Community Development Investing

From its inception, TLI defined community development investing in the broadest terms. TLI invests in affordable housing, small businesses, childcare centers, health care facilities, commercial developments and charter schools. All of these types of projects are critical to building successful communities.

We believe it’s important to get to know our borrowers. We want to be familiar with the organizations we do business with, understand their strategies, pipelines and challenges. Based on our borrowers’ feedback, TLI has tried to reduce unnecessary red tape and duplicative reporting related to the loan process. We are committed to respond quickly and clearly to borrowers’ proposals. TLI seeks to establish long term lending relationships with our borrowers. These relationships allow us to better understand the market conditions in which they work, as well as their ongoing investment needs.

In the early years of TLI we fashioned a flexible approach to our process. Rather than use fixed financial products, we tailor loans to fit the needs of our borrowers. TLI has supported innovative models that may contribute to moving forward the approach to community development. These creative projects and initiatives may not fit easily into set financial products; they tend to require early commitments of financing and investments which are tailored to a particular development. We are comfortable with this kind of investing because we are extremely familiar with our borrowers and their long term strategies to address issues in their communities.

Our Process

We encourage borrowers to contact us early in the development process. We are often able to evaluate the likelihood of The Life Initiative investment in a project relatively quickly. This saves borrowers significant time and effort. At times, we are able to help borrowers identify complementary financing sources, potential issues with project design or work through other project related challenges.

Since we don’t have standard financing products, our first step is to meet the borrower and understand the proposed project. Our due diligence process includes evaluating borrowers’ experience, team financial strength as well as the overall financial feasibility of the projects.

If the TLI staff feels the investment meets our lending criteria, then the loan is brought to the TLI Investment Committee to make a final decision on the proposed investment. The Investment Committee meets monthly so once our due diligence process is complete, we can act quickly on approving projects.