Opportunity Finance Network has a long history of policy leadership. A founding purpose of this organization was to serve as a unified, national voice for our membership. For more than 20 years, we have pursued policy change to increase capital for the opportunity finance industry with much success. In the early 1990s, for example, we incubated the CDFI Coalition in partnership with many national leadership organizations.1 The Coalition spearheaded the initiative that would become the CDFI Fund.

Opportunity Finance Network also played an important support role in preserving the Community Reinvestment Act and strengthening it by incorporating CDFIs into the regulations. We sought and achieved regulatory changes around the Equity Equivalent (EQ2) investment product, which we introduced in 1996 that rewarded bank investors, CDFIs, and the people and markets we serve. At the same time, our seminal 1996 paper on the need to extend CRA to all financial services companies that rely on federal backing continues to make the case for this critical policy change.

During the 90s, we focused almost all of our policy efforts on establishing, supporting, and improving the CDFI Fund with good results. Beyond the CDFI Fund, however, our policy work was reactive and narrowly focused. We responded to an agenda set by others, tackled only issues within our limited sphere of experience, and remained virtually unknown outside of our industry.

By 2001, we knew that we had to play an expanded and pro-active role in the policy debate. In 2003, we committed Opportunity Finance Network to focusing on structural and systemic changes that would significantly increase CDFI and related financing. In this approach to change, policy is the end game.

We embarked on a strategy to expand our influence and shape the political dialogue in new ways: we opened an office in Washington, DC, increasing our presence there, and began to look at new options for public and private capital.

In 2004, we adopted a strategic plan that directed us to take the policy offensive. In 2005, responding to negative perceptions in Washington, DC, and elsewhere to the industry “brand,” the Opportunity Finance Network adopted a new brand—opportunity finance. In less than a year, this new brand has sharply improved responses on Capitol Hill and across the federal government.

To date, we have demonstrated the value of opportunity finance as a policy strategy, proved our industry’s ability to intervene in appropriate ways and only at appropriate times, continue to build a bipartisan base of support for our work, and collaborate with a wide range of advocates and policymakers. Now we offer this policy agenda to build on what we have accomplished.

We will commit the resources necessary to implement this policy agenda. We believe this agenda will focus our efforts, strengthen our ability to mobilize Opportunity Finance Network’s Membership, increase our capacity for policy partnerships, and advance our mission.

Through careful planning and the dedication of Opportunity Finance Network leadership, Members, and staff, we can advance our mission through an aggressive, pro-active approach to policy. Opportunity Finance Network will maintain discipline around its focal issues and not become distracted by forces it cannot control.

Our agenda is ambitious, commensurate with the issues we face. We do not expect to be able to accomplish all of the priorities listed in this document easily, if at all. The people we serve—our investors, funders, partners, and customers—expect us to try nonetheless. They are depending on our ambition, expertise, and determination.