Chicago, IL – The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund are proud to present the 2014 Community Reinvestment Awards. This year’s awards focus on cross-sector community development collaborations. The community development field recognizes that no single organization or sector can effectively address the scale of need in low- and moderate income communities. Instead, new and often unlikely partners are starting to work together to combine their expertise and resources to develop comprehensive solutions.
The 2014 awards are meant to showcase innovative community development collaborations that are taking place across the country, recognizing that financial institutions have an important role to play in their success.
The 2014 Award winners are:
PNC — Grow Up Great/Crezca con Exito
In 2004, The PNC Financial Services Group launched PNC Grow Up Great (and PNC Crezca con Exito), a $350 million, multi-year, bilingual initiative to help to prepare children, birth to age five for school and life. PNC provides funding, advocacy, tools and volunteers to help families and communities foster children’s early learning. PNC has formed “non-traditional” local partnerships with arts, cultural and science organizations such as Sesame Workshop. Partners work with early childhood education centers to enhance early science and arts programming. Approximately 39,000 PNC employees have logged more than 410,000 volunteer hours. Two million children have been served and 138,000 teachers have received professional development.
Citi — Child Support for College (CS4C)
The CS4C initiative, funded by Citi, combined the efforts of RAISE Texas, local nonprofit financial coaching entities and the Texas Attorney General – Child Support Division (CSD) to help families in the child support system save for their children’s college education. RAISE Texas provided the coaching entities with a grant to increase their capacity for services and provide a financial incentive for parents to save for their children’s future educational expenses. The CS4C program provides matched contributions and financial coaching services to encourage college savings among eligible parents in the child support system. From February 2012 through August 2013, 63 custodial parents opened up 116 college savings accounts totaling almost $51,000 in deposits.
Goldman Sachs Bank USA — 10,000 Small Businesses
10,000 Small Businesses is a $500 million commitment by Goldman Sachs and The Goldman Sachs Foundation to unlock the job-creation potential of small businesses across the United States. 10,000 Small Businesses is an alliance of more than 90 government, education, capital and non-profit partners. Babson College and Initiative for a Competitive Inner City are key program partners with local and national business development organizations. Goldman Sachs partners with CDFIs and other mission-driven lenders to target areas underserved by traditional lenders. Opportunity Finance Network helped create the CDFI Growth Collaborative to build the capacity of CDFIs focused on small business lending. 75 percent of program-supported capital recipients are located in LMI areas, and more than 50 percent are minority- or women-owned enterprises. The program maintains a 99 percent graduation rate.
The 2014 Honorable Mentions are:
Third Federal Savings and Loan — Broadway P-16 Initiative and Trailside Slavic Village.
Goldman Sachs Bank USA — Early Childhood Social Impact Loan.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s primary mission is to charter, regulate, and supervise all national banks and federal savings associations. We also supervise the federal branches and agencies of foreign banks. Our goal in supervising banks and federal savings associations is to ensure that they operate in a safe and sound manner and in compliance with laws requiring fair treatment of their customers and fair access to credit and financial products.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (the CDFI Fund) was established by the Riegle Community Development and Regulatory Improvement Act of 1994 with the purpose of empowering America’s underserved and distressed by increasing economic opportunity and promoting community development investments. The CDFI Fund achieves its purpose by promoting access to capital and local economic growth through its CDFI Program, New Markets Tax Credit Program, Bank Enterprise Award Program, Native Initiatives, and CDFI Bond Guarantee Program. Since its creation, the CDFI Fund has awarded over $1.7 billion to community development organizations and financial institutions; it has awarded allocations of New Markets Tax Credits which will attract private-sector investments totaling $33 billion, including $1 billion of special allocation authority to be used for the recovery and redevelopment of the Gulf Opportunity Zone.
The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (SF Fed) works to advance the nation’s monetary, financial, and payment systems to build a stronger economy for all Americans. As part of the U.S. central bank, the SF Fed serves the Twelfth Federal Reserve District, which covers the nine western states—Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawai’i, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington—plus American Samoa, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. By pursuing our two key goals of maximum employment and price stability—known as the Fed’s dual mandate—we work toward supporting an economy that works for everyone.