🎯 BetterFi’s Highest Impact Month Yet!
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BetterFi Summer 2025 Field Report – What’s new and what’s next?
BetterFi is a 501(c)3 economic justice enterprise and CDFI dedicated to transforming consumer credit in Tennessee to be more fair, more accessible, and a pathway out of predatory lending. More at www.betterfi.co.
Hello!
I hope that the start of your year has been as good as ours. Our Chattanooga branch is open as of April 15th, and Maggie, Ashley, and I are already seeing applications and activity ramp up.
We are also taking the first steps toward improving the efficacy of our complementary financial programming. Read more below.
📈 High Impact May
Last month was our highest impact month yet. In May we extended more than $41,000 in credit to 12 people, saving those clients nearly $100,000 compared to what they would have paid predatory lenders. Our 6-month disbursal average has risen from around $3,350 at the end of June 2021 to over $20,500.
We have now disbursed nearly $785,000, saving our clients an estimated $1.9 million compared to what they would have otherwise paid predatory lenders.
🛟 Savings + Credit Building
As we work to increase the impact of our credit programs, we are also looking for ways to provide personal finance programming and information more effectively, realizing that potential clients are looking for shorter and more concise engagement.
With a generous grant from the South Cumberland Community Fund, we soon will be piloting a tool that provides a near-instantaneous snapshot of a client's cashflow information. Pulling from online banking or card data, the snapshot will provide insights into a client's income and spending and will drastically improve the potential efficacy of follow-up activities like budgeting.
We also are adding sections to our website that will more comprehensively compare types of predatory credit so that visitors can better understand the true costs of predatory financial products.
🔮 Preparing for the Unexpected
We have now disbursed our first Savings + Credit builder loans, enabling clients to work toward a savings target while benefiting from credit reporting to the three major credit bureaus.
We are seeking partner organizations that want to incorporate a savings component into their programming: we are envisioning cases like saving for deposits, emergencies, gifts, or school supplies.
As always, thank you for your support and partnership – we cannot continue our work without help from people like you.
Spike
Executive Director
BetterFi
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