OFN Training

Did you know that the formation of the CDFI industry is rooted in the civil rights, worker rights, and social justice movements of the 1960s and 1970s? And that the Women Religious provided seminal support to CDFIs helping them establish a proof of concept and grow into an industry? Or that Saturday Night Live (SNL) once did a skit that mentioned the CDFI Fund? Ever wondered how CDFIs came to be known as “financial first responders”? During this orientation, you’ll learn all this and more as we dive into how the industry has evolved over the past 50 years. You’ll also gain insights into CDFI impact and current trends – all while getting to other practitioners new to the industry!

Virtual Fees: $125 per person for OFN Members; $200 per person for General/Non-Members

In-Person Fees: $150 per person for OFN Members; $285 per person for General/Non-Members

Type: In-Person, Virtual 

Training dates in 2025: January – Virtual; April- Detroit, MI; May – Springfield, MA; June 11 – Austin, TX at OFN Small Business Finance Forum; October 21 – Washington, D.C. at OFN41; November – Minneapolis, MN; December – San Diego, CA.  See the calendar above to learn more. 

This 101-level workshop is designed to provide an efficient, foundational overview of capitalization in the context of CDFIs. We’ll delve into the various types of capital available to CDFIs – what they are, why they matter, and use cases – as well as sources for different types of capital. If you’re new to the world of CDFI capitalization, or just looking to refresh your knowledge on the capitalization landscape, this workshop is for you!   

Fees: $125 per person for OFN Members; $200 per person for General/Non-Members

Type: Virtual 

Training dates in 2025: March 19, August. See the calendar above to learn more. 

Why is capitalization so important to the CDFI loan fund business model? How can you align sources and uses to create an effective capitalization strategy? Building on the concepts of Capitalization 101, we’ll explore answers to these questions and more! Through case studies and interactive exercises, you’ll learn how capitalization supports CDFI operations, financing, and growth while gaining insights into the common challenges CDFIs encounter in building and implementing a capitalization strategy.  

For practitioners new to CDFI capitalization, we strongly recommend taking Capitalization 101: Sources & Uses prior to this workshop.  

Fees: $125 per person for OFN Members; $200 per person for General/Non-Members

Type: Virtual 

Training dates in 2025: March 26, August. See the calendar above to learn more. 

This interactive, full-day workshop is geared towards CDFI practitioners and mission-driven lenders seeking to strengthen and refine their capital-raising approach. The workshop will primarily focus on assisting attendees with developing and/or honing a compelling value proposition for various types of investors.  

Attendees will receive templates, tips, and real-time support to help them build a pitch deck and/or narrative that effectively conveys their organization’s work. Through interactive exercises, attendees will have opportunities to practice their pitch amidst peers and receive actionable feedback. 

The workshop will also cover what to expect when raising capital—from building a data room to the typical components of underwriting and due diligence processes—and include guidance on investor outreach and relationship management. Attendees will leave equipped with new skills and insights to maximize opportunities to successfully raise capital for their respective organizations. 

Please note that this training is only open to practitioners at OFN members, as well as other mission-driven lenders.  

For practitioners new to CDFI capitalization, we strongly recommend taking Capitalization 101: Sources & Uses prior to this workshop.  

Fees: $385 per person for OFN Members; $600 per person for General/Non-Members

Type: In-Person 

Training dates in 2025: April – Springfield, MA; November – Minneapolis, MN. See the calendar above to learn more. 

New for 2025! Explore the fundamentals of effective board development during this half-day, in-person training! Key topics covered include defining clear roles and responsibilities for board members, recruiting and retaining mission-aligned individuals, and establishing governance structures that promote accountability and mission alignment. 

Whether you’re forming a new board or enhancing an existing one, this training will provide you with the foundational tools and insights needed to build a strong, effective board that supports your organization’s growth and drives lasting impact.

Fees:$185 per person for OFN Members; $300 per person for General/Non-Members

Type: In-Person ONLY

Training dates in 2025: March 12 – Washington, D.C. See the calendar above to learn more. 

New for 2025! Are you seeking to strengthen your board or interested in leading practices for maximizing your board’s effectiveness? Attend this in-person training to learn how to foster productive board-staff relationships, navigate board dynamics, and leverage your board’s expertise to drive meaningful impact. Through interactive case studies and peer learning, you’ll gain actionable tools to build a culture of trust, accountability, and mission alignment that empowers your board to act as a true partner in advancing your goals.

Fees: $185 per person for OFN Members; $300 per person for General/Non-Members

Type: In-Person ONLY

Training dates in 2025: March 12 – Washington, D.C. See the calendar above to learn more. 

Interested in CDFI-specific training for your board members? Starting in 2025, OFN will offer tailored, customized executive training for CDFI board members to help build a deeper understanding of the CDFI industry, challenges and opportunities facing CDFI leaders, and leading practices for board governance, including fiduciary responsibilities and strategic planning in the context of a CDFI. 

Please reach out to [email protected] for more information.  

Fees: varies; this is a customized offering

Type: In-Person, Virtual

Description Coming Soon! 

Fees: $125 per person for OFN Members; $200 per person for General/Non-Members

Type: Virtual 

Training dates in 2025: TBA. See the calendar above to learn more. 

Designed for CDFI financial management professionals, this workshop is intended to help practitioners build their CDFI’s organizational resiliency through financial management. This is a two-part training: it starts with a full-day, in-person workshop and includes a 90-min follow-up virtual learning session via Zoom. The registration fee includes both of these components. 

During the in-person workshop, attendees will dive into the CAMEL framework, exploring leading practices for monitoring, analyzing, and assessing their CDFIs’ financial health through exercises involving both cases studies and analysis of their own organizations’ financials.  

Attendees will also receive access to Excel tools developed by OFN, such as a CAMEL KPI dashboard. The dashboard is an interconnected Excel tool that allows practitioners to leverage the CAMEL framework to identify trends in their CDFI’s financials, make financial projections, and assess performance against key performance indicators. OFN staff facilitators will work with attendees to adapt these concepts, materials, and tools to the needs of their CDFI. 

To maximize the workshop experience, participants will need to bring a laptop that can run Microsoft Excel as well as their CDFI’s most recent audited financials from the past three fiscal years. Additional information will be sent one week prior to the in-person workshop. 

Approximately six weeks after the in-person workshop, attendees will participate in a 90-min follow-up virtual session to discuss how they’ve adapted the tools and concepts to their CDFI; raise new questions and get support with any challenges they’ve encountered; share feedback on implementation; and engage in peer learning. 

Please note that due to demand, this training is only open to practitioners at OFN members and other mission-driven lenders. If you are interested in this workshop but are not a practitioner at a CDFI or mission-driven lender, please reach out to [email protected] to explore our customized training options. 

Fees: $450 per person for OFN Members; $800 per person for General/Non-Members

Type: Hybrid (In-Person & Virtual) 

Training dates in 2025: April – Detroit, MI at Midwest Regional Meeting; December – San Diego, CA at West Regional Meeting. Additional dates coming soon. See the calendar above to learn more.

Discover the core principles and components of CDFI small business lending! Through interactive discussions, case studies, and activities, you’ll deepen your understanding of key concepts and leading practices to develop a foundation on the “why,” “what,” and “how” of small business CDFIs and their work. 

We’ll begin by exploring the small business lending landscape, examining the critical role CDFIs play within this ecosystem, and the evolution of their small business lending practices. Next, we’ll delve into CDFI small business lending strategies, reviewing the most common loan products offered and key principles for effective lending and portfolio management within this sector. We’ll then transition to an overview of the types of programming and capacity-building initiatives small business CDFIs typically offer alongside their loans. Finally, we’ll close with an outlook on current trends, challenges, and opportunities in the CDFI small business lending space. 

Fees: $125 per person for OFN Members; $200 per person for General/Non-Members

Type: Virtual & In-Person 

Training dates in 2025: February 19 – Virtual; June 11 – Austin, TX at OFN Small Business Finance forum; September – Virtual. See the calendar above to learn more.

Step into the world of CDFI single-family lending with this immersive half-day workshop! You’ll build your knowledge of CDFI single-family lending practices from the ground up through interactive discussions, case studies, and collaborative activities. 

We’ll start by exploring the landscape of single-family lending and highlighting the role of CDFIs in expanding homeownership access, focusing on how CDFIs have designed single-family lending programs to address market gaps. From there, we’ll review the most common loan product offerings and key principles for effective lending and portfolio management within this sector. We’ll also examine how CDFIs strengthen borrower and community outcomes through capacity-building services, such as homebuyer counseling. The workshop will conclude with a discussion on market trends, policy shifts, and future opportunities in single-family CDFI lending. 

Fees: $125 per person for OFN Members; $200 per person for General/Non-Members

Type: Virtual  

Training dates in 2025: May, September. See the calendar above to learn more. 

Description coming soon! 

Fees: $125 per person for OFN Members; $200 per person for General/Non-Members 

Type: Virtual  

Training dates in 2025: May, September. See the calendar above to learn more. 

Interested in climate financing but unsure of where to start? Attend our free, virtual Climate Lending 101 workshop, offered quarterly exclusively for OFN members. 

During this ½ day, three-hour workshop, you’ll receive a primer on climate financing concepts and understand the business case for CDFI climate lending at the intersection of climate finance and environmental justice. 

You’ll also build your baseline knowledge of key terms, the purpose of climate lending, and the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund’s Clean Communities Investment Accelerator (CCIA) program. Through case studies and activities, you’ll also be introduced to the broader landscape of climate financing opportunities, products, and practices.  

Please note that this workshop is best suited for practitioners who have not yet developed a climate lending portfolio or are in the early stages of doing so.  

Fees: Free. This training is only open to OFN members. There is a limit of two attendees per OFN member organization. Registration is available first-come, first-served until we reach our maximum capacity.

Type: Virtual 

Training dates in 2025: January 13. Additional dates coming soon. See the calendar above to learn more. 

To support enduring change, CDFIs and other mission-driven lenders must recognize and re-evaluate how our own institutional practices affect the communities we seek to support. More and more CDFIs are taking steps to do exactly that and ensure their missions match their lending practices. This full-day workshop is divided into two parts: first, through a museum visit and series of interactive activities and discussions, we’ll discuss how the history of U.S. finance and community development affects borrowers and lenders today.

During the second half of this workshop, attendees will hear from peers who have engaged in this work for several years, discussing the various ways in which they’ve built a foundation that has allowed them to ensure equality of opportunity in their lending practices. We’ll guide practitioners through examining their loan policies, practices, and products for areas of improvement.  Join this workshop for an opportunity to begin or deepen your organization’s ongoing journey and commitment to aligning your organization’s lending practices with your mission and values.

Upon completing the workshop, registrants will have access to a new, virtual community of practice that meets quarterly to create space for ongoing learning, sharing, and discussion.

Fees: $385 per person for OFN Members; $700 per person for General/Non-Members

Type: In-Person

Want to learn about Impact Measurement and Management (IMM) and how your CDFI can best leverage it? This interactive, 101-level training will introduce you to the basics of IMM, what it is and is not, and how to make IMM strategies as useful as possible for your CDFI. We will break down both sides of IMM—measurement and management—to understand how these separate components come together to create a useful framework for data gathering, analysis, and use. Along the way, we’ll explore IMM frameworks and definitions in the CDFI ecosystem, as well as methods for data collection, analysis, and management. 

Fees: $125 per person for OFN Members; $200 per person for General/Non-Members

Type: Virtual 

Training dates in 2025: February 4, April. See the calendar above to learn more. 

Description Coming Soon! 

Fees: TBA 

Type: In-Person 

Training dates in 2025: June 11 – Austin, TX at OFN Small Business Finance Forum. See the calendar above to learn more. 

Description Coming Soon! 

Fees: $125 per person for OFN Members; $200 per person for General/Non-Members  

Type: Virtual 

Training dates in 2025: Summer 2025 – TBA. See the calendar above to learn more. 

Description Coming Soon! 

Fees: TBA 

Type: Virtual & In-Person 

Training dates in 2025: November. See the calendar above to learn more. 

No. To ensure that our trainings are an open, candid space, they are not recorded, and participation is limited to those who’ve registered in advance. For recorded content, we recommend our library of webinars, conference plenaries, and other resources, which can be found on CDFI Connect and OFN’s YouTube channel.

No. Paid trainings are not refundable, although they are transferrable to another member of your organization. All transfers incur a $75 processing fee.

Yes. All transfers incur a $75 processing fee. To process a transfer, please submit the request, including your colleague’s name, email address, phone number, organization, and work address, to [email protected].

It depends on the type of training.

• Registrations for in-person trainings cannot be transferred.
• Registrations for paid virtual trainings can be transferred to a future offering of the same virtual training for a $75 administrative fee. You can view upcoming offerings on our training calendar here. To process a transfer, please submit the request, including the training you’d like to attend instead, to [email protected].
• To ensure equitable access, registrations for our free, Climate Lending 101 virtual training cannot be transferred.

You can find OFN’s training schedule and course catalog on the Training page of our website. We update this page frequently as we add new offerings. You can also subscribe to our listserv to be the first to learn when registration opens for upcoming trainings.

To modify or cancel your registration, you will need your confirmation number, which you should have received in a confirmation email when you registered for the training. Once you have your confirmation number, you can modify or cancel your registration by following these steps:

• From your registration confirmation email, you can click the “modify or change your registration” link. When you click on the link, you will be prompted to enter your unique confirmation number.
• To cancel your registration: Once you are logged in, please scroll down and click on “cancel registration.” Once you have followed the prompts and confirmed your cancelation, you should receive a cancelation email.
• To modify your registration: Once you are logged in, please scroll down and click on “modify registration.” From there, you will be able to navigate through a series of pages by clicking the “Next” and “Previous” buttons at the bottom of each page:
  • First, the Personal Information page, where you can modify your personal and contact information.
  • Second, the Demographic Information page where you can choose to share information about yourself with us.
  • Third, the Sessions page, where you can add or remove conference sessions and add-ons. Please note that add-ons are non-refundable and removing them from your registration will not trigger a refund.
  • Fourth, your Registration Summary.
  • If any additional payment is due, you can process it on the next page.
  • At the bottom of the final page, you can click on the “Submit” button to confirm all your changes.

If you have questions or need assistance modifying or canceling your registration, please contact [email protected].

Your confirmation number is located in your confirmation email, which you should have received when you registered for the training. Event emails are sent by [email protected] via Cvent, our event platform, so these emails can sometimes go to a spam folder or the “other” tab in someone’s primary Outlook inbox. As a result, we recommend checking both of those places if you don’t initially see the email. If you still can’t locate your confirmation email, please contact [email protected].

•  CDFI Connect, our online peer learning and networking platform with 12,500 active users and a practitioner resource library. It’s a great space to ask questions and connect with others in the industry. You can join for free here.
•  OFN’s YouTube channel, where you can find recordings of past webinars, conference plenaries, and other multimedia resources.
•  OFN’s Training & Events page, where you can find all our offerings, including our training calendar & course catalogue, webinars, in-person events, and our annual conference.