When Impact Seven was established in 1970, it served seven counties in northwest Wisconsin. Since then, the Rice Lake, Wisconsin-based nonprofit Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) has extended its reach to the entire state, but its vision has stayed the same: revitalizing distressed communities by providing services and development in business, housing, and property management.

In 2015, Impact Seven received a $7 million, 10-year loan from the Community First Fund, a revolving loan fund that provides direct support to CDFIs, community development loan funds, and state housing finance agencies serving Illinois and Wisconsin. In this Community First Fund Partner Spotlight, we talk to Impact Seven’s President and CEO, Brett Gerber, about the organization and how the Community First Fund helps it make complex projects possible.

What makes you proudest of Impact Seven, and what would you like readers to know about the organization?

Impact Seven offers opportunities for people who are outside of the economic mainstream. We do this by providing decent and safe affordable housing options for low-wage workers and persons who are elderly or have disabilities, and by providing flexible financing for job-creating businesses, ranging from microloans to powerful and complex funding sources like New Markets Tax Credits. We really are focused on giving people opportunities to be successful, so I’d say I’m most proud of how we stay true to our mission and the expertise we have in those areas.

I’d like readers to know that, as a CDFI, Impact Seven is a valuable partner to banks and credit unions who are undertaking complicated, difficult projects. We aren’t a competitor, and we can bring tools and resources to the table that traditional lenders may not have access to or may not know about. We don’t have to be a lead lender; we can just fill in a piece of the financing that the traditional bank can’t make happen.

What has an investment from the Community First Fund allowed you to do that you wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise?

The flexibility of the Community First Fund loan allows us to be involved in larger projects. Much like our own unrestricted dollars, the Community First Fund loan is simple, straightforward, and flexible enough to fill gaps that more restrictive funding sources often leave open or make excessively complex. One example is Freshwater Plaza in Milwaukee, a large mixed-use project that includes residential space with a 20% set-aside for affordable units, as well as street-level retail such as a high-quality grocery store in an area with few options for buying fresh fruits and vegetables. Our piece of the $16 million phase III of that project was a $4 million loan, $3.5 million of which was sourced from the Community First Fund. Planned projects using the loan from the Community First Fund include gap financing on a $22 million historic preservation project in downtown Kenosha, and a $1.8 million pediatric dental clinic and pharmacy in Milwaukee. With the help of the Community First Fund, we’re able to provide a critical component to keep large, complicated projects like these moving forward.

In addition to the Community First Fund partnership, Impact Seven is also a member of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago and a participant in the Affordable Housing Program (AHP). Do you consider partnerships with organizations like the FHLBC a success driver?

We consider our growing relationship with the FHLBC to be one of the most important partnerships we have. In addition to being the sponsor on more than 35 AHP awards for our rental properties, Impact Seven has also been the member applicant on AHP applications submitted by other nonprofit developers. We’re interested in more opportunities to provide financing or otherwise play an active role in other developers’ challenging projects, and we plan on taking full advantage of the tools available through the FHLBC—the Community First Fund, AHP, and Community Investment Cash Advances.