Black and yellow graphic with the title community development lending, explained: predevelopment loans

Community Development Lending, Explained: Predevelopment Loans

In this series about community development lending, we aim to shed light on the diverse types of loans we offer at Capital Impact Partners, in the hope that it will provide the clarity our borrowers need to make an informed decision about applying for a community development loan. In this first installment, we delve into the essence of predevelopment loans, exploring what they are and how developers and community leaders can utilize them to bring their community-centered projects to life. 

Black and yellow graphic with the title community development lending, explained

Community Development Lending, Explained

For anyone seeking to access lending for community development projects, understanding the different types of loans can be confusing.

At Capital Impact Partners, our commitment to fostering positive social impact drives us to support mission-aligned real estate developers and community development leaders with a range of flexible and affordable financing solutions.

Our community development lending offerings include predevelopment loans, real estate acquisition loans, construction loans, working capital loans, refinance loans, New Market Tax Credit (NMTC) leverage loans, and NMTC Qualified Low-Income Community Investment (QLICI) loans.

Our loan products are designed to help our borrowers achieve their goals and revitalize disinvested and underestimated communities, whether that constitutes developing or preserving affordable housing, creating jobs through a small business, or building the resilience of communities through access to health care, healthy food, and education.

In this series of blogs, we aim to shed light on the diverse types of loans we offer and explore their significance within the context of Capital Impact’s mission-driven financing, in the hope that it will provide clarity to help borrowers make informed decisions about applying for community development loans.

Community Development, Demystified: A Glossary

As a mission-driven developer, organization, or business looking into community development projects, you may be coming across language that might sound confusing and be challenging to understand. What is a CDFI? What is NMTC? What is LTV?

At the Momentus Capital branded family of organizations, we leverage the combined expertise of Capital Impact Partners, CDC Small Business Finance, Ventures Lending Technologies, and Momentus Securities to expand capital and opportunities for underestimated communities.

At Capital Impact Partners specifically, we offer flexible and affordable financing to a broad range of community development projects that deliver social impact, including community health centers, public charter schools, small businesses, cooperatives, healthy food retailers, affordable housing developments, and dignified aging facilities.

This glossary aims to demystify terms to help you navigate through our lending and programmatic services and offerings. Below you will find definitions of terms divided into the following thematic sections:

Capital Impact Partners 40th Anniversary

Forty Years of Breaking Barriers to Success and Building Communities of Opportunity

By Ellis Carr, President and CEO

2022 is a special year for us at Capital Impact Partners as it marks our 40th anniversary. Four decades of leaning into helping people build communities of opportunity and developing pathways to success.

And while this is an exciting time for us as we embark on a new strategy under Momentus Capital, it is equally important to remember our roots as a champion for the cooperative movement.

(more…)
Students walk down hallway with teacher

In the Face of COVID-19, One Detroit School Meets Its Community With the Services It Needs

Since COVID-19 began, times have been incredibly trying for many across the country. Schools and teachers have been particularly hard-hit, having to figure out what education looks like in this new reality. It has been grueling, the hours have been long, and all of this has taken place as teachers and school staff fear for the health and safety of their students, loved ones, and themselves.

Teacher works with students at desks

Learning to Change: Reflections of the CDFI Racial Equity Collaborative on Education

This post was written by OFN Blog guest authors and OFN members BlueHub Capital, Capital Impact Partners, IFF, Nonprofit Finance Fund, LISC, Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF), Reinvestment Fund, and Self-Help 

Introduction 

In recent years, community development financial institutions (CDFIs) and similar mission-oriented financial services organizations have begun to elevate the importance of explicitly addressing racial equity in lending, investing, and operational practices. While this goal remains urgent, it is also a challenge to determine precisely how to incorporate or operationalize racial equity into our varied work. How do CDFIs incorporate an explicit racial equity perspective into their lending? What work do we need to do as institutions and individuals to genuinely build that racial equity perspective? And how might we collaborate across our industry to successfully achieve that goal?  

Students at Lee Montessori play.

Diverse by Design: Charter School Integration Leads to Growing Academic Success

By Emilie Linick, Senior Loan Officer

Equitable access to education provides all children with the chance to live up to their full potential and lead choice-filled lives. With racial and socio-economic inequity growing across the nation, high-quality education is crucial to giving students from low-income communities the opportunity to achieve the same life successes as their more affluent peers.

As a mission-driven Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), Capital Impact Partners aims to create communities of opportunity, and education is one cornerstone of that mission. For more than 20 years, we have partnered with and financed charter schools to extend high-quality education to the children who need it most.

Why and How We Finance Charter Schools

By Emilie Linick, Senior Loan Officer, and Quanic Fullard, Impact Strategy Specialist

Capital Impact Partners has long been driven by a mission to help people build communities of opportunity that break barriers to success. To that end, we continually look to expand our lending and incubate, scale, and advocate for new ideas that advance community development for those most in need.

Young children playing with a parachute in the school playground

School Facilities as a Catalyst for Community Development

By Abigail Suarez, Business Development Officer

A child’s access to education is the stepping stone to a lifetime of successes. Limited or inadequate access can put a child on a path toward a lifetime of struggle. In some communities, access to stellar facilities and a first-rate education is a given. In other communities, it’s a daily struggle against many factors: poverty, crumbling buildings, crime, and lack of resources among them. A community can want its children to have access to a first class education, but without the financial means to build and maintain schools, many places struggle to provide even adequate school facilities.