Welcome to the first Olamina update!

Candide Group’s Olamina Fund addresses the historic lack of access to capital in American communities — namely Black & Native communities, who have faced decades of disinvestment and intentional extraction. We’re so excited to share with you the first round of impact-aligned borrowers in our portfolio, and how they’re caring for their communities:

New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, a woman-led CDFI which serves primarily rural residents of cooperatively-governed manufactured housing parks. They’ve responded to COVID by:

  • Providing 3 month payment moratorium until June for anyone who needs it; expecting that longer terms will be needed.

  • Expanding Employee Assistance Program with services such as legal aid and counseling, and increasing TA support.

  • Raising funds for a borrower stabilization fund to offset costs of increased TA support, payment moratoriums, and any additional revolving needs.

UP Community Fund, a Black-led organization focused on lending money to middle market companies in the South. They’ve responded to COVID by:

  • Focusing on helping borrowers navigate the PPP and other loan programs made available through the CARES Act, to proactively weather the challenges these businesses could face in the coming months.

Oweesta, a Native American, female-led CDFI intermediary serving Native America, Native Hawaii and Alaska Native lands. They’ve responded to COVID by:

  • Launching a COVID-19 Webinar Series to provide resources and support to Native Communities.

  • Underwriting new loans for groups creating emergency loan funds.

  • Launching 2 new loan products for Native CDFIs for lines of credit and operating capital, with origination fees waived until August.

HOPE, a women of color-led credit union & CDFI serving the Deep South. They’ve responded to COVID by:

  • Offering loan modifications such as deferments without interest accrual and interest rate reductions.

  • Offering new expedited unsecured loans, financial counseling and TA, and relief from credit bureau reporting. 

  • Deploying $13.1mm in PPP loans across the five states: 93% (by amount) went to nonprofits/businesses owned/led by people of color or women, 41% (by number) were to businesses/nonprofits with five or fewer employees, 71% with 20 or fewer employees, and 59% (by number) were in amounts less than $100,000.

RCAC provides training, technical and financial resources & advocacy so rural communities can achieve their goals and visions. They’ve responded to COVID by:

  • Making over $850,000 PPP loans to rural small businesses.

  • Putting together a grant-funded loan fund to help businesses and restaurants re-emerge post-shutdown. 
 

What we’ve heard & how we’re showing up in response to COVID-19.

Olamina’s mission and strategy were built for the long run. Though we are in the midst of painfully uncharted territory, we’ve always believed that the lack of lending in the communities we serve has been at crisis-levels for decades. We’re grateful to be in a position to lean more deeply into Olamina’s core values: holding both truths that we're in a moment of unprecedented suffering and unprecedented opportunity. Through deep listening, we came to the conclusion that an initial six-month interest payment deferment option for all of our borrowers is one critical way to support our partners, as we weather this storm together.

We also needed to address this crisis on a more systemic level. As also noted by our friends at Ceniarth, many minority-owned small businesses in persistent poverty regions of the US — particularly those in deeply underserved, rural areas — lack the ability to access government stimulus money. The small number of CDFIs that could meet community needs through the PPP lacked the liquidity, low cost of capital, and administrative capacity needed to compete with larger, national banks and CDFIs for what is a first come, first serve race for capital. 

Olamina provided a $3M to a loan facility specifically designed to address the liquidity challenge. We pooled our funds with Ceniarth for a 0% interest rate loan to Rural Community Assistance Corporation (RCAC) in advance of the anticipated SBA loan forgiveness, so that they would be positioned to immediately deploy the stimulus money to small businesses in the persistent poverty areas they serve. Through RCAC and other CDFI members of Partners for Rural Transformation, small businesses will have access to the PPP funds in Rural and Native communities across Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii and other Pacific Islands, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. We are grateful for the support of our entire team who stepped up to help close this deal in 2 weeks to ensure that RCAC had the money in time for the second round of PPP funding.  
 

Systemic Racism During COVID-19: Impact Investing & Philanthropy’s Role

How we keep moving forward:

  1. For all our foundation friends that center racial equity, it’s time to break down the silos internally between grant-making and investing. 

  2. Listen to the feedback from grantees and investees about the evaluation process. 

  3. The time that is saved by streamlining the evaluation process can be used to critically examine the conscious and unconscious bias within the decision-making structure. 

  4. If your organization does not have a commitment to supporting Native organizations, it needs to. 

  5. Many organizations have heavy-hitters on their boards that can leverage their connections towards justice.

  6. Be kind to one another.

 

More about Olamina

Candide Group’s Olamina Fund addresses the historic lack of access to capital in American communities

— namely Black and Native communities, who have faced decades of disinvestment and intentional extraction.

Olamina Fund seeks to build tangible and sustainable community wealth by investing in access to asset-building, high-quality jobs, and self-determination for low-income communities.

At Candide Group we've seen huge demand from both sides of this equation — investors who want to apply a social and racial justice lens to their work, and community organizations committed to racial justice who have been systematically excluded and need a lower cost of capital, with flexible terms. We launched Olamina to bridge that gap.

  • Olamina Fund believes that organizations which are led by people from the communities they serve are ultimately able to manage resources and risk more effectively, so at least 80% of Olamina’s borrowers will be led by people of color and women.

  • We also provide non-financial capital, such as access to networks, as part of our investment strategy. 

  • Unlike traditional loan funds, community borrowers are placed at the center of Olamina’s governance and design of solutions. 

  • We seek to honor all stakeholders within the fund through participation in profits and through the formation of a Community Advisory Board, which will advise on the fund strategy, review opportunities, and participate on the Credit Committee.

Follow us on Twitter or visit CandideGroup.com for more!