Opportunity Finance Network Receives Largest Grant in 35-Year History from Wells Fargo - Seite 2

Wells Fargo investment in CDFIs

Wells Fargo has a history of working with CDFIs and OFN. From 2015 to 2021, Wells Fargo provided CDFIs who were expanding their lending to Black, Latinx, and other diverse small businesses with more than $80 million in debt and more than $94 million in grant capital through the Diverse Community Capital program. This initiative built capital, technology, and infrastructure for these CDFIs, strengthening them for the long term and enabling them to mobilize faster to meet the unexpected demand from small businesses during the pandemic. Additionally, the Wells Fargo NEXT Awards for Opportunity Finance awarded the nation’s most promising CDFIs more than $76 million from 2007 to 2016.

This $25 million grant is part of Wells Fargo’s Open for Business Fund, a roughly $420 million small business recovery effort. Through May 31, 2021, the Open for Business Fund is projected to reach roughly 35,000 small businesses, helping them keep nearly 90,000 jobs.

About OFN

Opportunity Finance Network, the national network of CDFIs, strives to ensure low-income and other under-resourced communities have access to affordable, responsible financial products and services. Members of OFN are CDFIs that deliver responsible lending to help low-income communities join the economic mainstream. Through 2019, OFN’s network originated $82.7 billion in financing in rural, urban, and Native communities. This financing has helped to create or maintain more than 1,751,000 jobs, start or expand 448,541 businesses and microenterprises, and support the development or rehabilitation of more than 2,148,000 housing units and more than 12,000 community facility projects.

About Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) is a diversified, community-based financial services company with $1.92 trillion in assets. Wells Fargo’s vision is to satisfy our customers’ financial needs and help them succeed financially. Founded in 1852 and headquartered in San Francisco, Wells Fargo provides banking, investment, and mortgage products and services, as well as consumer and commercial finance, through 7,200 locations, more than 13,000 ATMs, the internet (wellsfargo.com) and mobile banking, and has offices in 31 countries and territories to support customers who conduct business in the global economy. Wells Fargo serves one in three households in the United States. Wells Fargo & Company was ranked No. 30 on Fortune’s 2020 rankings of America’s largest corporations. News, insights, and perspectives from Wells Fargo are also available at Wells Fargo Stories.