Northern California Community Loan Fund

Services: Impact Measurement, Management & Evaluation
Client Type: CDFI
Geography: Regional

The Objective

Northern California Community Loan Fund (NCCLF) engaged Pacific Community Ventures to create a quantitative tool that would enable loan officers to assess and compare investments across sectors and impact themes based on their expected positive social impact as well as the extent to which they align with NCCLF’s mission

The Approach

In a highly collaborative process, Pacific Community Ventures worked with NCCLF to identify and translate the firm’s impact objectives and strategy into specific dimensions of impact with corresponding metrics. We synthesized the findings into an interactive Social Impact Rating Tool (SIR) that provides a quantitative score for loans’ expected impact and mission alignment.

The Results

NCCLF’s loan officers have utilized the SIR for two years to inform the deployment of over $70M in loans. Because of the SIR, senior leadership at NCCLF have revisited and scrutinized organizational mission and priorities, enhancing staff’s understanding of the organization’s impact.

The SIR has enabled more structured conversations on expected impact and mission alignment between loan officers during underwriting and when loan officers present credit memos to the loan committee.

As NCCLF began making loans focused on food security, they re-engaged PCV InSight to develop a customized food-specific impact rating system as part of the SIR in order to assess potential impact for this new area of lending.