As 2025 comes to a close, IFF is marking a significant milestone – CEO Joe Neri is retiring from his role and passing the baton to IFF veteran and current president of Core Business Solutions, Kirby Burkholder. Neri first joined IFF in 1997 and took the helm as CEO in 2011, succeeding founder Trinita Logue to become the second leader in the organization’s history.
During his impressive tenure, he established IFF’s real estate consulting and research businesses; led the organization’s expansion to 10 Midwest states; created Home First, a housing development corporation for people with disabilities; and grew IFF’s on-balance sheet loan portfolio to more than $600 million with nearly $1.1 billion in managed assets. Under Neri’s leadership, IFF had its most impactful year to date in 2023, closing 153 loans that provided $233.9 million in capital to nonprofit changemakers.
In recognition of Neri’s transformational leadership of IFF, he was honored with Opportunity Finance Network’s 2025 Executive Leadership Award in October, which is presented each year to a community development financial institution (CDFI) executive whose vision and perseverance have driven capital into communities underserved by mainstream finance.
As he prepares for his next chapter, we sat down with Neri for a Q&A to reflect on his tenure at IFF, the evolution of the organization, what he’s looking forward to after his last day as CEO, and more.
IFF: A logical place to start is at the beginning…what brought you to IFF in 1997?
Neri: What attracted me to IFF was the opportunity to completely change the conventional wisdom about how nonprofits should go about facilities real estate development. I was working at a community development corporation in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood in the 1990s, and I was surrounded by amazing nonprofit leaders and staff who were desperately trying to figure out how to get new facilities or repair their existing facilities. Put bluntly, they were failing at that despite having the funding needed to achieve their goals. Not because they weren’t amazing people, but because that work wasn’t part of their jobs. They were teachers and social workers, but they were expected to be able to develop real estate. It just seemed to me to be very upside down.
I was introduced to IFF when the organization where I worked, The Resurrection Project, took on a child care center project and a transitional housing project and needed financing. IFF later asked me to speak at a conference they were hosting, and that experience led to a cab ride with IFF’s founder, Trinita Logue. During the ride, she told me that IFF was creating a technical assistance job to support nonprofits with development and asked if I’d be interested in the role. I wasn’t, because nonprofits didn’t need then, and don’t need now, a cheerleader who provides advice. They need an actual partner to do the hard work that is real estate development. Trinita took that conversation to heart and adjusted the position to do just that, and I took the job.
“Getting funding for the work early on was a challenge, and we heard repeatedly that we needed to teach nonprofits how to fish instead of catching the fish for them. I never understood that, because it was an approach that had been tried repeatedly without success. That’s just not how it works. You don’t learn real estate development in a week, and that approach ignores the fact that nonprofit leaders already have challenging jobs that don’t allow them to take on an entirely different job simultaneously.”
Getting funding for the work early on was a challenge, and we heard repeatedly that we needed to teach nonprofits how to fish instead of catching the fish for them. I never understood that, because it was an approach that had been tried repeatedly without success. That’s just not how it works. You don’t learn real estate development in a week, and that approach ignores the fact that nonprofit leaders already have challenging jobs that don’t allow them to take on an entirely different job simultaneously. It took some time, but we finally broke through that barrier and got people to understand that you can’t pay for what you can’t build, just as much as you can’t build what you can’t pay for.
IFF: Not many people work at the same organization for as long as you did. What kept you at IFF for nearly 30 years?
Neri: It’s a simple answer. Almost 30 years after coming to IFF, we still need more child care centers. We still need more health clinics. We still need better nonprofit facilities that inspire the communities they’re in. There’s a constant challenge for nonprofits to access capital and pair it with the technical expertise needed to complete those types of development projects, and I am still absolutely committed to the work IFF does to help organizations achieve their goals and strengthen their communities. What IFF does today is still very similar to what we were doing in the early days, but we’ve continued to expand and grow to reach more nonprofits in more places.
IFF: Are there any inflection points during your time at IFF that stand out to you as particularly important to the organization’s evolution?
Neri: There are a number of those, but one that I think was pivotal was the first time we hired external strategic planners, in 2003. They did a major environmental scan and came back to us to say that they had good news and bad news. The good news was that IFF’s clients loved us, we had absolute respect from the foundation and banking communities, the organization was well run, we had great talent, and that the sky was the limit. The bad news was that, given all of the good news, IFF wasn’t doing enough. That hit our senior leadership team like a lightning bolt. Ouch. But their point was that we had a responsibility to use everything that had been built up to that point to achieve greater impact.
“We decided that we weren’t going to be a CDFI that just focused on who needed the loans most, creating filter after filter that hindered access to capital. Instead, we would approach our lending with the understanding that every nonprofit that walked through the door needed capital to do their mission.”
I think a lot of people would have heard that and walked away from the strategic planning process satisfied that everybody already thought IFF was great, but that wasn’t the way Trinita was built. We were closing about 25 loans per year at the time, and the strategic planner was telling us that we should aim for 150. That was very controversial, because there were a significant number of people at IFF who just fundamentally didn’t think that we could make more loans.
Having been challenged, though, we decided that we weren’t going to be a CDFI that just focused on who needed the loans most, creating filter after filter that hindered access to capital. Instead, we would approach our lending with the understanding that every nonprofit that walked through the door needed capital to do their mission. At that point, we reorganized and decided to just work it, putting a lot of hard work and ingenuity into finding the money we needed to drastically increase our lending.
IFF: How did that decision influence IFF’s trajectory?
Neri: It was such an incredibly important pivot point, and we’ve followed that mandate ever since. Instead of spending our time figuring out how to manage the demand for capital, we spend our time finding more money to meet the demand. In the first nine months of that new strategic plan in 2003, we approved 53 loans. The following year, we approved 103.
Achieving that growth that quickly required us to expand outside of the Chicago area for the first time in a meaningful way by spending time in downstate Illinois and embedding ourselves in those communities to understand their needs. That first foray outside of Chicago set the wheels in motion for expansion to other states in the Midwest, 10 of which IFF now serves.
We also had to change how we marketed IFF and our process to close loans while completely reconstructing the loan department. There was no path to increasing the number of loans we provided otherwise. We also would have had no chance to drastically increase our lending without Real Estate Solutions. Without that type of support, many nonprofits would never even consider taking on a facilities project, let alone following through with that and reaching a point where an IFF loan can be deployed to help bring the project to fruition.
I think that one of the problems in community development is that we too often overcomplicate things. That shift we made in 2003 required a lot of hard work, but the premise was simple: put as much flexible capital as possible into the hands of as many nonprofits as possible so that they can achieve their goals. IFF is one of the few non-appraisal-based CDFIs in the country, we’re one of the few CDFIs that do long-term community facilities loans, and we’re the only CDFI in the country that provides loans for 95 percent of project costs. And with that approach to lending, which has been central to IFF’s identity since its founding, along with a commitment rooted in the 2003 strategic plan to dramatically increase our loan volume, IFF has grown to become one of the largest diversified CDFIs in the country.
IFF: That’s a great segue to the next question. What do you consider the most important lessons IFF has learned about effective community development finance?
Neri: There’s way too much to cover here, so I’ll focus on one reflection. From the moment IFF was established, Trinita was adamant about not having banks tell her how to do the work. And that made it hard, but there’s an adage that sometimes you have to do the hard thing to have an easy life. Had IFF’s investors dictated one by one in those early days how we could lend, the organization never would have gotten to where it is today. We had to do things differently than banks to achieve our goals.
IFF was set up just like a community foundation, which makes sense since we started in one (The Chicago Community Trust). The community foundation model is essentially a cooperative of wealthy people that give their money to the community foundation, and then the foundation figures out how to make grants that solve the community’s problems. IFF is similar, with financial institutions providing the capital, and IFF figuring out the loan products and other supports that nonprofits need to succeed in terms of facilities and equipment. It’s a big funnel into a trusted entity. But that trust is mutual. We have to deliver results to have the flexibility to dictate how we work. Not having that flexibility as a mission-driven lender makes the work far more challenging.
Over time, the banks that invest in IFF have come to see us as partners, and there’s an understanding that to be an investor in IFF is to be amongst a lot of other investors as a community. I think the lesson to take from that is that if you’re in community development, you need to develop community, and that includes your funding sources.
IFF: What moments at IFF over the years are you most proud of personally?
Neri: Using the word ‘moment’ is a good way of asking that question. Often, people ask what my favorite project has been, and that’s truly like asking me about my favorite kid. I only have two of those and can’t answer the question, so there’s no way I could pick one project out of thousands.
“Personally, the moments that speak to me the most are every time we open, or help another organization open, a new child care center. The early childhood education sector as a whole has the ability to totally change the trajectory of the youngest kids’ lives, and that’s why increasing access to quality child care is something I’ve been so dedicated to for so long.”
Personally, the moments that speak to me the most are every time we open, or help another organization open, a new child care center. The early childhood education sector as a whole has the ability to totally change the trajectory of the youngest kids’ lives, and that’s why increasing access to quality child care is something I’ve been so dedicated to for so long. The first ECE center I worked on was before I came to IFF, and I bought a tie for the grand opening of that facility. I’ve worn that tie to every ribbon cutting for child care centers and charter schools I’ve been to since then as a reminder of the importance of those projects.
The creation of Home First in 2011 is another moment that I’m particularly proud of, and that work has also always been near and dear to my heart. People with disabilities, whether because of something that happened to them or just because of how they were born, are prescribed housing far too frequently that no one would choose to live in simply because there aren’t enough high-quality, accessible housing options available in their communities. At a visceral level of humanity, that is just wrong. The first Home First resident was a gentleman who had a stroke, lost his job at age 40, and then was put in a nursing home for the rest of his life. But because of Home First, he had the opportunity to move into a condominium in an elevator building in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. Having that place to live, near his friends and family, utterly changed his life for the better. Those are the types of stories that make me get emotional every time I tell them.
I also think it’s important to point out that Trinita and IFF’s original board had this genius idea to serve all nonprofits, and I’ve always loved the pure diversity of that directive, both in terms of who IFF serves and the type of work we do with them. Tennis isn’t going to save the world, but an amazing afterschool program on the South Side of Chicago centered around teaching young people how to play the game and providing them with mentors has a tangible impact on those kids, their families, and their communities. IFF is in a unique position to help an organization like XS Tennis, which is doing that type of work, just as much as we can help an ECE provider, a health center, a charter school, and the many other types of nonprofits that are more commonly associated with community development. That diversity is exactly what IFF should be doing, because there’s no silver bullet to create thriving communities. Each project is a building block, and their cumulative impact is what truly creates thriving places.
IFF: Shifting gears, this is clearly a tumultuous period in the CDFI industry, with the federal government’s CDFI Fund in danger of significant funding cuts. How does that uncertainty affect IFF?
Neri: The bottom line is that an investment in a CDFI like IFF is an incredible one given how many private dollars we leverage. For every $1 invested at IFF, $12 goes into communities. We’re fortunate at IFF to be pretty self-sufficient, which is the result of a lot of discipline to generate surpluses year after year. Those surpluses become dollars that we can use as leverage to borrow more money to lend to nonprofits. That pool of money is supplemented by funding from the CDFI Fund, which increases our net assets and allows us to borrow more. If that funding goes away, growth slows. And at a time when a lot of the nonprofits we serve are experiencing their own funding challenges, growth remains really important so that we can help them solve their problems and focus on serving their communities. That’s why we’re going to continue fighting for the CDFI Fund and the resources it provides, because then we can get those dollars into the hands of nonprofits and the communities they serve.
IFF: Last question…your final day as IFF’s CEO is December 31st. What excites you about January 1st and beyond?
Neri: You know, I was wide awake at three o’clock this morning, worried about five or six things. I’ll probably still worry about those things, but I’m hoping that fades some over time since I won’t be completely responsible for them anymore. I said earlier that I’m still absolutely committed to IFF’s work, and stepping down as CEO doesn’t mean that I’m stepping away from community development. Everything I’ve done as CEO is technically community development because of the nature of IFF’s work, but one of the challenges of being a CEO is getting further away from the communities we serve. I’m looking forward to assignments that allow me to get back to more of the hands-on work I did earlier in my career.
I think there are going to be a number of things that’ll keep me engaged in IFF’s work, where I can add value. Our new strategic plan will provide some opportunities for that, along with the work in the early education sector, marketing, and business development. And I’m really excited about doing one or two of those things per day instead of the one hundred things required as the CEO.