Mission Driven Bank Fund and Partners Aim to Close Racial Income and Wealth Gaps
The Mission Driven Bank Fund is pleased to announce a partnership with the National Bankers Association Foundation and UpMetrics to track the social impact of the Fund’s capital and technical services investment in Minority Depository Institutions (MDIs) and Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs).
MDIs and CDFIs are mission-driven community lenders who provide access to capital and credit in minority, low- and moderate-income (LMI), and rural communities. These institutions help close the racial income and wealth gaps by providing access to banking services that support home ownership, business growth, and quality job creation to underbanked or unbanked communities.
The National Bankers Association Foundation has provided valuable insights into the needs of these institutions and ways to make them better. Based on understanding the market, the Mission Driven Bank Fund will seek to make supportive investments and subsidized technical services to build organizational capacity. UpMetrics will collect and analyze portfolio company data, via EquityEQ - a customized dashboard developed in partnership with the National Bankers Association Foundation, as an important part of the Mission Driven Bank Fund Impact Management & Measurement process. Through these efforts, the partnership hopes to improve bank resiliency, improve access to capital to underserved communities, amplify the importance of community lenders, and attract additional investor capital to capitalize the sector further.
“Our partnership with the National Bankers Association Foundation and UpMetrics is a critical step in gaining insights into the progress the Mission Driven Bank Fund is making toward closing the racial income and wealth gaps. We are committed to working with our bank partners to understand the many positive long-term outcomes they have on their communities,” said Krystal Langholz, Director and Head of Technical Services for the Mission Driven Bank Fund. The partnership builds on an ongoing relationship between UpMetrics and the National Bankers Association that included a year-long pilot with MDIs and CDFIs in 2022-2023.
"By leveraging the National Bankers Association Foundation’s subject matter expertise and UpMetrics’ state-of-the-art impact measurement platform, we are able to provide banks and their investors with a robust framework for evaluating the significance of mission-driven investments,” said Drew Payne, CEO UpMetrics. “The bottom line is that empowering banks to more easily and effectively leverage their data will create better outcomes for the communities they serve.”
In addition to impact reporting and internal analytics, the partnership hopes to produce public insights that can help policymakers, philanthropic foundations, and other stakeholders better understand the sector and its significance. “By producing empirical research on the social impact of mission-driven community lenders, we can provide actionable insights that can increase the effectiveness of both public policy and market-based development in our nation’s most disadvantaged communities,” said Anthony Barr, Research and Impact Director for the National Bankers Association Foundation.
The Mission Driven Bank Fund is anchored by investments from Microsoft and Truist and is currently pursuing additional closings with a target of over $500 million in total capital. “The Fund provides FDIC-insured MDIs and CDFIs tailored financial solutions and technical support designed to build capacity and increase community impact,” said Paul Welch, Portfolio Manager of the Mission Driven Bank Fund. The Fund had its first close at the end of 2023 and has started to deploy capital.
Source: The Mission Driven Bank Fund
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