Filling in the Gaps: Using CDFI Fund Data to Learn More about CDFI Activity

In this section, we use data from the CDFI Fund to help fill in the picture of CDFI activity in the Southeast. The CDFI Fund collects annual institution and transaction level data from certified CDFIs, which it makes periodically available to the public. These data lend insight into the geographic scope of CDFI lending activity and the geographic spread of CDFI investments. To give a fuller representation of CDFI activity in the Southeast, the maps and analysis that follow use six years of CDFI Fund transaction-level data, from 2009 to 2014. This period of time was selected based on CDFI Fund data availability and on the timing of the Richmond Fed survey, which began in 2009 and has continued biennially.

However, even with the additional information gleaned from CDFI Fund data, this analysis is not representative of the full population of CDFIs headquartered and/or operating in the Southeast. Noncertified CDFIs are not required to report to the CDFI Fund, and consequently may not be represented in the CDFI Fund data. While only a small percentage of CDFIs are noncertified — just 1.4 percent of survey respondents (two CDFIs) reported being noncertified — those institutions are contributors to the full landscape of CDFI activity. Furthermore, certified CDFIs are only required to report their financial activity to the CDFI Fund. Thus, CDFI Fund data do not capture non-lending activities performed by certified CDFIs, including financial education and advocacy. Both the survey data and the CDFI Fund data should be viewed with an awareness of these limitations.

The CDFI Fund data give a rather different picture of CDFI activity in the Southeast than the 2015 survey results, as shown in Maps 7 and 8. While the survey results show CDFI activity in all counties, with at least two CDFIs operating in each county, the CDFI Fund data indicate a lack of CDFI lending activity in 25.5 percent of counties in the Southeast (278 counties) from 2009 to 2014.

There are several possible explanations for this discrepancy. First, the two sets of data represent different years. While the survey data was collected in 2015, the most recent available CDFI Fund data is from 2014. In the year between the two sources of data, there may have been an increase in the total number of CDFIs, which is then reflected in the 2015 survey data. Alternatively, the CDFI Fund only collects data on financial transactions, so the map that uses CDFI Fund data may underrepresent the full range of CDFI activity in the Southeast. As the survey also requested information on non-lending programs and services, respondents may have included in their geographic scope any area in which they operate in any capacity, be it lending or non-lending. Finally, the difference could be indicative of one disadvantage of self-administered survey instruments: if respondents had limited or generalized information about their geographic scope, responses may indicate a broader geographic area than the transaction data indicates.