New products. New places. That’s what the past year was all about for Opportunity Fund.Our 2011 fiscal year ended on June 30th. During the year, Opportunity Fund launched new products to help working families, and we engaged audiences in new places in our efforts to build the domestic microfinance movement. As we close the books on another great year providing financial services to our community, here are some of the highlights of our work that your investment helped us to achieve. New Products
New Places
Thank You! None of these accomplishments would be possible without your help. Thank you for supporting the dreams of people like Felicia and Chong, and for nurturing microfinance through your investment in Opportunity Fund. With your help, we look forward to another exciting year! Best wishes, FY2011 Program Highlights—1,800 families served In Fiscal Year 2011, which ended on June 30th, Opportunity Fund invested more than $23 million to improve the lives of 1,800 Bay Area working families through small business loans, matched savings accounts, and new affordable homes. Each dollar we invested provided incredible leverage for our donors’ contributions: savers graduating from college, entrepreneurs expanding their businesses, and parents finding safe homes in which to raise their children. Microlending: Entrepreneurship and job creation Community Real Estate: Affordable housing and neighborhood infrastructure Leadership in the microfinance field “The Olympic gold standard for what an informed, educational, entertaining, valuable, enjoyable conference discussion can be” “So much intelligen¬t commentary and debate. I was sorry when it came to an end.” |
In 2011, Opportunity Fund launched Start2Save, our new microsavings initiative that helps underbanked families build emergency savings. Start2Save gives hardworking people—like Felicia, who supports her husband and grandson on a job that was cut back to 15 hours a week—a chance to build their own safety net by matching their savings in a rainy day fund. Through Start2Save, Felicia is taking the first step toward long-term financial stability. 
We also launched GreenForGreen, a microloan product that helps small businesses make investments to reduce energy costs, eliminate harmful toxins, and launch new lines of eco-friendly products. A GreenForGreen loan helped Chong’s dry cleaning business “go green” by providing the funds he needed to invest in an eco-friendly steam cleaning system. Now Chong can differentiate his services from his competition, capitalizing on his clients’ interest in supporting an environmentally-friendly dry cleaner to build his business.
Responding to popular demand, Opportunity Fund took our Microfinance USA conference on the road to New York City in May! A sold-out crowd of 850 investors, social entrepreneurs, policymakers, practitioners, and clients debated ideas and exchanged information on microfinance, highlighting how this strategy creates jobs, spurs economic growth, and builds financial stability across the U.S.
You can also find Opportunity Fund loan officers and business advisors in more neighborhoods than ever. We are now open for business at our new lending branch office in Plaza Adelante, in San Francisco’s Mission District, and we have new team members traveling all around the greater Bay Area to meet with clients at their businesses.
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