Ward 8 Community Investment Fund

The W8CIF, is a black led place-based funding opportunity offering  “grants-secured loans” to Ward 8 resident-entrepreneurs, and small  businesses. Grant secured loans are a new generation of anti-racist  financial product developed by and for black entrepreneurs in  partnership with elected officials, DSLBD, and a small business focused  CDFI. The grant-secured-loan product is designed to address the unmet  needs for “friends and family” funding which is not available to many  black founders due to the racial wealth gap in Washington, DC. A  multi-year community-centered-design process, drawing on the combined  insights and wisdom of activists, community members, entrepreneurs, and  (later) community development finance practitioners, led to the creation  of this groundbreaking financial product.  Grant secured Loans channel  funding to small businesses, where it’s needed most, while enhancing the  credit history of clients, to improve their access to mainstream  funding options.

The W8CIF grant supported loan program  both catalyzes business growth for Ward 8’s brilliant and creative  small businesses and increasing the capital absorption capacity of the  small business economy in Ward 8, The W8CIF’s grant secured loan pilot  program delivers a proof of concept and step forward in the creation of  antiracist financial products that can be expanded upon to with  additional capital flows to small businesses and entrepreneurs from  philanthropy, CDFIs and Banks.

Through the framework of  a public-private partnership, DCCDC collaborated with Ward 8  Councilmember Trayon White, and Mayor Muriel E. Bowsers’ DC Department  of Small, Local, Disadvantaged Businesses (DSLBD), and Life Asset, a  nonprofit Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) micro-loan  fund located in the Skyland Workforce Center to create this unique and  powerful funding tool.