Learning from the Southern Opportunity and Resilience (SOAR) Fund
(June 6, 2023) Calvert Impact hosted a webinar with 60 Decibels, Community Reinvestment Fund USA, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), TruFund Financial Services, and Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs (ACE) to discuss results from the recently released 60 Decibels report on the SOAR Fund.
Key Takeaways:
SOAR partnered with existing local CDFI's to streamline access to funds for borrowers.
Per the 60_Decibels report, the experience of borrowers working with CDFI's was overwhelmingly positive.
97% of borrowers feel confident they can repay the loan.
The SOAR Fund was able to reach a more financially remote part of the country. Only 41% of SOAR Fund recipients have prior loan access.
Click here to view the SOAR "Learning from the Southern Opportunity and Resilience Fund" presentation.
Calling the CDFI partnership a streamlining success overstates it. If only 41% of SOAR recipients had prior loan access, the bottleneck may be underwriting and servicing capacity at LISC, TruFund, and ACE, not referral design. I’d want 90-day delinquency and TA completion rates before crediting the model. Standardizing those is like tracking Pokémon card value trends—tedious, but the comparison only works with the same fields.
What’s absent from the 60 Decibels release is the denominator behind 97% repayment confidence. Split it by the 41% with prior loan access and the rest, then reconcile it against 90-day delinquency and technical assistance completion across TruFund, LISC, and ACE. A shared worksheet could do that; a few best AI tools for that kind of tracking could automate the segmentation, but the servicing data still has to exist first.
97% repayment confidence is the weakest evidence in the 60 Decibels report. Borrowers can feel positive about a CDFI relationship yet still lack the cash-flow data to judge default risk, especially when only 41% had prior loan access. I’d rather see actual repayment, delinquency, and technical assistance completion rates—something a CDFI loan performance tracking worksheet can standardize across TruFund, LISC, and ACE.