Grow with Google Small Business Fund Marks One Year
Sacha Adorno
From the first days of COVID-19, CDFIs have been on the pandemic’s front line, providing financial support and services to small businesses, homeowners, and community developers. And corporations like Google have turned to CDFIs to help communities hardest hit by the pandemic’s economic impact — the communities CDFIs historically serve — survive and position for recovery.
March marked the one-year anniversary of Google’s partnership with OFN on the Grow with Google Small Business Fund and Google.org Grant Program. The unique collaboration invests $180 million of Google’s corporate and philanthropic capital into CDFIs nationwide through OFN. With this financing, Google, OFN, and our member CDFIs are helping to support the short-term recovery and long-term financing needs of America’s small businesses.
“If there’s a silver lining to the COVID-19 crisis, it’s a growing widespread acknowledgement that America’s small businesses, especially Black, Latinx, women, and Native-owned businesses, are the backbone of a healthy American economy,” said Amir Kirkwood, OFN’s chief lending and investment officer. “Google knows this and realized in the earliest days of the pandemic that it takes specialized lenders like CDFIs to uplift these small businesses. The company’s investment has helped our members reach some of the nation’s smallest, most vulnerable entrepreneurs, positioning them to not only survive the crisis but to thrive post-pandemic.”
Since April 2020, OFN has committed $118 million in Grow with Google Small Business Fund loans to 38 CDFIs and disbursed $5.7 million in Google.org-funded grants to 33 CDFIs. Most recently the following CDFIs have received capital for small business support:
- Accompany Capital (loan and grant)
- AltCap (loan)
- Appalachian Community Capital (loan and grant)
- Community First Fund (loan and grant)
- Harlem Entrepreneurial Fund, LLC (loan and grant)
- Hope Enterprise Corporation (grant)
- Justine PETERSEN Housing and Reinvestment Corporation (loan and grant)
- Latino Economic Development Center (loan and grant)
- LiftFund (loan and grant)
- Main Street Launch (loan and grant)
- Natural Capital Investment Fund (loan)
- The Enterprise Center Capital Corporation (loan and grant)
- Reinvestment Fund (loan)
- WomenVenture (loan)