Opportunity Finance Network

We recommend that our Members consider making key messaging changes to improve your press releases, Web pages, and marketing materials. The suggestions below strongly support our core purpose of aligning capital with social, economic, and political justice, while providing a framework for communicating who we are and what we do more effectively.

Here is a sample description about the Opportunity Finance Network that leverages positive messaging about our collective results:

The Opportunity Finance Network creates growth that is good for communities, good for investors, good for individuals, and good for the economy. Our experts deliver quality, affordable housing, vital community services and entrepreneurial capital in urban and rural neighborhoods in all 50 states. The network has a 20-year track record of success, financing 141,000 jobs and 28,000 businesses, with losses as good as or better than most banks. The emerging markets we support will be a primary driver of the U.S. economy over the next 50 years.

Here is a helpful chart that contrasts current industry language (and its misperceptions) with suggestions for new messaging that will appeal to our various internal and external audiences:

Insead of:	Consider Trying:
"Community Development Finance" (To those outside the industry, this makes us sound wasteful, ineffective, and undeserving of private sector investment.)	"Opportunity Finance"
"CDFI Industry" (This term inspired negative feedback, and in many cases, was not even recognized or known.)	"Opportunity Finance Industry"
"Doing the deals that no one else will" (This language signals many negatives, such as instability and high-risk, low return.)	"Creating growth that is good for communities, good for investors, good for individuals, and good for the economy"
"Underserved population" or "disadvantaged communities" (When used often and alone, these terms make us sound like a charity or governmental program.)	"Opportunity markets" or "Communities of opportunity"