LISC Chicago reposted this
Four decades ago, five groups of community organizers and social justice workers got together at a convent in Massachusetts, all deeply committed to the idea that capital could do more to forge equity and justice in low-income places and to creating a forum for community development investment. That convening was the birth of the organization we know today as Opportunity Finance Network, which has been gathering and guiding the CDFI industry ever since, helping investors to put their resources in under-resourced places, in alignment with their shared social and spiritual values. Yesterday, OFN’s 40th annual conference opened with an enthusiastic bang, and those same five groups are still in attendance—plus some 2,500 attendees from hundreds of member CDFIs across the country—to mark this history and chart the course for our collective work going forward. The opening day’s highlights included a welcome from the CDFI Oweesta Corporation, which led a Native gathering, a plenary talk by U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (a stalwart supporter of CDFIs), and a conversation with some of the lions of the CDFI movement, including Bill Bynum, founder of HOPE, Michael Swack (an attendee of the original OFN meeting), and Sister Corinne Florek (considered the godmother of the CDFI movement). There’s also an impressive exhibition tracing the roots of OFN and the CDFI movement from its earliest days to the present, with a shout-out to LISC as the first CDFI, in 2017, to enter the capital markets with our own notes. LISC is honored to be a longtime OFN member (our CFO christina travers sits on the board) and a sponsor of this landmark conference, and to have a robust line-up of our staff as speakers and panelists, including our new president of LISC Green, John Moon. Stay tuned for more on this landmark event and the ideas and news that emerge! #CDFI #SocialImpact #EconomicJustice #OFN40