Survey results have shown that demand for CDFIs’ products and services has continually grown for years. In the 2019 survey, almost three-quarters of respondents said demand had increased from 2018. An even larger share (86%) foresaw demand continuing to increase in 2020. Although CDFIs’ business slowed briefly at the onset of the pandemic, the 2020 COVID-19 CDFI Survey revealed that the resulting economic environment spurred many financially underserved individuals and businesses to seek banking or lending services, and demand for CDFIs quickly regained momentum. As demand for their products and services continued to grow, CDFIs expressed wanting to offer additional products and services. In the 2021 survey, 76% of respondents said they wanted to expand their offerings but could not on a sustained basis. Limited staffing was frequently reported as a top inhibitor to growth. Lending capital was the secondary issue.
Archives: Resources
Small Business Economic Perspectives & Policy Priorities
Between Aug. 4-15, 2023, Small Business for America’s Future conducted a national survey of 961 small business owners to gauge their sentiment around the economy and the Inflation Reduction Act on its one-year anniversary.
Role of Banks in Funding Climate Change
California communities have been ravaged by fires, flooding, extreme heat and paralyzing spring snowstorms. Big changes in public policy and corporate conduct are needed to solve the crisis of climate change. This report analyzes the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a public-private initiative created in 2020 to help alleviate financial pressures businesses experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, and highlights the unexpected impacts the loan program has had on climate change. This first-of-its-kind analysis looks at all bank financing of oil, gas and coal companies under the PPP.
Employee Ownership for Manufacturers
This report presents employee ownership as a strategy to address all three challenges with a flexible and proactive succession planning tool. We highlight the growing number of cases in which employee ownership has been successfully used to strengthen small- and medium-sized American manufacturers, including an innovative partnership the Oregon Manufacturing Extension Partnership (OMEP) has formed with Project Equity to offer their clients employee ownership succession planning services. By connecting these pressing challenges with this powerful solution, this report aims to equip key stakeholders to incorporate employee ownership into their toolkits to support small- and medium-sized manufacturers across the country, taking a critical step toward building quality jobs, forming resilient supply chains, and establishing sustainable business models.
Breaking Barriers to Capital Access for Returning Citizens
Endeavor Ready 3.0: Breaking Barriers to Capital Access for Returning Citizens report outlines actions that lenders and organizations in the reentry community can take to improve outcomes in their programs and remove barriers to capital access to better serve millions of returning citizens.
California Competitiveness Report
CALIFORNIA IS A CROWN JEWEL FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND INVESTMENT
– The economy of California is the largest in the country, with a $3.598 trillion (GSP) as of 2022.
– It is the largest subnational economy in the world.
– If California were a sovereign nation, it would rank in terms of nominal GDP as the world’s fifth-largest economy, behind Germany and ahead of India.
Women’s Small Business Ownership Report
Women represent more than half of the United States population and make significant contributions across all industries and sectors. Americans filed about 5.1 million business applications in 2022, nearly 14,000 a day, up from 3.5 million in 2019. That compares to just 29 percent of all business filings pre-pandemic. Women in particular have been the driving force behind America’s economic rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic, creating about half of new businesses for the third year in a row. Women of color, specifically Black women, have had a tremendous impact on the post-pandemic economy with the number of Black-women-owned employer businesses increasing to around 18 percent from 2017-2020, compared to a 9 percent increase in the number of women-owned businesses. According to an analysis produced by the Boston Consulting Group, if women participated equally to men as entrepreneurs, global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) could increase by approximately 3 to 6 percent, adding $2.5 to $5 trillion
to the global economy.
The Startup Surge Continues
Here we highlight several major takeaways for business formation through the first half of 2023. We focus on applications from likely employers because of their crucial role in job creation. We make most comparisons to 2019 in order to explicitly highlight how the pandemic-era economy has dramatically differed from prior trends up to 2020 when the pandemic hit, and to emphasize the staying power of the startup surge.
CA Small Business Owners Support Paid Leave Policies
As the California Legislature considers updating the state’s small business paid family leave and sick day policies, a new poll shows that small businesses owners strongly support expanding family leave protections and other benefits to their employees, including increasing the amount of paid sick days that employees can take.
Well-Being in Rural California 2023
Well-Being in Rural California 2023 paints a picture of well-being and access to opportunity across race, place, and gender in rural California today. Using the American Human Development Index (HDI), this report presents how residents in rural California are doing on three key dimensions of well-being—a long and healthy life, access to knowledge, and a decent standard of living. Broken down by race and ethnicity, by gender, and by census tract, the index shows how communities are faring relative to one another and to the state and country as a whole. The report found that stark variation exists by place and by demographic group—resulting in significant inequalities across rural areas.