The Capital Good Fund’s breadth of loan and technical assistance programs meet the ever-chaning needs of low and moderate-income communities.
We are always looking to serve our target market better. If you feel you have an idea that you would like us to implement, or would like to learn more about our work and those we serve, please feel free to contact us.
Andy and Jill with a Grameen Bank Center Manager and Borrowers
If you talk to anyone at Grameen Bank they will tell you that the real bank can only be found by going to the villages where Grameen operates. Grameen, after all, means rural, and in fact by law Grameen can only operate its lending programs in the villages. It is for this reason that on our third day in Bangladesh we—Jill, me, an Australian named Mark, our translator Matin and Mark’s translator Yunus—are all crammed into a mini-van barreling down the roads that lead to Rashahi, the zone that we will be visiting. Traffic here is an eclectic mix of motorcycles, bicycle rickshaws, cars, trucks hauling absurdly large loads and comically unstable buses all chaotically weaving and swerving, honking and narrowly avoiding catastrophe.
After 6 hours of bouncing along these roads we are happy, if not relieved, to have arrived at the Branch that will be our home for the next 10 days. It is a two-story building—the first occupied by Grameen—with two small rooms for guests. In order to understand where branches fit into the Grameen hierarchy, I need to take a moment to explain how the bank is organized. For in truth, Grameen is nothing short of an organizational miracle. In fact, I would go so far as to say that while Dr. Muhammad Yunus is praised for recognizing that the poor can be credit worthy, his real, lasting achievement is in the details of how he goes about delivering that credit to them in a cost-effective manner.
This photo shows one of the Grameen center meetings
First Impressions of Bangladesh and Grameen Bank
When Jill and I landed in Dhaka on Sunday the city was shrouded in an intense fog that, we later learned, is quite common this time of year. The scene when we walked outside the airport was pretty much what one would expect of a third world capital city: people everywhere; rickshaws competing for space with taxis and buses and all manner of other vehicles, human, animal and fossil-fuel powered; bustling markets; polluted air, etc.
We were taken to the Grand Prince Hotel and then immediately met up with our interpreter, Matin, who accompanied us to Grameen Bank’s head office. Our first adventure took place when Muhaimeen hailed a bicycle rickshaw that, in just three chaotic minutes, brought us to the office. Amazingly, Grameen, a Bank that exists for and is owned by the poor, has a 21 story head office, one of the tallest buildings in the area. One can’t help but feel that Grameen is a kind of conglomerate for good: leveraging all the ingenuity, efficiency, scale and power of corporations while being driven entirely by the motive to eradicate the world of poverty, of pollution, of injustice. The numbers are staggering: Grameen has 8 million borrowers, 97% of whom are women and all of whom are poor. They have 20,000 employees, a staggeringly high repayment rate, 4 million bank accounts for non Grameen borrowers (all borrowers must open an account so that they can deposit their required weekly savings there), and have turned a profit all but three years of operation. Lastly, they are 95% owned by the borrowers themselves—each borrower gets a share in the company—and 5% owned by the Bangladesh government. In short, Grameen’s Nobel Peace Prize was well deserved.
This photo is from our first flight from Boston to London on 1-01-10
Jill and I are currently in the airport in Bahrain waiting for the third, and final, leg of our 28 hour trip to Dhaka, Bangladesh. We left Boston on the first of January at 7:20 PM and arrived in London at 6:50 AM on the second. As you can see from the photo above, we really lucked out in terms of our seating on the first flight: we got the seats that are usually reserved for flight attendants when they take naps on long flight; as a result, we had seats that could recline all the way down (even though we were in coach) and we had as much leg room as we could possibly want! The flight went smoothly and, as I have been reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich—an absolutely fascinating history of Hitler’s Germany—the time passed rather quickly. Our second flight took us from London to Bahrain, where we are currently in the midst of a seven hour layover before one final flight to Dhaka.
We couldn’t resist taking a photo of this display inside the airport terminal in Bahrain
Both Jill and I are extremely excited to begin the training with Grameen Bank, though we are also somewhat tired from all the travel. Personally, I can say that I consider Grameen to be one of the beacons of hope for creating a world in which poverty, as Muhammad Yunus likes to say, is “relegated to museums” and people around the world have the health, safety and economic opportunity they need to lead fulfilling lives. I am certain that over the next three weeks we will learn much, experience much and come up with many ideas that we can implement at Capital Good Fund. We are inspired and honored to have this opportunity to learn from a Nobel Peace Prize winning organization, and we are confident that this experience will help us to make Capital Good Fund even more effective and innovative as we worked towards realizing our mission of creating poverty-free, inclusive green economy in the United States.
Stay tuned for more blog posts! We will be posting many photos and thoughts every chance we get, and feel free to leave comments, as well.
After much searching, Jill and I found travel adaptors that allowed us to work on our computers
The Capital Good Fund is excited to announce that it has launched its DoubleGreen Credit Builder Loan program! This innovative new loan covers the cost of purchasing and installing a programmable thermostats in households throughout Rhode Island. These energy upgrades can save borrowers approximately $185 in annual energy bills. Moreover, borrowers will be able to build their credit through demonstrated repayment of the loan. Improved credit, in turn, will provide greater access to capital and other economic opportunities and lead to a more prosperous and inclusive economy for all. Lastly, CGF is the first microlender in the country to launch a loan of this nature!
Participants in the workshop pose with their graduation certificates!
Our innovative 5-part business training workshop—which teaches business basics such as profit and loss, budgeting and marketing—recently came to a close with a final class focusing on how to go green, both at home and through entrepreneurship. 15 Providence residents attended the course, 9 of whom attended all 5 classes and received certificates. We are thrilled with the results of the class. Students learned the essential skills needed for business, but were also taught basic financial literacy, including how to create a personal budget, understanding credit and how to calculate and compare interest rates. In addition, wherever possible the students learned how going green presents opportunities for saving and making money at home and in their businesses. Surveys conducted at the end of the course confirmed what we anecdotally knew: that it was a success! For example, 100% of the students would recommend the course to a friend, 87.5% would pay $50 or more for the course and 87.% would be interested in taking an advanced business course offered by us. Read on to learn about our plans moving forward.
Authored by Andy Posner, CGF’s Co-Founder and Director
Andy Posner poses with Eva after the ceremony
On Thursday, September 17 Eva, our first citizenship borrower, officially became a United States citizen during a moving swearing in ceremony at the International Institute of Rhode Island (IIRI). CGF’s loan of $875 covered Eva’s cost of applying for citizenship, as well as what the IIRI charges for legal representation and citizenship classes throughout the process. This special day—which was special for Eva, CGF and the 24 other immigrants who finally became naturalized citizens—was made even more special by the fact that it was also citizen and constitution day, a fact whose significance was not lost on the speakers and members of the audience. After taking an oath of allegiance to the United States, the new citizens received certificates and celebrated their new status! Read on for more photos from and thoughts about the event.
David Cicilline, Mayor of Providence, recently wrote, in the on-line magazine Social Enterprise, that the city is fast becoming a ‘hot bed for young social entrepreneurs’ and that social enterprise is a ‘key ingredient to our future success’, highlighting the Capital Good Fund as an example of this burgeoning sector. Mayor Cicilline points out that his administration will be ‘paying particular attention to the need of social enterprises and how municipal government can play a role in helping them achieve their goals.’ Nurturing social enterprise, small businesses, and non-profits is a critical component to the city’s economic future, an idea captured by its recent rebranding as the The Creative Capital.
Authored by Julie Siwicki
For one: credit reports are complicated. As a summer intern, one of my first tasks involved finding resources about building credit. CGF staff planned to study them, internalize them, and then begin providing credit counseling to our borrowers. With the help of an asset-building organization in St. Louis, MO, Justine Petersen, LLC, CGF received several trainings in reading credit reports. We learned a lot – like how long it takes for a bad line of credit to fall off your score, and why starting a new line can be better than paying off old debt. I was baffled by the amount of information each sample report contained. The trainings made me feel much more confident about my personal finances, and I realized that Providence’s low-income residents stand to benefit from them markedly more than I did.
Authored by Nabeel Gillani
According to a recent story by the AP, nearly 10,000 new bank branches were opened throughout the U.S. in the past five years (1). However, only 1 out of every 10 of these branches was opened in an inner city neighborhood. Instead of focusing on low-income neighborhoods, most banks gravitate towards middle to high-income areas, undoubtedly because they assume the risk of banking to higher income individuals is significantly less. At the same time, when banks do offer their services to lower-income customers, they tend to charge them the most for overdraft and other fees. In fact, in 2008 banks made a record $38.5 billion from overdraft fees, however “the most cash-strapped customers are the hardest hit by such fees, with 90 per cent of overdraft revenues coming from 10 per cent of the 130m checking accounts in the US.” (2) Given a paradigm in which lower-income populations lack access to the benefits of the banking system—and even when they do gain that access, they face high fees—it isn’t surprising that these population mistrust the banking sector. The result is a system that effectively shuts out millions of Americans from accessing mainstream financial services—and inhibits many more from taking the steps they need to raise their standards of living.
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