How IFF’s Lending to CDFIs Powers Small Business Growth Across the Midwest May 27, 2026

Since our founding in 1988, IFF has worked at the intersection of facilities and finance to provide nonprofits with the resources and support they need to create and maintain the physical infrastructure required to provide essential services to their communities—like quality affordable housing, accessible child care and K-12 education, health care, youth services, and more. The rationale for this focus is simple: nonprofits are powerful engines of change, and when they have facilities that meet their needs, they’re able to more effectively and efficiently achieve their missions and deepen their community impact. 

Equally important to thriving communities are small businesses that form the backbone of local economies by creating jobs, contributing to the tax base, and building local wealth. Like nonprofits, small businesses often lack access to traditional financing because of limited credit history, uneven cash flows, and a lack of tangible assets that can be used as collateral.  

While IFF doesn’t directly bridge this gap for small businesses, plenty of the more than 1,400 other certified community development financial institutions (CDFIs) throughout the United States do. And as a large CDFI with a strong balance sheet and access to multiple sources of flexible capital, IFF routinely provides low-cost loans to fellow nonprofit CDFIs that specialize in small business lending to strengthen the CDFI ecosystem, amplify the impact of IFF’s work, and to ensure that more local entrepreneurs across the Midwest have access to the capital and support they need to launch and grow small businesses.  

Through the partnerships detailed below, IFF is ensuring that community-centered capital remains a steady engine for job creation and neighborhood vitality. 

A Long-Term Partnership to Boost Small Businesses in Missouri, Kansas, and Southern Illinois

Established in 1997 in St. Louis, MO, Justine PETERSEN (JP) empowers individuals and families with the knowledge, tools, and products necessary to build intergenerational assets and wealth, including small business owners. The organization accomplishes this by providing local entrepreneurs in Missouri, Illinois, and Kansas with comprehensive credit score counseling, access to credit building loan products and secured credit cards, and loans from $500 to $150,000 that are designed to provide small businesses with the liquidity needed to launch and grow so they’ll be well positioned to access financing from traditional lenders.

IFF’s relationship with JP stretches back nearly two decades, with a $462,500 loan provided to the organization in March 2007—one of our first loans in Missouri after expanding to the state in late 2006—helping JP purchase and relocate to a new office after leasing space for its first decade. Since then, IFF has provided JP with six additional loans totaling more than $4 million that have helped the organization drastically expand its capacity to support small business owners like Zenon and Yolanda Gallegos.

“Being able to borrow from a fellow CDFI is extremely advantageous, because it allows us to work with a lender who understands the challenges in our ecosystem,” says Robert Boyle, JP’s CEO and co-founder. “With most investors, it’s all about the financials—that’s prudent. But being able to tell the story of why the capital is needed and what it will do before getting into the details of the financials is really what defines our relationship with IFF.”

One example of what that’s looked like in practice occurred in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic caused widespread disruptions to the economy and many CDFIs struggled to keep pace with skyrocketing demand for their services in an environment where managing liquidity became an existential challenge. After discussions with colleagues in the CDFI industry about the scope of the need, IFF secured $2.5 million in low-cost capital from Northern Trust that was quickly deployed to five fellow CDFIs to strengthen the industry.

Among those CDFIs was JP, with the financing directly supporting the organization’s Contractor Loan Fund. A 90- to 180-day financing product that provides up to $150,000 to small construction firms that can’t access traditional loans and lines of credit, the Contractor Loan Fund supports small firms that have secured construction contracts but don’t have access to the upfront capital needed to execute the work. By providing short-term, low-cost financing, JP enables these small business owners to more quickly scale up by taking on projects that would otherwise remain out of reach.  

“We’ve loaned about $45 million through the Contractor Loan Fund since its inception, and there’s always more demand for capital than there is supply,” says Boyle. “The pandemic was a pivotal period to be able to increase our support for small contractors, and the $500,000 loan from IFF directly helped many firms take on larger projects and accelerate their growth during a period of extreme economic uncertainty.”

More recently, in 2023, with the demand for flexible capital continuing to surge post-pandemic, IFF provided a $2 million loan to JP that provided essential liquidity to support growth across the organization’s lending programs. The loan strengthened JP’s balance sheet and ensured the organization could continue to meet the needs of entrepreneurs during a period where JP’s annual lending activity jumped from $20 million pre-pandemic to $40 million.

“That $2 million was among the largest investments we received during that period,” says Boyle. “It allowed us to make upward of 1,200 to 1,300 loans per year as we expanded our staff from 32 full-time employees to 47 to meet the demand. As we’ve expanded our capacity, having a partner like IFF that’s willing to provide flexible capital that enables us to continue scaling up to ensure that financial opportunity remains accessible to everyone in the communities we serve has been invaluable.”

Creating an Ecosystem of Support for Food Businesses on Chicago’s West Side

While access to flexible capital like that provided by Justine PETERSEN is essential for small businesses to grow and thrive, many entrepreneurs also face a physical barrier to growth: the lack of high-quality, professional space for their businesses. Allies for Community Business (A4CB), a CDFI based in Chicago, recognized this and, with their partner, the Industrial Council of Nearwest Chicago (ICNC), addressed the need with the development of The Hatchery. A food business incubator located in the Garfield Park neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side, The Hatchery is a 67,000-square-foot facility opened in 2019 with 54 private kitchens available for short-term leases, five shared kitchen spaces rentable by the hour, dry/cold storage, loading docks, and a collaborative learning environment for emerging entrepreneurs.  

From start to finish of the $32.4 million project, IFF provided the support A4CB and ICNC needed to translate their idea into a tangible community asset. This included serving as a thought partner as the organizations formulated their concept and determined what was required to bring The Hatchery to fruition, followed by a predevelopment loan of approximately $300,000 to cover upfront costs needed to advance the project to the groundbreaking.  

“A4CB is primarily an investor in small businesses and had zero experience in doing physical development at that point,” recalls A4CB CEO Brad McConnell. “Our partner, ICNC, also hadn’t developed new construction previously, and we would have struggled to secure a predevelopment loan from a bank. IFF took a risk in providing that early-stage financing, and it was very beneficial to be able to access that capital from a fellow CDFI who understood the vision and the positive impact the project would have on the community and all of the entrepreneurs The Hatchery exists to serve.” 

To supplement their lack of development experience, A4CB and ICNC also turned to IFF to serve as the lead developer for the project. In this role, IFF pulled together the parcels of land and pieces of financing needed to make the project a reality, with our Real Estate Solutions team managing the construction of The Hatchery as the owner’s representative. As part of the New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) deal that facilitated the project, IFF also provided a $2.3 million source loan that contributed to a complex capital stack that also included a Tax Increment Financing subsidy from the City of Chicago, debt financing from multiple lenders, and grants from a multitude of private foundations.  

This support helped A4CB and ICNC reach the December 2018 ceremonial ribbon cutting, after which The Hatchery opened its doors for the first time to emerging entrepreneurs and A4CB relocated its offices to the facility to be in close proximity to the small business owners the organization specializes in serving.  

One of the facility’s first tenants was Maya-Camille Broussard, the creator, owner, and chef at Justice of the Pies. Broussard started out in a shared kitchen in 2014. During her first year in business, she brought her pies to various farmers markets and art fairs throughout Chicago. Later, she expanded to pop-ups in other cities and got her products into Whole Foods. At The Hatchery, Broussard found a supportive, collaborative environment and the physical space needed to scale her business. By 2023, Justice of the Pies had grown to the point that it was ready for a brick-and-mortar storefront, which is now thriving in the Avalon Park community on Chicago’s South Side.  

The business’ trajectory exemplifies the positive impact of The Hatchery, which to date has provided hundreds of entrepreneurs with the space and business coaching they need to grow and thrive. Cumulatively, those small businesses have created and retained thousands of jobs, increasing economic opportunity in neighborhoods across the city.  

To ensure that The Hatchery remains an asset to the Garfield Park neighborhood and a viable endeavor for A4CB and ICNC, IFF most recently helped the organizations unwind the NMTC deal that made the development possible by providing a $900,000 loan in March 2026 to help refinance the remaining debt from the facility’s construction. The refinance dramatically reduced A4CB and ICNC’s monthly debt payments. With increased cash flow, the co-owners will be better able to continue investing in the facility and the small businesses that call The Hatchery home.  

“The Hatchery is truly what community development should look like,” says McConnell. “When you walk up to the kitchen doors and see the small business owners grinding every day to create jobs and wealth in the community, that’s what it’s all about. And by reducing The Hatchery’s monthly payments, there’s more money available for us to reinvest in the entrepreneurs who are doing the work.”