Yes. Organizations must sign the CDFI Certification Agreement to be Certified as CDFIs, and are subject to the terms and conditions in the Agreement to maintain their Certified status. The CDFI Certification Agreement template can be viewed on the CDFI Fund’s website.

If an organization’s CDFI Certification Application is declined, the CDFI Fund will provide a detailed debriefing document within 30 days of notifying the organization of the declined Application. The debriefing document will specify the CDFI Certification criteria that were not met by the Applicant as well as the reason why the Applicant did not meet the criteria.

Yes, a deferred loan with the payment due on sale, even if no other prior payment is made, is an eligible Financial Product and should be included in the activity presented in connection with the Financing Entity and Target Market requirements for CDFI Certification. To be considered an eligible Financial Product, a loan (including a deferred loan) must include an expectation of repayment, regardless of the timing of that repayment.

Yes. There are two instances where forgivable loans can be considered as eligible Financial Products and can be counted for Target Market activity.

The first instance is a forgivable loan with at least one payment within twelve (12) months of the loan closing date.

The second instance is a forgivable loan that meets each of the following seven (7) conditions: 

Table 1: Primary Geographic Markets Served

DIHCs, Affiliates of DIHCs, and Subsidiaries of IDIs are subject to the Collective Review process for CDFI Certification. This means that during the CDFI Certification application review process the CDFI Fund will review (1) the individual activities of the Applicant and (2) the activities of the Applicant’s Affiliates to make sure that the Applicant and its Affiliates all meet the requirements for CDFI Certification.

To meet the Accountability test when subject to the CDFI Certification Collective Review process, each Applicant must demonstrate Accountability to its identified Target Market through a governing board or advisory board. In addition, each Affiliate must demonstrate Accountability to its own Collective Review Market components through its own governing board or advisory board—even if an Affiliate’s Collective Review Market type(s) is the same as the Applicant’s proposed CDFI Certification Target Market.

Section Zero is a set of questions at the start of the CDFI Certification Application for Applicants that wish to seek a determination on the acceptability of:

Applicants are required only to attest in question BI-A06 whether or not an Affiliate's sole line of business is the administration of another federal financing program(s) (e.g., the SBA 7(A) loan program) and, if the answer is yes, then identify the program.

An organization may choose to create a spin-off entity for the purposes of Certification when the organization’s predominant activity is non-financing or non-eligible financing and the organization is therefore unable to meet the Financing Entity criterion for Certification. To be eligible for Certification, the newly created entity (i.e., the spin-off entity):