Showcasing the impact of investment in underserved communities

Community Development Financial Institutions Fund

Historically, people in lower-income communities have had limited access to the types of loans and bank accounts that millions of other Americans take for granted. Community Development Financial Institutions—known as CDFIs—are specialized financial institutions that are dedicated to increasing access to financial services in underserved communities. They provide loans to support small businesses, to develop affordable housing, and to strengthen community-based social service organizations. They also provide safe and affordable financial services to communities that traditional banks have abandoned but predatory lenders have not. CDFIs help create economic opportunity in places where opportunity is needed most.

SERVICES

research
content development
marketing and promotion strategy
design
branding
photography
videography

THE CLIENT

The Community Development Financial Institutions Fund is an agency of the U.S. Department of the Treasury that provides financing and capacity-building programs to strengthen CDFIs. There are now nearly 1,400 CDFIs in the U.S., and since its inception in 1994, the CDFI Fund has provided more than $5.1 billion to support them.

THE PROBLEM

For the past several years, the CDFI Fund has released an annual Year in Review publication to highlight its fiscal year-end impact metrics and accomplishments. The Year in Review was a professionally designed and printed annual report that typically contained 30-40 pages of content, images, and infographics.

Due to the pandemic, the CDFI Fund was participating in fewer in-person meetings and conferences in 2020 and had less need for a full printed annual report. However, the agency still wanted a professionally designed publication that would present its annual impact in a user-friendly way. The challenge was to develop a new form of the Year in Review that would meet the CDFI Fund’s requirements and be easily accessible to a large audience.

THE SOLUTION

All Things Creative created a new web-based version of the Year in Review that condensed the essential information the CDFI Fund needed to convey into concise, impact-driven results. We also created a shorter printed infographic for the CDFI Fund’s internal use that complemented the web-based version and summarized key data.

THE APPROACH

After in-depth conversations with the CDFI Fund, we reviewed past versions of the Year in Review and wrote new content for the web-based version that included background information about the CDFI Fund’s mission, a summary of the CDFI Fund’s fiscal year 2020 achievements, and a review of the performance of each of the CDFI Fund’s six funding programs during the year. We also wrote content for the infographic based on content from the web version.

Once the content was approved, we designed the web-based format with interactive elements and also created an attractive infographic that highlighted key accomplishments.

The CDFI Fund wanted to reimagine its approach to the traditional report. Our goal with the design was to showcase the agency’s impact in a visually appealing way, and feedback from stakeholders showed that we achieved that goal.