CFED Awarded $125,000 Grant from Capital One for Innovative Asset-Building and Microenterprise Services Initiative

Funding will be used to advance the financial security and upward mobility of low-income entrepreneurs.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – April 8, 2013 – (RealEstateRama) — The Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) announced a $125,000 grant from Capital One Financial Corporation to support work to identify new scalable opportunities to help disadvantaged entrepreneurs achieve upward economic mobility. The grant will facilitate a partnership between CFED and several microenterprise organizations, including Accion Texas, Inc., the California Association for Micro Enterprise Opportunity (CAMEO), the Enterprise Development Group (EDG) in the Washington, DC metro area, and others. Through these partnerships, CFED will promote emerging practices that service providers can implement to ensure that their clients have access to the financial products and skills they need, and are actively using them to make their businesses stable and sustainable.

“Accion Texas, CAMEO, and EDG, all high-performing, innovative leaders in serving low-income entrepreneurs, will be able to elevate their promising practices and cross-pollinate ideas that can help clients achieve financial security and upward economic mobility,” said Andrea Levere, CFED president. “Capital One’s leadership and support is making it possible to extend the project’s impact beyond our four active partners and reach the wider field of microenterprise practitioners, policymakers and financial institutions.”

The Capital One grant will fund a number of the project’s core activities and products in 2013 including:

• In-depth interviews with key staff at the four partner organizations to learn about their clients’ specific financial capability and product needs, and the operational opportunities and obstacles that affect capacity to deliver new solutions.
• Small group convenings to share our findings and identify ways to replicate effective innovations.
• The development of public education materials, such as an Emerging Practices Guide, a Policy Analysis Report, and several Field Innovation Briefs to be disseminated to policymakers, practitioners, financial institutions and other key stakeholders to make them aware of field developments and opportunities to support promising approaches.

“CFED is a leading national intermediary with decades of experience that combines expertise in both microenterprise and asset building to create synergies in support of microenterprises and the self-employed,” said Daniel Delehanty, senior director, Community Development Banking at Capital One. “Through Capital One’s Investing for Good program, we continue to work with organizations like CFED to help microentrepreneurs grow their businesses through capacity building and integration of innovative financial capability training and support that ultimately helps to create more jobs and stimulate local economies.”

About Capital One
Capital One Financial Corporation, headquartered in McLean, Virginia, is a Fortune 500 company with more than 900 branch locations primarily in New York, New Jersey, Texas, Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Its subsidiaries, Capital One, N.A. and Capital One Bank (USA), N. A., offer a broad spectrum of financial products and services to consumers, small businesses and commercial clients. We apply the same principles of innovation, collaboration and empowerment in our commitment to our communities across the country that we do in our business. We recognize that helping to build strong and healthy communities – good places to work, good places to do business and good places to raise families – benefits us all and we are proud to support this and other community initiatives.

About Corporation for Enterprise Development
CFED’s mission is to empower low- and moderate-income households to build and preserve assets by advancing policies and programs that help them achieve the American Dream, including buying a home, pursuing higher education, starting a business and saving for the future. As a leading source for data about household financial security and policy solutions, CFED understands what families need to succeed. We promote programs on the ground and invest in social enterprises that create pathways to financial security and opportunity for millions of people.

Established in 1979 as the Corporation for Enterprise Development, CFED works nationally and internationally through its offices in Washington, DC; Durham, North Carolina; and San Francisco, California.

Contact:
Kristin Lawton, 202.408.9788