Page 24 RAIN Spring 1986 ' '- i"- L: ■ ■ ■ '!'■ Community Loan Funds: Who We Are, What We’ve Learned, Where We’re Going -f Thefollowing article is takenfrom a talk by Chuck Matthei, director of the Institutefor Community Economics (ICE). We introduced RAIN readers to Matthei and the ICE in our MarchlApril 1985 issue in cm interview where he described ice's work with community land trusts, housing, and revolving loanfunds. In the year that has passed, the revolving loanfund “movement" has really taken off, with numerousfunds sprouting or expanding all across the country. In order to tap this burst ofenergy, help organize it, and further expand its influence, ICE sponsored a national conference ofcommunity loanfunds in October oflast year. Thirty-fivefundsfrom around the country were represented. Taken together, thesefunds had already mobilized over $13J million in capital. One good thing that came out of the conference was a plan to create a national association of community loanfunds. For more information on this association, contact ICE, listed below. Another good thing that came out of the conference was Matthei's opening speech, which we have excerpted and reprinted with permissionfrom the Fall 1985 issue ofICE's newsletter. Community Economics. The issue is devoted to coverage ofthe conference. For copies ofthe newsletter, orfor other information about ICE's work, contact Institutefor Community Economics, 151 Montague City Road, Greenfield, MA 01301; 4131774-5933. Forfurther information on ICE's approach to land reform, the Winter 1986 issue o/Building Economic Alternatives contains a lead article by Matthei called “Land Reform Begins at Home." Copies are availablefor $1 JO eachfrom Co-op America, 2100 M Street NW, Suite 310, Washington, DC 20063. —FLS BONNIE ACKER Who We Are I'd like to start our time together by taking a look at who we are at this conference. We are representatives of 35 loan funds of considerable diversity. There are young funds here, and some more seasoned funds, and a number of groups in the process of developing funds. We are funds with a mixture of purposes—some concentrating on loans for housing development, others on loans to consumer and worker cooperatives, and some involved in lending to a broad range of community development projects. We also represent a diversity of people. We represent constituencies of lenders and borrowers that are far more diverse than we as a group of sixty people are. Speaking from ICE's (Institute for Community Economics) experience, our individual lenders are wealthy people and people of very modest means; they are older people whose life savings are invested in the ICE Loan Funi and they are children whose college trust funds have been invested in the Loan Fund by their parents. Our lenders are also institutions—^religious organizations perhaps more than any other institutions, but also foundations, and even banks and investment management firms. Our borrowers are as diverse, or even more so. They are people of every color and ethnic origin. They are poor people and working class people and people of moderate income—but that doesn't really say it all, because every class and constituency within a community benefits from the kinds of projects that our funds finance. We are forging a kind of new partnership across some very broad divides. It's not a partnership without tensions, but it is a partnership that we should nurture. We are trying to forge a partnership, in some measure, between those who advocate
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