an if but donor there's been work done to allow donor advisors to make deposits into CDFI's so depository assets aren't as you know strong as more equity assets but it's still something but then they could also be you know making direct contributions to CDFI's and so I think that's a really interesting market to continue to pursue but it's going to require breaking through and you know reaching you know the folks who are sitting on that capital understand getting them to understand that there needs to be some disruption to the system because it's leading to this disparate outcomes just one thing I want to point out just because we're talking about Native American communities and CDFI's is so each of the reserve banks has a community development function there's 12 reserve banks within the federal reserve system and some of the reserve banks have their own sort of special focus in New York we have a you know focus more on sort of financing components of this stuff but in at the Minneapolis Fed and I know the guy runs the center there's a center for I'm talking about right so those folks really have a an interest worth both from a research and outreach standpoint on financing issues and as they affect Native American community so I would encourage you to get in touch with them I'm happy to make an introduction or what have you and we've got a question about mission drift so you know we talked about accessing capital market and this push for securitization do you think there's potential for is there a potential for mission drift or for them to prioritize profit versus their you know purpose-driven mission and how would you mitigate that? I mean I think there's always a risk of that and I think it's you know falls upon the management of the CDFI to kind of stick to what their mission is and their long-term strategy of serving their communities that doesn't mean that the securitization option is a bad option in the sense that it's one tool you can choose not to use the tool so I think you know there's always a risk of mission drift and I think it takes the management team some fortitude to kind of stick to what their priorities are and not kind of get too distracted by noise that's not relevant to them and might not serve their community Great so we have one where it's a question it's new to me so it's about property assessed clean energy and this is comes from John Kinney with the clean fund and he's asking so this is a credit enhancement tool focused on energy efficiency for commercial real estate so how would a company reach out to a CDFI to offer this product I don't know if you would have I guess maybe this goes to the kind of clean energy we talked about earlier before Yeah so I think that's C-PACE right is that's the what it's referred to as in the market and we've kind of seen some financings that are secured by C-PACE loans and my understanding of it is there is you know an assessment on a a commercial property that is kind of used to finance the retrofits you know if that's a product that is of interest you know I think I'm not sure how many CDFI's offer it or kind of who to contact but it is kind of an established product securitization or secondary market for those type of credits or at least there's kind of an emerging one I know of one issuance that just kind of recently happened in that regard but and so I guess the question was who did the who do you reach out how how would a company reach out to a CDFI for this I guess they would have to first find out if the CDFI if they offer this product yeah so I think you know in part the securitization vehicle is a way to recycle capital so odds are you know you're going to sell your loans 80% of your loans and you still retain servicing fees and what not but you with will take that capital and recycle it and make new loans and so you'll make that interest spread off of those new loans ostensibly so hopefully you know if it's functioning properly and there's no shift in business model and you know the CDFI continues to you know incorporate it in as part of its business model it doesn't necessarily I think have to undermine profitability that being said like you know not everyone is going to incorporate it properly it is kind of a new tool potentially so that's kind of how I think about you know how it can be utilized and again it's I think of it as kind of one tool those recovery loan funds that you're referring to were a great kind of kind of experiment with respect to setting up discreet now for those of you that don't know there were four of these funds set up throughout the country and they brought together private and public capital thinking of the New York Forward Fund specifically because that's my state but you know that brought in kind of philanthropic money as well as the state kind of had funded a reserve for that fund and they were able to buy up loans from CDFIs and so it helped kind of and these were kind of non-standard loans right so it helped show that there is broad appetite across the different segments of the investment community to buy into this structure and then also you know that these loans or facilities they weren't you know QCIP securitizations but they had a lot of those flavors to it there's loan loan data associated with it that can help build markets with respect to kind of a future securitization so I think that those were really important and again it's like like I was saying before you know with the with a lot of the federal dollars coming for these various programs it's a good incubator for new ideas to kind of kind of take hold and see where they go in terms of building broader kind of scalability one thing I just add on quickly is you think about this being a new tool to add to the to the Quiver to the Toolbox for CDFIs it prepares them for changing market conditions so you know if you're CDFI and you don't feel like you have new loans to make off that 80% to recycle that capital then that's not going to look like an attractive tool at that time but market conditions can change and so I think that was part of the inspiration of trying to think about this tool now and sort of have it in as something that could be used if liquidity became a constraining factor for the CDFI market just in in 2021 we were hearing with the influx of ECIP money and corporate money and other factors some folks we talked to at the outside of researching this said liquidity is not an issue for CDFI so why are we talking about this? Well it looks a little bit different now that rates are going up now that you have the crisis with mid-sized banks with maybe some of those deposits looking a little less secure and so now you know just to illustrate you know market conditions can change quickly and so we want CDFI to be prepared with a range of options to be able to to meet the needs of their community in the moment yeah I mean I think you know if you think about the range of 1500 institutions with the CDFI certification some are going to have more of a need than others and at various times right some are going to have some level of demand that they're not able to meet based on the capital that they hold and their lending requirements and limits and so for those I mean it may be a a situation where they think about that volume and the their you know ability or how to meet those needs of their borrowers and fund those loans right and there may be a cohort of CDFI's for which that's way more interesting and they can kind of prove out that you know to this point like that side of their business it sort of grows from there and maybe there are examples where you know folks within the industry have seen that and then they kind of learn from that but I think this this point about that you know it's one of a number of that CDFI's can use as they think about how to originate loans how to serve the customers and the communities that they continue to work with it it's just I think my best answer is that it's it just doesn't feel like it's for everyone at the same time that they're probably greater needs and greater sort of levels of interest based based on the CDFI's own you know situation