WASHINGTON, D.C. – September 25, 2014 – (RealEstateRama) — The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund) is soliciting comments regarding its Capacity Building Initiative (CBI). The Capacity Building Initiative provides direct training and technical assistance on issues impacting Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs).
Through the CBI, the CDFI Fund uses federal resources to engage third party contractors to provide specialized capacity building assistance to CDFIs and Native CDFIs. The CBI training and technical assistance is designed to increase the ability of CDFIs to deliver financial products and services to underserved communities. Such assistance usually takes the form of place-based training workshops, technical assistance, webinars, training curricula, and research reports. In addition, the CDFI Fund hosts a Virtual Resource Bank on its website to provide curricula and informational materials for the trainings to the general public.
To date, the Capacity Building Initiative has provided trainings on a variety of topics, including portfolio management, capitalization strategies, Minority Depository Institutions, emerging CDFIs, and small business and microfinance lending, among others. The complete list of current CBI training series and Virtual Resource Banks can be found on the CDFI Fund’s website at www.cdfifund.gov/cbi.
CDFIs, community and economic development trade groups, and members of the general public are invited to provide written comments on the Capacity Building Initiative. The CDFI Fund specifically requests comments on the following:
What are the ways that the Capacity Building Initiative could be improved to provide more effective assistance to CDFIs?
What CDFI capacity building needs should be addressed by future CBI assistance? Please provide new topics as well as highlight past training series that the CDFI Fund should offer again or expand upon.
What training and technical assistance structures are most useful for CDFIs and why? For instance, trainings can be place-based or virtual while technical assistance can be accomplished over the phone, on site, through cohort models, or other forms.
How can the Virtual Resource Bank be improved to better disseminate information from CBI training series?
How can the CDFI Fund improve its outreach efforts to ensure that the CDFI industry is aware of CBI training and technical assistance opportunities?
Written comments should be submitted by e-mail to 
For more information about the Capacity Building Initiative, please visit www.cdfifund.gov/cbi or view the Fact Sheet. Learn more about the CDFI Fund and its programs at www.cdfifund.gov.
