Mountain | Plains Regional Native CDFI Coalition
Coalition Lead: Four Bands Community Fund
Phase 2 Award: $45 million
Private Investment (Sept. 2022 – Sept. 2024): $882,000
Additional Public and Nonprofit Funding (Sept. 2022 – Sept. 2024): $3.8 million
Project Description:
Serving Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming, the Mountain | Plains Regional Native CDFI Coalition leveraging a $45 million BBBRC grant to reverse decades of historical disinvestment and institutionalized inequities impacting Native communities by increasing capacity of and investment in the Indigenous Finance Industry through an alliance of nine Native Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs). Through a new regional revolving loan fund, enhanced physical infrastructure assets, and increased capacity, the coalition is strategically deploying financial investments to Native entrepreneurs and small businesses while simultaneously driving quality job creation.
As of September 2024, the coalition has made significant strides in achieving its vision of a robust Indigenous Finance Industry by growing intellectual, human and financial capital while building physical and non-physical infrastructure.:
- The Coalition has developed a shared tool for members and partners to forward a regional ecosystem-wide narrative change strategy. Critical to the vision of success is a continued effort to dispel many of the myths around perceived risk in lending in Indian Country. This narrative change, which spans each of the entire portfolio of component projects, is continuing to show up in places that were not initially anticipated upon the EDA award.
- Expanding the Indigenous financial expertise in the region is well underway, with the successful identification of professional needs among finance leaders and the subsequent development of relevant degree programs at Tribal colleges and universities in the four-state region. Shared needs that emerged during these consultations include business counseling, grant writing, underwriting, and succession plans among Native CDFIs, which face a more difficult time in filling vacant positions than non-Native entities.
- The regional revolving loan fund, the keystone of the Mountain | Plains Regional Native CDFI Coalition’s project, began issuing loans to Native entrepreneurs and businesses in October 2023 and has dispersed around $3.5 million to 13 businesses within the region. Coalition members have expressed how significant this sum is given historical lending amounts in Indian Country in the Great Plains region. Critically, the coalition was also able to secure funding from the Wells Fargo Invest Native Initiative to provide gap funding for CDFIs as they seek to invest in local businesses.
Coalition Overarching Narrative (applicant submitted) (PDF)
“The Mountain | Plains Coalition is primarily led by Native women who are fortifying the regional Indigenous Finance Industry. … This investment is the single largest investment into the Native CDFI industry since its founding in 1985. With this seed capital, the Coalition is launching a holistic, five-year strategy to reimagine and actualize capital systems that center relationship, reciprocity, and resilience.”
Mountain | Plains Regional Native CDFI Coalition
Related Links
- Learn more about the new Crow Innovation Center.
- Learn more about the Coalition’s workforce and professional development plan.
- Learn more about the Coalition’s Regional Impacts.
- Learn more about the Annual Mountain | Plains Indigenous Finance Gathering.
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