Brooklyn Community Development Organization Promotes Healthy, Green Neighborhoods
Client: East New York Restoration Local Development Corporation (ENYRLDC)
Client Location: New York, NY
CDFI: Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF)
CDFI Service Area: National
Community facility financing
East New York Restoration Local Development Corporation (ENYRLDC) works to increase career and business opportunities in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York. The organization’s goal is to foster a solid foundation for economic development by supporting small businesses, job development, and efforts to keep communities clean, green, and environmentally informed.
Clean up activities in community gardens, composting and building a greenhouse. ENYRLDC has partnered with numerous gardens to help often elderly gardeners prepare spaces for the growing season, set up green houses and compost equipment of different types, and beautify the spaces.
Last year, ENYRLDC began constructing an outdoor adult fitness center in an East New York community after learning from seniors in the community that they lacked adequate facilities. At the same time, the organization saw an increase in demand for its existing programs: community cleanups, green programs, a job development center, job fairs, and placing and cleaning trashcans on identified street corners in East New York.
ENYRLDC’s responsiveness to the community’s needs coupled with city contract payout delays placed an increasing amount of strain on the organization’s cash flow – strain that the organization’s executive director alleviated by making a personal loan to the organization. To address ENYRLDC’s financial challenges, they turned to Nonprofit Finance Fund.
Nonprofit Finance Fund made a loan to ENYRLDC through its zero-interest CARE Fund to both pay off the executive director’s personal loan and bridge the financing that ENYRLDC needs to complete the fitness center while city contract payouts continue to be delayed. Effectively, this loan will ease cash flow pressures on the organization while supporting the health and wellness of East New York communities.
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