CHAPTER 6
The Biggest-Impact Financial Sector You’ve Never Heard Of
Community Development Loan Funds Reach Out to Individual Investors
When Kym Ramsey wanted to open a child-care center in 1999, she knew she was not the ideal bank candidate. Then 33, she had no experience running her own business and no collateral to speak of. What she did have was guts and passion. Ramsey, who got her economics degree at Georgetown University on an ROTC scholarship, had jumped out of airplanes and fired tanks in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. Returning home to the Philadelphia suburbs, she earned a graduate degree in human resources and worked in that field for a couple of large companies, teaching business as an adjunct professor on the side. With her daughter in day care, Ramsey began to think about starting her own day-care center, combining a love of learning and her business background.
After studying the field, she decided that her best bet was to open a franchise of a national day-care school, like the one that her daughter was enrolled in. To do so, however, would cost $600,000, with 20 percent down. Then there was rent to pay, supplies to buy, and teachers to hire. “I have no rich family or uncle or anything like that,” said Ramsey. She made the rounds of banks but was rejected again and again. She had just won $25,000 in a business plan competition when someone told her about The Reinvestment Fund (TRF), a lender based in Philadelphia. “I told them if they would take a risk on ...
