Borrowers bring investments full circle
By Community Loan Fund staff
A cooperative that was helped by a loan from the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund is giving back to others by investing its savings here.
We're privileged to work every day with investors in the Community Loan Fund, from individuals with small investments to the largest foundations and financial institutions. They have many different motivations for investing with us.
One of our favorite investments happened recently. Only eight years earlier, residents of the Woodstock Cooperative in Woodstock, N.H. had bought their manufactured-housing community with a loan and training from the Community Loan Fund.
Fast-forward to 2009, and the community is thriving. Its board realized it had some excess funds that were earning a low interest rate in bank CDs. After careful consideration and a good look at the Community Loan Fund's financial strength and safety, they decided to invest these funds with us when the CDs matured.
Woodstock's residents understood that an investment here would help ensure that the Community Loan Fund has capital to loan to future co-ops that want to become resident-owned communities. They could give back to communities the way they had been helped years before AND they could earn a much-higher return on their money. So in October 2009 they did just that.
Because of Woodstock's decision, other resident-owned communities are considering similar investments. That's investing full circle! We wonder if anyone on the Woodstock Co-op board could have foreseen this result when they were initially organizing and buying their community back in 2001!
By the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund's Investor Relations team.
Please note: Investments in the Community Loan Fund are not available to residents of some states outside New Hampshire. Please contact us for more information.
