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The nation’s largest and most prestigious awards program for community development financial institutions (CDFIs) announced today that four leading U.S. CDFIs are finalists for awards totaling $8.25 million.

Two finalists will compete for $5.5 million, and two finalists will compete for $2.75 million in the highly competitive 2010 Wachovia Wells Fargo NEXT Awards for Opportunity Finance. Awardees will be announced prior to an awards celebration on Wednesday, November 3, at Opportunity Finance Network’s (OFN’s) 26th Annual Conference in San Francisco, CA.

The 2010 finalists are: Alternatives Federal Credit Union (Ithaca, NY); Boston Community Capital (Boston, MA); Enterprise Cascadia (Ilwaco, WA); and, Partners for the Common Good (Washington, DC).

“The finalists for this year’s Wachovia Wells Fargo NEXT Awards for Opportunity Finance each demonstrate excellence and proven expertise serving important opportunity markets. These inspiring organizations have delivered real results for low- wealth and low-income communities and exemplify how CDFIs can drive economic recovery and growth in those markets,” said Mark Pinsky, President and CEO of the Philadelphia-based Opportunity Finance Network, the leading national network of high- performance CDFIs.

The Wachovia Wells Fargo NEXT Awards for Opportunity Finance in partnership with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is run and funded through OFN by The Wachovia Wells Fargo Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The awards recognize excellence among financial institutions that responsibly serve low-income and low-wealth people and communities and were established to spotlight how CDFIs increasingly benefit our nation’s economy.

CDFIs are market-based, private sector financial intermediaries that create opportunities for low-wealth and low-income individuals and institutions and spark growth in hard-to- serve markets across the nation.

“This year’s finalists are taking CDFIs to the next level,” said Lesley Eckstein, executive vice president and group head, Community Lending and Investment, for Wells Fargo. “Wachovia, a Wells Fargo Company, is proud to support these community-based funding organizations by partnering in an $8.25 million investment in the Wachovia Wells Fargo NEXT Awards for Opportunity Finance, which will help families and individuals in underserved communities work toward financial independence and gain more access to credit.”

Finalists in the $5.5 million category are:

• Alternatives Federal Credit Union which builds wealth and economic opportunity for undeserved people and communities. Alternatives FCU was chosen because it is developing a scalable regional model to expand the availability of credit union products and services in low-income communities through increased efficiency and shared functions among credit unions.
• Boston Community Capital (BCC) which builds healthy communities where low-income people live and work. This organization was selected because it has created an innovative and proven model to address the foreclosure crisis which has the potential to be replicable in BCC’s markets, as well as nationally.

Finalists in the $2.75 million category are:

• Enterprise Cascadia which provides a wide range of loan products that support its triple bottom line objectives (economic, social and environmental). Enterprise Cascadia was selected because it has developed an innovative regional financing program to reduce green house gas emissions.
• Partners for the Common Good (PCG) which was founded in 2000 by a group of faith-based institutions, provides loans and revolving lines of credit to borrowers serving low-income people and communities in the areas of affordable housing, commercial real estate, community facilities, and international microfinance. PCG was selected because their CDFI participation model has the potential to have substantial impact on CDFI liquidity and capitalization.

“Since the inception of the Wachovia Wells Fargo NEXT Awards for Opportunity Finance three years ago, we have seen unprecedented positive changes for the communities served by the awardees,” added Debra Schwartz, director of program- related investments for the MacArthur Foundation. “For example, IFF–the Midwest’s largest CDFI dedicated solely to financing real estate projects of nonprofits– used their 2008 $5.5 million award to increase lending by 77%, launch a new product for land trusts, and to solidify a geographic expansion into three major cities, to serve more people in more low-income communities. We believe this year’s awardees will follow in IFF’s footsteps by affecting positive changes in the communities they serve.”