Community Development Financial Institutions Fund
Fund promoting economic revitalization in the U.S.
The Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund) promotes economic revitalization in distressed communities throughout the United States by providing financial assistance and information to community development financial institutions (CDFI). The CDFI Fund was originally established as an independent government corporation through the Riegle Community Development and Regulatory Improvement Act of 1994. Congress promptly moved the CDFI Fund under United States Department of the Treasury in a 1995 reconciliation bill. Financial institutions, which may include banks, credit unions, loan funds, and community development venture capital funds, can apply to the CDFI Fund for formal certification as a CDFI.
In March 2025, President Trump issued an executive order that directed that the CDFI Fund be eliminated "to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law", along with several other agencies.
History
As of September 1, 2005, there were 747 certified CDFIs in the U.S. The CDFI Fund offers a variety of financial programs to provide capital to CDFIs, such as the Financial Assistance Program, Technical Assistance Program, Bank Enterprise Award Program, and the New Markets Tax Credit Program.
One of the oldest nonprofit loan funds in the United States, Enterprise Community Loan Fund - a subsidiary of Enterprise Community Partners has loaned more than $725 million to help build or renovate 91,000 affordable homes. They also offer local funds in Atlanta, Louisiana, Los Angeles, and New York City. Other, larger nonprofit loan funds have typically invested nearly $2 billion per loan fund (as of 2017) including Low Income Investment Fund, Boston Community Capital, Reinvestment Fund, Capital Impact Partners, Local Initiatives Support Corp and Self-Help. Within the field, only a handful of CDFIs have achieved an investment grade rating from Standard & Poor - including Local Initiative Support Corp, Reinvestment Fund, Capital Impact Partners.
In 1998, City First Bank was certified as Washington, DC's first CDFI bank.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Community Development Financial Institutions Fund” as fund promoting economic revitalization in the U.S. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5154722. VIAF identifies the subject as 132872015. The Library of Congress control number is no2003093301. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1994, 1995, 2025 and 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “Community Development Financial Institutions Fund” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.