The interim progress report details the NYC Local Lending Collaborative formed by Accion, Excelsior Growth Fund, and Renaissance Economic Development Corporation to improve financial access for small businesses in low-income neighborhoods. Goals include distributing $14 million to 475 businesses over three years and enhancing collaborative capabilities, though partners face challenges in aligning individual and collective goals, communication, and decision-making. Key recommendations focus on improving project management, clarifying goals, and empowering sub-committees for better ownership and effectiveness in executing the collaborative's initiatives.

1. JOINING FORCES TO
INCREASE ACCESS:
An interim progress report on the
NYC local lending collaborative
Prepared by
© 2017

2. In mid-to-late 2016, Accion, Excelsior
Growth Fund (EGF), and Renaissance
Economic Development Corporation
(REDC), came together to form the
NYC Local Lending Collaborative
(the Collaborative).
The three financial institutions, each
with a successful history and niche,
came together as part of a successful
grant application for JP Morgan Chase’s
PRO Neighborhood initiative.
The purpose of the Collaborative is to
address income inequality by financing
small business owners located in
low-income and highly distressed
neighborhoods.
1 INTRODUCTION
Below are the goals of the Collaborative over a three-year period
from October 2016 to September 2019:
Distribute $14M to 475 small
businesses and aid 1,000 small
business entrepreneurs through
technical business assistance
Integrate financial services
and provide a range of
technical assistance to
targeted neighborhoods
Establish a technology
platform that is the
touchpoint for referrals
Create unified marketing and
outreach into the targeted
neighborhoods, leveraging
existing partnerships
in the community
Ensure that the collective
business assistance
services are tailored to the
business owners in these
targeted neighborhoods

3. 1
The document also includes recommendations to consider as the partnership continues.
The Collaborative engaged TCC Group
to conduct an evaluation of the partnership
in the interim (at the end of year one)
and toward the end of the grant period.
The goals of the interim progress report
were to get a sense of how the partnership
was working, what aspects were
successful, and what can be improved.
Data collection for this report involved
interviews with members of leadership
at each of the partner organizations.
This document shares findings from
the interviews presented in three
thematic buckets:
2
The findings in this section focus on
the working relationship that has been
established among the partner
organizations and the Collaborative’s
internal capacity.
Relationships and
Collaborative Capacity
These findings highlight what has
worked well and what could be
improved when executing the
articulated plans of the Collaborative.
Implementation
The findings in this section share
the perceptions of what has been
accomplished thus far through
the Collaborative.
Outcomes

4. FINDINGS

5. Although goals of the
Collaborative are understood
by all partners, there are varied
interpretations of the benefit
that the Collaborative brings
to each partner.
All partners expressed the goals of the
Collaborative as:Relationships
and Collaborative
Capacity
Some see the Collaborative as
increasing their own organizational
capacity to serve clients, while others
find the value of engagement in more
tangible aspects, such as the
routing tool.
It is possible that varying definitions
of the benefits could lead to mixed
understanding of the overall goals
of the Collaborative down the road.
Some also suggested that there is
opportunity to further align the goals
of the Collaborative with individual
organizational goals in the second
year of partnership to increase
synergy among the organizations.
4
1. Creating efficiency in the
lending market to small
business owners: and
2. Serving the intended number of
clients in targeted neighborhoods.
While the value-add of being in
the Collaborative do overlap
between partners in some cases,
they are not always aligned.

6. 5
Communication and
scheduling are areas
where partners
would like to see
improvement.
Early on, senior members of the team
reported spending a lot of time working
together to make progress on the
partnership.
Partners indicated that the time required
by senior staff exceeded what they
expected, but they realized that they
needed to dedicate time at the highest
level to make the partnership work.
Over time, the amount of time the
senior staff spends together has gone
down, as would be expected.
However, it seems the drop-off lacked
sufficient clarity and time. Partners
indicated that the frequency and
channels of communication, particularly
among the members of the steering
committee, still need to be fleshed out.
They have not yet established a good
rhythm for the recurrence of meetings,
which at times has led to delays in
decision-making.
The key barrier is finding meeting times
agreeable to all three organizations and
their respective schedules.

7. Partners are pooling
their strengths and
specific skillsets to
divide responsibilities
equitably.
This has enabled them to
overcome individual resource
constraints that may have
otherwise made the work
challenging.
Partners described that each
organization’s expertise and
strengths were identified and
tasks were divided to best
align with those strengths.
For example, the organization
that has had the most
experience with direct
outreach and on-the-ground
recruiting in the community
has taken the helm on
planning outreach efforts
for NYC Local Lending.
6

8. Collaborative partners
have established a
culture of trust and
transparency.
Each partner acknowledged that the
level of trust and transparency existing
among the organizations is unique to
this Collaborative.
The trust and transparency was
facilitated by pre-existing relationships
and knowledge of each other that
eventually led to this partnership.
The culture of trust established was
an asset when working through the
design of the routing tool, as each
partner had to make compromises,
and a sense of trust has been
further solidified as a result of the
collaborative work.
7

9. Implementation
Willingness to accept
trade-offs at the
organizational level has
been a key facilitator in
program implementation.
As expected with a partnership of
multiple organizations, managing
individual priorities can be a challenge.
It was not always easy for each partner
to prioritize collective goals over
organizational goals.
However, partners indicated that the
willingness to prioritize and accept trade-
offs helped them get the routing tool up
and running. 8
Still, partners recognize that
accepting trade-offs is something
that will need to happen over the
course of the partnership and thus
they must continuously work on
clearly prioritizing goals for the
Collaborative.

10. There is a sense that
business development
for NYC Local Lending
needs more attention.
Though sub-committees have been set
up to focus on these areas, partners
still expressed a need for increased
strategic effort in the coming year.
There is a need for increased visibility
and awareness of the Collaborative
in the targeted neighborhoods.
Now that the platform is operational,
partners would like to see more efforts
go into business development for
the service.
Some partners mentioned a need
for increased local outreach and
partnerships in target communities
to spread the word.
Others indicated a need to identify
a strategy to implement business
development activities across the
three partner organizations.
This strategy would need to
address the challenge of creating
a single brand for the Collaborative
that doesn’t conflate with the
individual brands of the partner
organizations.
9

11. The organizations have
established a clear
organizational structure
for the Collaborative.
They were able to set up a steering
committee responsible for
decision-making comprised of
leaders from each organization.
There is a sense that the steering
committee’s work was crucial
in getting the Collaborative started.
Having the senior leaders involved in the
steering committee also created a sense
of buy-in from the top which was important
to each organization’s investment in
the Collaborative. 10
Outcomes
They also created several
sub-committees devoted to particular
tasks related to the Collaborative’s
program implementation.
Despite the success of creating this
structure, partners expressed a
desire for sub-committees to take
more ownership of projects in order
to free up time at the steering
committee level.

12. The Collaborative has
established an online
technology platform for
routing referrals based
on their developed
algorithm.
The main success of the platform is that it
is a unified customer-facing product, so
business owners only have to go to one
site and fill out a single questionnaire.
Though the tool is not necessarily seen
as innovative, partners are still getting a
feel for it and expect it to become
increasingly valuable as the collaborative
scales up its use internally and more
partners use it. They also indicated value
in the tool’s ability to simplify the
customer’s process to accessing
needed capital.
Additionally, partners indicated that
the amount of time invested in
figuring out the algorithm for the tool
was necessary, but there were mixed
feelings on whether the return on the
time investment was worth it.
11

13. There is a sense that the
Collaborative is already
meeting outcome
expectations in terms of
numbers served in the
targeted communities.
Though the data has not yet been
analyzed for the entire year, partners
repeatedly mentioned that they are
meeting, and in some cases exceeding,
the reach that they would have
accomplished on their own and
surpassing targets set out in the grant.
This is seen as a success especially
because some of the targeted areas
had not previously been served by
any of the partner organizations.
12

14. RECOMMENDATIONS

15. 14
Ensure that each
organization has a Project
Lead to manage and
provide project support
for the Collaborative.
This would ideally be someone who is not
at the executive level, that can help with
scheduling across the three organizations
and ensures that there are always open
channels of communication among the
partners.

16. 15
Continue to discuss and clarify
the Collaborative’s goals.
As the partnership continues, there may be
moments when overall goals need to be revisited
in order to guide decision-making and prioritization.
There was a sense that increased alignment
between organizational goals and the overall
goals of the Collaborative would be beneficial.
Where possible, work as a group to encourage
that alignment.

17. Ensure that sub-committees
are working effectively to
meet the needs of the
Collaborative.
There was some sense that an improvement
in sub-committees could lessen some of the
time burden for members of the steering
committee.
Consider creating clear procedure guidelines
that articulate where sub-committees can
take ownership of the work or make
decisions, so that only the most important
decisions are presented to the steering
committee.
16
Additionally, it might be useful to ensure that
each sub-committee has a single point person
who is in charge of keeping the group on top of
tasks according to established timelines.

18. Learn More and Contact Us
www.locallending.nyc
www.tccgrp.com