CGF Blog

DoubleGreen Weatherization Loan

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Interested in applying for our DoubleGreen Weatherization loan?  Please fill out the form below!

Digital Equity Loans

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Building Green Connections:  CGF Gala 2010

Friday, April 02, 2010

Our Impact

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

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.

Visiting a Village—Part 1

Monday, February 08, 2010

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.

First Experiences With Bangladesh and Grameen

Monday, January 04, 2010

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.

First Blog Post From Bangladesh—Actually, From the Bahrain Airport

Saturday, January 02, 2010

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

DoubleGreen Credit Builder Loan Program

Thursday, December 24, 2009

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!

Click here to apply for the loan!

Photos and Thoughts From Our First Business Training Workshop!

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

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.

Sign Up For a Capital Good Fund Workshop!

Wednesday, December 02, 2009