COMMUNITIES UNLIMITED INC
Programs
Environmental Services and Community Support
CU's Environmental Services Program works with small population community environmental management systems: community drinking water systems; wastewater systems; and solid waste management systems through on-site technical assistance, training, publications, and financing. With a current staff of over 47 highly trained professional technical assistance providers, CU Environmental Services supports efforts to provide access to safe drinking water for everyone and environmentally-responsible waste disposal within an ever-changing regulatory environment in the communities that are provided technical assistance and training. Our technical assistance focuses on building local capacity of governing board members, environmental operators, and other system staff so that they will develop and maintain the capability to adequately manage and operate their environmental management systems. All of CU Environmental Services' technical assistance and training is focused on achieving national environmental system outcomes. As a regional partner of the national Rural Community Assistance Partnership, (RCAP), CU serves as the Southern RCAP partner in providing environmental technical assistance and training throughout a seven-state region of Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma. Additionally, CU Environmental Services supports other RCAP regional partners in other regions of the country with access to their CDFI community environmental lending. During fiscal year 2022, CU Environmental Services provided onsite assistance to 620 small communities and rural environmental systems. CU's environmental staff leveraged over $169 million in construction financing to improve community water and wastewater systems. CU Environmental Services staff completed 83 training workshops attended by 885 community officials, board members, certified operators, and other environmental management system staff members. In addition, through the Agua4All program and its funders, we were able to provide 15 filling stations to three school districts in Texas and Alabama. This provided assistance benefited approximately 6 distinct school buildings, 206 faculty members and 1,223 students. CU Environmental Services achieved the following National Environmental Outcomes last year for the following number of communities: 52 Communities: Improved Coordination between Communities (Regionalization Strategies); 94 Communities: Improved Public Health by achieving compliance with Safe Drinking Water Act rules and regulations; 80 Communities: Improved Environmental Health by achieving compliance with Clean Water Act and Pollution Control Act rules and regulations; 51 Communities: Improved Capacity of Community Facilities; 183 Communities: Achieved Financial Sustainability; 149 Communities: Increased Managerial Capacity; 18 Communities: Improved Self-Defined Prosperity; 32 Communities: Achieved Global Information System Mapping Capabilities.GeographiesNot indicatedDatesOct 1, 2021 – Sep 30, 2022Source990No causes providedNo populations provided–$4.2MCommunity Environmental Lending Program
In 1992, CU started making loans to water and wastewater systems in rural areas to ensure that residents had clean, healthy drinking water and safe wastewater treatment systems. In 2001 CU was certified as a CDFI. Loans made to Community Environmental Management Systems are used for improvement projects, pre-development financing, purchase of equipment and emergency financing needs. In 2022, CU loaned $8,263,709 to 20 water and wastewater systems to improve their water and wastewater systems. These loans included $3,938,390 (48%) loaned in Persistent Poverty Counties. Loans ranged from the small loan needed to meet compliance to larger loans for pre-development work that helped these communities access larger loans and grants. Small business lending was added in 2010 as small businesses were struggling to recover from the 2008 recession and bank lending tightened. Again, CU works to fill the gap in financing with loans from $1,000 to $100,000 to small businesses that do not qualify for traditional financing. Small business loans can be used for working capital, which is one of the biggest gaps in small business financing. Other uses include purchase or repair of equipment and real estate purchase or improvements. CU offers a variety of small business loan products that are designed to grow as the business grows. CU's small business lending is focused on filling gaps in rural places and minority populations. In 2022, CU increased loan production by 41%. Thirty-six small businesses received $985,660 in loans, averaging $27,380. This includes 69% to minority owned businesses, 25% in Persistent Poverty Counties, 43% in rural areas, and 58% to women-owned businesses. CU revived the Nuestra Casa loan program that was hugely successful in the early 2000s in the South Texas Colonias, re-launching the home improvement program using the Small Dollar Loan Grant in May 2022 with the hiring of a key local Hispanic lender for the Brownsville office, provided 69 new loans in the first two months. Small but impactful loans to not only improve and increase often the largest asset of low-income borrowers, the program offers credit counseling and financial incentives to pay on time and improve individual credit scores allowing for improved access to traditional financial products.GeographiesNot indicatedDatesOct 1, 2021 – Sep 30, 2022Source990No causes providedNo populations provided–$1.1MHousing and Entrepreneurship Initiatives
Housing, Entrepreneurship, and Community Sustainability: During fiscal year 2022, CU launched its housing program. CU housing initiatives were in the earliest planning and launch stages throughout most of the fiscal year. CU did increase staff capacity for the housing program through the hiring of an Area Director for Rural Housing. Filling this role allowed the organization to start the process of identifying housing needs within the communities they serve, plan for impactful programs and resources unique to the needs of rural communities, and determine the best way for Communities Unlimited to meet the housing needs in their service area. In addition to increased staff capacity, the CU housing program engaged partners in the expansion of a volumetric modular housing manufacturing system and initiatives to increase homeownership for black, indigenous, and other communities of color. The Entrepreneurship Division began restructuring its programming in response to the rapid growth in demand for its services that has been continuing since the onset of the COVID19 pandemic. We launched a new Client Relations Management tool to capture and manage client referrals that are coming from all across its 7-state service area. During fiscal year 2022 CU's Entrepreneurship team launched three new program initiatives: 1. CU e-Center; 2. E-Wealth Health; and 3. Arkansas MBDA Business Center. In January 2022, the CU e-Center was launched offering self-paced on-demand small business courses with over 20 different topics so far such as Understanding Financial Statements, Calculating Break-Even, Accounting vs Bookkeeping, Digital Marketing for Small Business, Preparing for a Small Business Loan, and Ideation to Startup. So far over 125 courses have been taken by 41 individuals. We began using the CU 3-Center as resources to supplement our one-on-one management consulting services as the demand for our one-on-one management consulting services continues to grow. In this next fiscal year there will be many new topics including courses to help small business learn How to Avoid a Predatory Loan and more in-depth course content such as a Capital Readiness course that will be combined with our one-on-one management consulting assistance in helping small businesses secure capital. In August 2022, the Entrepreneurship Division launched its new E-Wealth Health Program E=Entrepreneur that is focused on closing the wealth gap through entrepreneurship by taking multiple cohorts of committed small business owners, mostly minority owners, through a 12 month intensive programming. The E-Wealth Health Program consists of required monthly webinars and one--on-one management consulting sessions. The business owners are taught how to manage their business to profitability and how to grow business retained earnings that are then used strategically toward securing capital and/or wealth creation. These initial cohorts of business owners are offered Wealth Accelerator payments as an incentive to establishing and contributing to a retirement account. CU's CEO, Ines Polonius and the Director of Entrepreneurship co-authored a white paper title, Wealth Building for Business Owners of Color: A whole-Person Approach which addresses CU's approach to creating racial equity through entrepreneurship. In September 2022, CU was selected as the home of the first Arkansas MBD Business Center. The MBDA is the Minority Business Development Agency, a bureau of the U.S. Department of Commerce. It is the only federal agency solely dedicated to the growth and global competitiveness of minority business enterprises. The Arkansas MBDA Business Center is being led by CU's Entrepreneurship Division and its focus is on helping minority small business owners secure contracts, new markets, and capital. This new initiative will require connection to the larger minority revenue generating businesses and CU will be expanding its contract financing loan product introduced by CU's Lending Division this same year. The Entrepreneurship Division assisted 343 clients with 165 of these opting for one-on-one management consulting engagements. This is a 35% increase from the 254 clients assisted in 2021. Additionally, the program training events includes 41 clients completing LMS courses and 251 attendees to live webinars. CU's Community Sustainability team's network of partner communities grew to a cumulative 52 communities who have worked toward developing more vibrant, sustainable economies by leveraging local assets for long-term growth. CU recognizes that for communities to achieve real sustainability the approach must be radically resident driven. Residents drive the process; creating the plans, filling gaps and connecting to existing resources to activate the community's power for change. CU's staff facilitates this process and assists with infrastructure management and improvement, community facility development, small business development and access to financing. They believe that people should have the opportunity to thrive where they live, work, play and worship regardless of the location or population of their community. One of the goals of the CS team is to build a diverse leadership team who are open minded and motivated to initiate change. They provide training to build personal and community capacity that will enable residents to be the problem solvers. As a regional hub they provide WealthWorks training and value chain facilitation. Assets are recognized through the engagement of Community leaders and utilized to build a strategy for economic growth. This strategy directs the long-term execution of work by CS staff side by side in relationship with community. During the COVID-19 Pandemic, the team worked alongside senior leadership to create opportunities to pivot the work into a virtual connectivity platform. They believe in the communities they serve and investing in creating learning opportunities during a time when they were often most impacted was crucial. Monthly Zoom community leadership meetings along with educational opportunities rounded out a robust engagement strategy to keep their communities moving toward their goals in spite of obstacles. By deploying their E.D.G.E. Capacity Building model, which involves Enlightening - training, Delivering - technical assistance, Guiding - as community conducts tasks, and Empowering - monitoring the community's continued success in their execution of tasks, Community Facilitators purposefully and intentionally go into every community with an exit strategy in mind, realizing that the true benefit of their efforts is building or strengthening the capacity of local governments and non-profits so that when they do complete a project they are no longer needed to ensure that community facilities, local housing, and/or community and economic development will continue to be sustainable. CU leverages each of its programs and identifies partners to bring the resources needed for implementation of the strategies to create lasting change. Community Sustainability helps communities: Evaluate ordinances and policies that are friendly to small businesses. Increase the number of local businesses. Support growth of existing local businesses. Deliver resources and convene partners who have new resources to deploy. Provide access to financing. Evaluate existing community development plans. Work with GIS mapping program to create sustainable resource maps. And, develop broadband strategies and connect to resources for deployment. They accomplish this through: Collaboration with local leadership to provide an assessment of the community's economic opportunities. Environmental technical assistance resources. Small business management consulting. Community facilities resources. Home improvement lending. Local, regional, state and federal convening of stakeholders.GeographiesNot indicatedDatesOct 1, 2021 – Sep 30, 2022Source990No causes providedNo populations provided–$1.6M
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