Chicago, IL (April 16, 2025) – We Rise Together: For an Equitable & Just Recovery, a funders collaborative working to improve local neighborhood economies for a stronger Chicago region, announced it has awarded $1.15 million to IFF—a mission-driven nonprofit lender—to administer a new loan pool.
Select nonprofits located in Cook County that received federal recovery funding, but have not yet used all of it, will be invited to apply for loans of up to $50,000 to help bridge or otherwise complement their federal ARPA funds. Priority will be given to loan pool applicants that are nonprofits working in workforce development, neighborhood and community development, and other small business support services, which are priority areas for COVID recovery.
The loans will be made available in 2025 as any federal recovery funding that remains unused will be rescinded by the federal government at the end of 2026.
This program builds on IFF’s success piloting the Flex Loan Program (Flex Loans) and a corresponding outreach initiative on Chicago’s South and West sides to address systemic barriers to capital availability.
Launched in 2022, Flex Loans are designed to increase access to capital among nonprofits that face systemic barriers when seeking financing from mainstream financial institutions. These barriers include appraisal requirements in communities where redlining artificially deflated property values, strict target market criteria, and complicated application processes, among other examples. Flex Loans aim to mitigate these challenges by offering more flexible administrative requirements, including minimal required supporting documentation to apply for loans and an expedited closing process to put flexible capital in the hands of community changemakers more quickly.
Since launching the program, IFF has lent nearly $1 million through Flex Loans.
For more information visit iff.org/flex-loan.