NFF Dollars at Work

Leadership Preparatory Charter School opened in 2015 with kindergarten and first grade classes. It has added a grade every year since, currently at K-5. In order to realize its goal of K-8 education, the school needed more space. With the help of a construction loan from NFF and partners, the school will build its middle school adjacent to the elementary school, expanding by 2024 to 490 students from 315 currently. This loan is the first from NFF’s Resilient Communities Fund, a $10 million fund from our most recent NMTC awards. With loans under $4 million with low interest rates, the fund is available to borrowers with financing needs too small to benefit from traditional NMTC allocations.

Partnerc: BlueHub Capital, Pinnacle Bank

Venice Community Housing is a permanent supportive housing and social services provider based and working in the Westside of Los Angeles, specializing in supportive housing for people formerly experiencing homelessness. Venice manages 16 affordable housing properties, almost half of which are exclusively crisis housing and housing for formerly chronically homeless individuals. NFF provided a $500,000 predevelopment loan to support Venice’s current development pipeline. This loan is the third from NFF’s Accelerating Permanent Supportive Housing Fund, which provides early-stage capital to help speed the development of supportive housing in the Los Angeles area.

Nowell Leadership Academy is a transfer charter high school in Providence, RI, serving pregnant and parenting students. The school is located on two campuses seven miles apart, which creates financial and operational challenges, as well as inconsistent support services for students, such as childcare. With a new campus for all 160 students, the school will save money, offer a better social and communal experience, and provide lactation and health rooms, transportation services, and a dedicated space for free on-site childcare. NFF provided a $610,000 loan for leasehold improvements on the new space.

Urban Dove Team Charter School is a network of high schools in New York City that serves over-aged and under-credited students seeking to graduate from high school. Originally founded in 1998 as an after-school program focused on mentorship through sports, Urban Dove became a high school in 2012. The school still uses a team sports model that is intended to engage and educate students no longer served by their zoned schools. The Brooklyn campus is currently housed in a space shared with a church. NFF’s loan will help the school move to a new facility with better classrooms and a spacious gym that can accommodate their sports-focused curriculum.

Partner: Civic Builders

Compass Rose Academy is a tuition-free charter school where nearly 90% of students are from low-income households. The school believes every child, no matter their race, socio-economic status, zip code, or home language, should have access to a rigorous, college-preparation-focused curriculum. Since opening in 2017, it has earned high ratings from the Texas Education Authority. The school is expanding to a new space to accommodate a growing middle school and adding a high school. NFF participated in financing a loan for renovations on a newly leased space that will accommodate 850 students, an increase from nearly 400 now.

Partners: BlueHub Capital, Civic Builders

Washington Heights and Inwood Music Community Charter School (WHIN) opened in 2017 and serves primarily students of color and low-income students through an innovative, music-infused curriculum in New York City. The new space will include a theater for the children to perform concerts, as well as a cafeteria, rehearsal room, teacher’s lounge and office, eight classrooms, and an outdoor playground on the roof. NFF provided a $600,000 loan for predevelopment and preconstruction costs, such as environmental remediation and architecture and engineering.

Partner: Civic Builders

Reed Community Partners, in partnership with Allied Housing, Abode Services and Santa Clara Country is addressing the homelessness crisis in San Jose, California with the construction of 91 new units of affordable housing. Forty-six of the units will be designated as permanent supportive housing, offering residents health and social services. The acquisition loan totaled $3.4 million and was led by Housing Trust Silicon Valley, with NFF participating at $1.7 million. Santa Clara County is also supporting the project by aligning Measure A bond funding and other resources such as vouchers. This is the second loan under NFF’s AIM Healthy Fund, which makes lower cost loans available to California providers of supportive housing, elder care, behavioral health, and other essential community services working towards better health outcomes and driving the social determinants of health. The first loan was to Hill Country Community Clinic to build a new comprehensive health center and 16 units of supportive housing in Redding, California.

Partners: Housing Trust Silicon Valley.

Stockton Collegiate International Schools (SCIS) was founded in 2009 to offer the academically rigorous International Baccalaureate curriculum to grades K-12 to students that are typically underrepresented in such programs in Stockton, California, including students of color, students from low-income families, and students with special needs. Nearly all SCIS’ high-school students graduate and earn scores on International Baccalaureate tests that qualify for college credit. NFF provided a $500,000 loan to help SCIS make more efficient use of its space, by consolidating the number of buildings on its campus from five to four. The project, along with debt refinancing from NFF loan partner Civic Builders, will result in facility costs savings of approximately $429,000 annually.

Partner: Civic Builders

Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation (WHEDco) provides housing, economic and youth development, family counseling, and small business support. It also created a cultural home for the community through its Bronx Music Heritage Center (BMHC), with programming including live music performances, readings, film screenings, educational art programs, art installations, and music history trolley tours. Free events in the space served 5,000 people last year. With the help of a $2-million bridge loan from NFF, BMHC will soon have a brand-new space on the ground floor of one of WHEDco’s mixed use affordable housing developments, Bronx Commons. It will include a flexible theater space with seats for up to 350, classroom, dance studio, art exhibition area, recording studio, café and kitchen. In 2018, NFF provided WHEDco with a $2.5-million bridge loan for the renovation of another mixed-use space in the Bronx, Urban Horizons.  

Springfield Prep Charter SchoolOpened in 2015,currently operates in a temporary space serving 324 students in grades K-5. The school has identified a new, permanent space that can accommodate its full enrollment charter of 486 students in grades K-8. NFF provided a $2.4 million loan to finance acquisition and predevelopment of the new site, where the school plans a $10-million renovation.

Partners: BlueHub Capital

A Community of Friends (ACOF) works to end homelessness by providing quality permanent and affordable supportive housing for people with mental illness. With over 44 properties housing 2,533 adults and children in greater Los Angeles, all its locations have social services to help tenants remain stably housed. NFF provided a $2-million enterprise-level predevelopment and working capital loan in support of ACOF’s pipeline of nine supportive housing projects and their goal of expanding to 16 projects by 2021. This loan is the second from NFF’s Accelerating Permanent Supportive Housing Fund, which provides early-stage capital to help speed the development of supportive housing in the Los Angeles area. 

Downtown Community Television Center (DCTV) is a nonprofit independent media arts center in New York City. Founded in 1972, it fosters diverse viewpoints and creates positive social change by providing professional training, state-of-the-industry resources, and by creating and exhibiting thought-provoking, impactful documentary films. DCTV is building a new, 74-seat public cinema devoted exclusively to documentary film screenings. Located on the building’s ground floor, the cinema will serve as an expansion of the existing DCTV Presents programming, where the organization hosts screening events that engage audiences in documentary films about important social issues. NFF provided a $1-million bridge loan and a $1.1-million construction loan toward the $5.2-million project.

Partner: LISC

First Step Staffing is a nonprofit staffing agency. It converts existing for-profit staffing agencies into nonprofits with a mission-driven employment strategy – directly hiring those that have been most disenfranchised from the workforce – men and women experiencing homelessness, veterans, and people with disabilities. In 2018, it placed over 5,504 people with barriers into temporary jobs, 4,708 of whom had recently experienced homelessness. Founded in Atlanta 2006, it has expanded to Nashville, and in 2017, to Philadelphia, with the help of a $1.2 -million loan from NFF to purchase the accounts of a for-profit staffing company. First Step is taking now taking its approach now to Los Angeles. NFF made a $2.375-million term loan to finance First Step’s acquisition of a staffing company in LA that will now provide direct employment for thousands of people who face barriers to entering the workforce.

Partners: Reinvestment Fund, Dignity Health, REDF, LA County Workforce Development Aging & Community Services, and San Bernardino County

Blackstone Valley Prep Mayoral Academy (BVP) is a growing K-12 charter school network that serves 2,100 students from four neighboring communities in Rhode Island, creating shared experiences across both racial and socioeconomic lines. Founded in 2009, BVP currently operates three elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school. NFF provided a $1.45-million loan to finance the renovation of MS2, BVP’s middle school located in Lincoln, RI, which will provide four new classrooms and two break-out rooms as well as replace the HVAC system and renovate existing bathrooms. In December 2016, NFF provided a $925,000 loan to acquire and renovate a 40,500 square foot facility for BVP’s high school in Cumberland, RI.

Partner: BlueHub Capital

Hill Country Community Clinic offers integrated medical, dental, chiropractic, and mental health services to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay. With $11 million in NMTC sub-allocation and $10 million in loans, including investment from NFF’s AIM Healthy Fund and participation from Dignity Health, Hill Country Community Clinic is another step closer to the construction of a new 35,000 square foot health center that will serve over 9,000 patients annually once fully operational. The project, Center of Hope, will also include 16 units of supportive housing for young adults transitioning out of homelessness.