The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund has announced that it will grant a total of approximately $17 million to 85 banks in recognition of their service to economically distressed communities. The grants will be awarded through the fiscal year 2013 round of the CDFI Fund’s Bank Enterprise Awards (BEA) Program, which provides capital to FDIC-insured depository institutions serving census tracts where at least 30 percent of the population lives at or below the national poverty level and the unemployment rate is at least 1.5 times the national average. Collectively, the 85 recipients increased their loans, investments, and financial services in economically distressed communities by nearly $428 million during the BEA Program’s one-year assessment period and increased their loans, deposits, and technical assistance to CDFIs by more than $48 million. The CDFI Fund selected the 2013 grant recipients from a pool of 98 applicants, the largest since fiscal year 2002.
One institution in the Ninth Federal Reserve District, Sunrise Banks in St. Paul, Minn., made the awardee list. Sunrise will receive $323,000—the largest of the award amounts in the 2013 round of funding—for providing commercial real estate loans and project investments in distressed communities in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
