CDFI Fund Announces New Series to Expand the Capacity of CDFIs to Finance Community Health Centers

Washington, DC-The Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund) is expanding the Capacity Building Initiative to support new innovative sectors of critically needed community development financing. The new "Financing Community Health Centers" series will focus on building the capacity of Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) to finance and support community health centers in underserved communities. The training and technical assistance provided as part of the series holds the promise of simultaneously producing jobs, addressing the needs of vital community facilities, and developing the economies of the nation's low-income communities. Opportunity Finance Network has been selected as the training provider.

"The 'Financing Community Health Centers' series builds upon the CDFI Fund's holistic vision for community development," said CDFI Fund Director Donna J. Gambrell. "Community health centers serve as engines of economic development in low-income communities, generating jobs for a wide range of skill-sets as well as providing vital health care services for over 20 million patients. Providing this training series reinforces the CDFI Fund's commitment to encouraging innovative financing opportunities for the CDFI industry that also target pressing needs in low-income and distressed communities."

Director Gambrell announced the new series at the National Association of Community Health Centers' 2013 Policy and Issues Forum in Washington, D.C., speaking to an audience of health professionals and community health center administrators. Community health centers provide medical, dental, mental health, and substance abuse services, focusing on primary and preventive health care. Seventy-two percent of patients at community health centers in 2011 were at or below the poverty level, and nearly fifty percent lived in rural communities. CDFIs provide lending and non-financial services to the same underserved populations that community health centers support, and many leading CDFIs have developed best practices to assist their local community health centers with financing for construction, growth, and expansion.

The "Financing Community Health Centers" series is a dedicated two-year effort that will provide structured, specialized technical assistance and training services to CDFIs engaged in or planning to provide assistance to community health centers. The training will provide best practices on successful financing from the leading experts in this field, as well as tools for interpreting the changing operating environment over the course of the next 24 months.

Training opportunities for the "Financing Community Health Centers" Capacity Building Initiative series will be added to the CDFI Fund's website in the coming months. For more information about the Capacity Building Initiative, including the other training series currently available, please visit www.cdfifund.gov/cbi.

About the CDFI Fund

The CDFI Fund invests in and builds the capacity of community-based, private, for-profit and non-profit financial institutions with a primary mission of community development in economically distressed communities. These institutions certified by the CDFI Fund as Community Development Financial Institutions or CDFIs are able to respond to gaps in local markets that traditional financial institutions are not adequately serving. CDFIs provide critically needed capital, credit and other financial products in addition to technical assistance to community residents and businesses, service providers, and developers working to meet community needs. The CDFI Fund's vision is an America in which all people have adequate access to affordable capital, credit and financial services.

About Opportunity Finance Network

Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) is the national network of Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs)-private financial institutions that are 100 percent dedicated to delivering responsible, affordable lending to help low?income, low?wealth, and other disadvantaged people and communities join the economic mainstream. Through 2011, OFN's Network has originated more than $30 billion in financing in urban, rural, and Native communities, and financed 940,000 housing units, 83,000 business and microenterprises, 9,000 community facilities, and created or retained 497,000 jobs. More information is available at: www.opportunityfinance.net.