In This Must Know…
- Congrats to CAMEO Loan Loss Reserve Grantees!
- CAMEO Receives Grants!
- More money for the California Rebuilding Fund!
- Heidi joins Small Business Majority for a 30 minutes small business policy brief tomorrow at 12:00 pm PDT.
- Celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month and check out stories of our Hispanic entrepreneurs.
- Our Impact Census is due in one week! Listen to our recorded listening session if you have any questions.
- This week’s Goodie highlight is CAMEO is hiring, see who else is!
Alan Fisher, founder of CRC, passed away last week. Our condolences go out to Sharon Miller, the CEO of Renaissance and his family. Alan, RIP. You were a trailblazer.
Congrats to CAMEO LLR Grantees
We are pleased to announce the grantees of CAMEO’s Loan Loss Reserve Program sponsored by Union Bank. Five microlenders will receive grants of $9,000 each for loan loss reserves to support their microlending to entrepreneurs of color in California.
Congrats to: Accessity (formerly Accion serving Southern California), Feed The Hunger, First Community Capital, Fresno Area Hispanic Foundation and TMC Community Capital!
Read more about this innovative new program as the latest offering from our CDFI Incubator and through MUFG Union Bank’s Community Recovery Program (CRP) on our blog post.
CAMEO Receives Grants
CAMEO is excited to announce we received the Rebuilding Better grant from Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to do policy work around racial justice. CAMEO was one of 21 organizations that was selected to support activities that engage entrepreneurs in advocacy. Congrats to our other colleagues that include AEO, RCAC, Common Future, and Micro Enterprise Services of Oregon and more! We’re hiring a policy specialist to help us with the work.
And we were approved for our 2nd CDFI Fund TA Grant for $125K! The following CAMEO members also were approved: Economic Justice Fund, First Community Capital, ICA Fund, Inclusive Action for the City, and TMC Community Capital! These grantees have participated in our CDFI Incubator (except for ICA Fund).
California Rebuilding Fund
California’s smallest businesses have access to an additional $56.5 million through the California Rebuilding Fund, which offers flexible, low-cost loans to support long-term recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. First announced by Governor Gavin Newsom in November 2020, the Fund is a public-private partnership that blends capital from private, philanthropic and public sector organizations to support new lending administered by CDFIs.
We will host a CA Rebuilding Fund Train the Trainer on October 22, 2021 where we’ll review changes in the program, share outreach strategies and answer questions.
The Goodies
Industry News
- U.S. Bank announced plans to purchase Union Bank, which will make it the the fifth-largest bank in California.
- The FDIC is standing up the Mission-Driven Bank Fund to help mission-driven banks, FDIC-insured minority depository institutions (MDIs) and Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), that support low- and moderate-income, minority, and rural communities.
New Resources
- Download a new GAO report on the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) – “Program Changes Increased Lending to the Smallest Businesses and in Underserved Locations.”
- ICYMI: The SBA issued a final rule that allows SBA to immediately issue Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan forgiveness decisions and provide certainty around the appeals process. This rule went into effect September 14, 2021.
Other Goodies
- ICYMI: Last week, we signed onto a comment letter to the DFPI on the proposed rule establishing UDAAP protections and data collection on financing to small businesses, nonprofits, and family farms.
- Jobs: CAMEO, CRC, Working Solutions, and Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center announced new jobs recently. See who else is hiring!