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CDFI Friendly Fort Worth on Wednesday announced its nine-member founding board of directors, an important next step in an initiative launched in January that officials expect could bring up to $250 million in lending over five years to traditionally underserved and under-resourced communities.
CDFI Friendly Fort Worth will work as a go-between, matching community development financial institutions with borrowers to provide loans to minority-owned businesses and disadvantaged people, both of which have historically lacked access to capital.
The founding board of directors are, in alphabetical order:
- Javier Balderrama, Alband, Lane & Balderrama
- Joe Cordova, Edward Jones
- Glenn Forbes, Financial Professional
- Michelle Green-Ford, Fort Worth Metropolitan Black Chamber of Commerce
- Jazmin Gutierrez, Fort Worth Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
- Cristal Hernandez-Galvan, Hernandez Grants & Consulting LLC
- Grace McDermott, US Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce
- Willie Rankin, Childcare Associates
- Andy Williams, Rehab Warriors
“To govern the new nonprofit that is being set up, this board has the right experience and skills to ensure that it is rooted in the communities it will serve,” says Robert Sturns, director of the city of Fort Worth’s Department of Economic Development. “This is a private-sector board because CDFI Friendly Fort Worth is an independent, nongovernmental effort.”
The Department of Economic Development is overseeing the city’s contract to develop and establish CDFI Friendly Fort Worth.
The city has already kicked in $3 million through the federal government’s pandemic-era American Rescue Plan. Mayor Mattie Parker announced in January that Bank of America had pledged $10 million toward it.
“Fort Worth has really for a long time struggled, frankly, to focus in our communities that need us most, especially our Black and Hispanic communities that have amazing businesses that really teeter month to month to just make it,” Parker said then. “That’s frustrating because we know that their capacity is so much bigger.”
The CDFI Friendly Fort Worth board will meet for the first time this summer to elect officers. It will oversee the next steps in Fort Worth’s CDFI Friendly strategy, including business planning, hiring an executive director and facilitating more financing by the 18 CDFIs now working in the city.
Earlier Wednesday, CDFI Friendly Fort Worth announced that, already in 2022, CDFIs from across the nation have invested more than $7.3 million in Fort Worth.
“Every community must determine its financing needs and priorities for itself,” says Mark Pinsky of CDFI Friendly America. “Fort Worth is off to a terrific start, and the board’s job will be to build on the community’s achievements since we started in November 2021. CDFI Friendly Fort Worth should help create new opportunities for people and communities here through access to affordable, fair financing.”