I am Robert E. Carter, from San Diego, CA

Good morning. This is Chonda Aiello from Justine Petersen.

Hi, Katie Castro from Kansas City, Missouri. Sr. Director of Partnership Services at the Latino Coalition.

Hello everyone, Barbara Carswell from YouthBridge Community Foundation.

Justin He, WashU, from St Louis MI

Tori Gonzalez - St Louis Capital Collaborative

Josh Silver, National Community Reinvestment Coalition, NCRC, jsilver@ncrc.org. Community Reinvestment Act policy

Cyril Loum - Skandalaris Center

Thanks for joining, Katie!

Hi All! Jessica Weldon with the Skandalaris Center/Entrepreneurship at WashU!

Mayra Rios, WashU - Olin Business School, from STL MO

Teresa Wilke, Silver Arrow Strategies in STL and Adjunct Brown School Faculty. Thanks for this session!

Hello All! Chris Ramsay of the Skandalaris Center at WashU- https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-ramsay-2011/

Stephanie Goss, WashU, Olin Business School, from St. Louis Missouri

Melissa Grizzle, Dir of Entrep Dev at ITEN (Innovation, Technology & Entrepreneur Network) in St. Louis.

Nice to see you, Teresa!

Hello everyone! Sara Westbrooks, Entrepreneur Support Associate, Arch Grants

Hi All - Anjie Sanford BioGenerator, Manager of Inclusive Entrepreneurship Development. Let's connect!

Whitney Bembenek, MSW at WashU, WEPOWER storyteller, DEI practicum student at BioSTL

Welcome everyone! Excited to see everyone here. Please continue putting your name and info into the chat.

Derek Ozkal, Senior Program Officer, Kauffman Foundation

WEPOWER: https://wepowerstl.org/

https://livingcities.org

https://www.missiondrivenfinance.com

Hi All - Brittany Henry, Sr Associate at Impact America Fund

Welcome Brittany. Good to have you here!

Hello Everyone. Alexander Antrum, Analyst, Reconstruction Funds. New Orleans, LA

So expensive!

Thanks for joining us, Alex!

In case anyone wants to go deeper into “non-extractive finance,” this is a good starting point: https://seedcommons.org/about-seed-commons/seed-commons-approach-to-non-extractive-finance/

+1 on a blended capital stack with different kinds of investors playing different roles in a fund

Thank you - yes pls all share cool links

This meeting is only for fund managers?

@Robert, no, it’s open to all though the focus is on access to capital so many in the room are involved in fund management

Would love to hear how you get the banks interested in other approaches to CRA

https://www.thehackettgroup.com

@Alex - love that framing for growing subs to prime contractors. Great way to tap into anchor institutions' supplier diversity programs and impact spend.

Most St Louis banks have seemed to be pretty settled in their current approaches, at least in my limited experience

especially in light of the infrastructure bill being introduced

Hackett Group Fund: https://www.thehackettgroup.com/?msclkid=94d846b7c65011ec82bbfcc82fd5e87d

Manchester Story Group: https://manchesterstory.com/?msclkid=cb8a65f5c65011ecb322ae1c36637783

http://www.higherpurposeco.org/

+1 to what Lauren said; would love to connect around that more, Alex. We’ve been looking into doing more focused work with Black and Latinx owned & led construction firms & anchor institutions

Yoni/anyone else, I would be great to connect. My email is alexander@hackett-group.com

Ok. Thank you Yoni. I am a minority business owner with an investment/loan from one of the participants here and I was just trying to learn about access to growth capital and how these groups look at that beyond initial contributions. Can someone address how any of their funds are looking at that. A lot of minority businesses put the initial capital to work and achieve great growth but have no access to capital to support that growth.

Two of our other client-partners are involved with Kaiser Permanente and the healthcare anchor network to diversify supply chains and stabilize with employee ownership. Brand new write-up: https://about.kaiserpermanente.org/community-health/news/employee-owned-businesses-foster-healthier-local-economies

https://wepowerstl.org/

https://justinepetersen.org/

Great stuff, Tori and JP!

Hi Brendan (Cosgrove), so glad to see you here! I owe you a major shoutout for suggesting WEPOWER look into a revenue based model a few years back. That was one of the most useful suggestions in our whole research process and turned us on to the path we’re on today. And shoutout in turn to Kauffman Foundation for funding the Capital Access Lab to support more work like this (in addition to this research project obviously)

+1 to the mobilization lending / guarantee pool need! Also, a great way for financial institutions and philanthropic groups to partner

@Thaddeus, sounds like a great place for Living Cities to broker some relationships! :)

Thank you for such an informative Zoom! Unfortunately I need to leave for class, but thank you.

Higher Purpose Co loan guarantee pool within our funding network is supported by RSF Finance and the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation. We maintain agency in the decision making process and have used the guarantee to reduce interest rates and closing costs.

Tim, that’s really cool to hear that RSF is part of that. I didn’t know they did that. Can you share more about your terms (rates, duration, etc)

That box is part of how we got to where we are! It’s an exclusive and discriminatory box

To support Black & Latinx entrepreneurs especially, we want ALL the tools in the toolbox to exist. To Tori's point, CDFIs (and banks) are best suited to provide lines of credit. In our part of the country, they are also excellent for microfinance and business starts. We like to fill the spaces in between where CDFIs shine.

Appreciate those points (and that candor) Galen

I would also like to invite all the students to share questions in the chat

+1 Galen - the cost of capital for CDFIs from banks not only in terms of the rate, but also the risk parameters that they require

I am really appreciating how this conversation is starting at the entrepreneur & fund level and moving upstream to more of a systems and policy lens!

(To clarify, I didn’t lay out the agenda, lest that sound like I’m complementing myself. I meant that as praise to Heather & Bukola who really put in nearly all of the work to organize and plan this)

😊

Yoni- Higher Purpose Co worked with a CDFI Communities Unlimited in partnership with RSF to stand up the loan guarantee. Some of the aspects include Guarantee Rates” shall be as follows: (a) 75%for Loans to (i) any business that has operated as a home-based or other part-time business forany period of time and is now preparing to move to full time or (ii) any business that hasoperated full time for two years or less (“Start-up Business”) and (b) 60% for Loans to anybusiness that has operated for more than two years and has documented sales and a marketplace(”Existing Business”).

Barbara - Great to hear that you moved forward with investing in CDFI’s!

Thank you @Yoni :)

Thank you Tim

https://ncrc.org/

So appreciate folks investing in CDFIs. They also have a rough time with federally-mandated balance sheet ratios. Supporting with grants, equity, and deposits is also important so that more community lending can take place.

Yes!! The smaller investment is likely just as expensive to underwrite (or perhaps more expensive/time consuming) and where there are more gaps in access to capital!

Great point

Yes we all need to think about where we bank

+1 to what Lauren said re: CDFIs & investing in CDFIs. To be candid & fair, in St Louis they’re (I think?) the only non-bank investors doing this work at scale. As Lauren said earlier, we need all the tools in the toolbox. And it’s critical we do what’s possible to meet individuals and business owners with the best terms possible in the current system while also experimenting with models that hold promise for the future. And CDFIs are critical partners in that experimentation too.

@Josh — glad you added that last point! I would love to help play a role making sure everyday people know what’s happening with CRA reform & know how to represent their views and participate in the (normally wonky & inside baseball) comment period

Yes BJC is making moves to deploy money in CDFI

https://ncrc.org/conference/

announcement of NCRC conference

It sounds like procurement requirements (i.e. there are requirements that exist on paper and there’s a huge gap between goals or rules on paper and what happens in practice)

Why aren't these companies deploying capital directly in growth minority businesses like mine?

+1 Melissa

Robert — I think each of these groups is trying to deploy capital effectively to make things more inclusive and accessible. Beyond that, it’s hard to comment on the specifics of your experience without knowing the specifics of your business, which a venue like this isn’t really well suited for. I wish you the best.

+1000 Melissa - entrepreneur support organizations are KEY to making sense of what capital is the right capital for the stage of business

+1000 from me too

The St Louis Capital Collective that Tori has been convening is taking an approach that uses entrepreneur support organizations as key referral & underwriting partners.

💛 Impact America Fund team

Join our LinkedIn group to stay connected, network,and get updates https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9159967/

This is the Capital Access Prosperity Strategy and Practice Group.

Join our LinkedIn group to stay connected, network, and get updates https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9159967/

This is the Capital Access Prosperity Strategy and Practice Group.

If folks on the call are working on making access to capital more inclusive and haven’t heard of the Inclusive Capital Collective, I encourage you to also check that out and join: https://www.inclusive-capital.us/

Incredible conversation and wonderful to hear about so many efforts. Thanks all for sharing!

As a place-based group, it can be really hard to keep tabs on what’s happening nationally in this work. Appreciative of settings like this as well as things like the Inclusive Capital Showcase that groups like Zebras Unite and the ICC have organized.

Local cross-referral is great! In San Diego, we have a group of impact lenders that convene quarterly to share what we're seeing and deepen relationships with each other to make it easy to refer entrepreneurs to best-fit capital.

Kay’s Kute Fruit https://www.ofn.org/impact-stories/family-owned-mississippi-fruit-shop-purchases-building-with-cdfi-financing/

Hearing what other communities are doing: takeaway - capital + services much needed - which means high touch. Connect with Alex and Tim.

For an action item, I’m a grad student who serves on a planning committee for WashU’s 2023 Impact Investing Symposium. I appreciated this conversation so much and took pages of notes for my takeaways!

Thank you!

Co-create and share information about the full spectrum of capital tools & when to use them.