This conference is cosponsored by the Federal Reserve System and the Aspen Institute’s Economic Opportunities Program, and is the third in a series of seven to be held at various Reserve Banks and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors over the next two years.

The basis of the conference series is a paper by the Aspen Institute’s Economic Opportunities Program published by the Chicago Fed’s Consumer and Community Affairs division in December 2004 in its periodical, Profitwise News and Views. “New Pathways to Scale for Community Development Finance” (this is an 812k PDF file) summarizes ten case studies, primarily private sector examples, of successful attempts to broaden the impact and market reach of an assortment of products, services, and organizations.

The general goals of the conference series are to:

• Introduce a new framework for scale and sustainability for the community development finance field;
• Explore new business models and practices with potential for promoting scale and sustainability in the field;
• Provide a forum where bankers, community economic development professionals, foundation representatives and other funders, and those involved in related public policy areas can share ideas about the future of the CDFI/community development industry;
• Encourage future dialogue and action on the industry and industry practices, and the development of techniques to measure the impact of new or modified organizational and industry practices.

In addition to these, the San Francisco conference brought together participants to work on four themes, and to explore how new business models could support increased scale in these specific areas:

• Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI). A team of people from the economic development part of the CDFI field worked to identify specific next steps in creating a new CDFI cooperative that would support retaining the local lending expertise of each CDFI member while increasing the ability to raise larger sums of lending capital at better rates.
• Individual Development Accounts (IDA). This group worked on developing a national network for IDA organizations, and a National Matching Fund that would raise $10 million to fund IDAs across the country.
• Child Care. This group discussed how to provide a more robust infrastructure for child care providers in California, and explore topics such as the development of a trade association, and means of influencing public policy and child care funding in the state.
• California Charter Schools. This group met to design ways to enhance the operations of California’s 600 charter schools while maintaining innovation in education delivery. The three primary areas the group ended up focusing on was marketing, methods to improve efficiency by improving back office operations and developing a Charter BTSA program.