CARDINAL IMPACT ADVISORS

Innovative community investment is our expertise. Let us be your guide.

Connect

Cardinal Impact Advisors works with large, socially-minded organizations to develop and implement capital strategies to achieve community impact goals.

Services

Our goal is to help you stay on mission while connecting you with public and private resources. We serve as a bridge between large capital markets, institutional investors, grassroots organizing, and the communities you seek to serve.

Strategy

A comprehensive strategy is the backbone of all great visions. With open minds and passion for the field, our team works alongside you to develop your idea into a financial roadmap that you can use to secure organizational consensus. Our approach typically involves a needs assessment, product and services plans, and building out investor strategies.

Implementation

In the implementation phase, we put your strategy to work. Our team helps translate your plan into step-by-step actions laddering up to measurable results. We support in building and launching new programs, investor identification, financial modeling, legal structuring, and more.

Operations

Launching a new investment program is just the start. After a program is built, we stick with you to make sure that you have all the support, structures, and resources needed to effectively operate your new program. This includes systems and process development, deal origination, and portfolio management.

Impact First

Impact is our primary focus as we develop and launch capital programs that serve communities.

We are passionate about helping secure and deploy capital to health clinics, affordable homes, schools, healthy food grocery stores, Native communities, and more because we know it’s possible to achieve win/win solutions for thriving neighborhoods and civic-minded investors.

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We’ve helped deploy $394 million to community-based projects

“We sought holistic support in building our impact investing program—and Cardinal Impact Advisors played every position from strategic advisor to credit underwriter, to impact measurement manager. Their support offered us the flexibility to evolve with a changing economic landscape while centering the most underserved communities. In many ways, Sajan is a member of our team.”

Zoila Jennings
Lead Impact Investment Officer, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
"Capital Impact Advisors is a highly valued and regular part of the LIIF team. Their hands-on experience in the community development field accelerated communications, issue spotting and project completion. After our work together, we saw a 3x increase in originations via our special lending initiatives."

Maygen Moore
VP of Affordable Housing & National Funds, Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF)
"Cardinal Impact Advisors partnered with us when we were at a strategic crossroads. We needed support evaluating solutions to support community development that also allowed us to remain viable. Now we have a clear path forward: a new financial model to support fundraising and full board support."

Ja’Net Defell
President & CEO, Community Desk Chicago
"Advancing racial equity through lending has been a massive undertaking. Sajan’s knowledge of CDFIs and impact investing meant he was able to quickly craft a work plan, and his team partnered with ours to produce baseline impact data for dozens of transactions with accuracy and diligence. This was a huge accomplishment. These historical lending insights will strengthen our Impact Scorecard."

Eliisa Frazier
Director, Racial Equity & Impact Lending, Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF)
"With Cardinal Impact Advisors' assistance, Arnold Ventures designed a strategy to launch a new line of impact investments in affordable housing, which grew to approximately $100 million in commitments over several years. Cardinal's team helped build internal processes and models to monitor impact investments, execute on compliance and financial due diligence, and actively manage investments.”

Beth Banks
CFO, Arnold Ventures

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