By Evan Taylor | VP of Operations
Supporters of LEND,
LEND is back on campus and we are excited to announce that we have hit the ground running in more ways than one!
First and foremost, we have seen incredible growth in our lending portfolio. Thanks to the hard work of our loan teams we were able to complete two loans over the summer and are on pace to distribute two more by the end of the year. As we welcome Jillian Trespeces (Evanston Float Center) and Ana Vela (Amanecer Taco Shop) to the LEND family, we also want to acknowledge that we crossed a major milestone with their loans: $100,000 in total disbursement.
This milestone has helped fuel some significant recognition and press for our organization. The Daily Northwestern highlighted our growth and the success of the Sunshine Enterprises partnership in a recent article. Northwestern News Network also aired a feature praising LEND, microfinance, and our community impact by telling the story of Jennifer Eason, owner of Jennifer’s Edibles.
Moving forward we plan to build on this momentum and finish the year strong. Our loan pipeline is growing and our Business Training Program (BTP) continues to see more and more interest in the community. This has generated a need for more members and we plan to add a couple more helping hands from a competitive application pool by the end of the month. Additionally, we are ramping up our fundraising and collection efforts as we push towards the next disbursement milestone. Our demand is higher than ever, so we can assure that any and all donations will go a long way towards our goals of serving a wider audience and genereating expanded impact.
As always, thank you for your continued support and we look forward to sharing more exciting news shortly!
Be sure to support our new loan clients and check out our Daily article here: https://dailynorthwestern.com/2017/09/20/city/business/microfinance-group-launches-program-help-low-income-minority-owned-businesses/
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
