Opportunities Credit Union is proud to be a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI)
As a Community Development Financial Institution, we are dedicated to providing responsible and affordable lending options in Vermont to assist low-income, low-wealth and disadvantaged individuals and communities. Our goal is to help these communities build wealth and become more economically stable. We are proud to bring CDFI services to the communities we serve, as every job generated, project financed, and home bought or constructed represents a crucial advancement in transforming the lives of those in our community.
These are just some of the many ways we’ve embodied our CDFI standing in the community:
- We are the only CDFI Credit Union in Vermont.
- We have participated with the CDFI Program since 1997.
- We’ve received $289,055 in Technical Assistance Awards and $17,279,306 in Financial Assistance Awards since becoming a CDFI.
- We are utilized to set up the Gardner/Goldman Microbusiness Fund, providing affordable small and microbusiness loans to 43 small businesses totaling more than $508,000 in financing.
- 8% of our loans issued during 2022 went to CDFI Target Markets (aka to low-income Vermonters and CDFI Investment Areas), with 94.5% of dollars loaned in 2022 going to Target Markets.
- We helped fund Money Sense Financial Counseling, which has provided services to 407 Vermonters in 2022 alone, and to nearly 1,600 Vermonters since the beginning of 2021.
- We facilitated the purchase of a new core server that processed 788,000 transactions in 2022 totaling $789,000,000 in transactions.
