The city of Fort Worth announced that finance and community development professional Glenn Forbes has been hired as executive director of CDFI Friendly Fort Worth, launched just over a year ago.
The city said the hiring is another milestone in establishing an independent, community-centered, not-for-profit organization that exists solely to match community development financial institutions, or CDFIs, to financing needs in Fort Worth.
Forbes’s hiring was approved by CDFI Friendly Fort Worth’s community-controlled, eight-member board following a competitive recruitment process, the city said.
Forbes has more than 32 years of comprehensive commercial banking experience—with most of those years spent at JP Morgan Chase— and including government finance, public board governance, branch management, community development and public speaking, the city said. Forbes also has served as the initial CEO for two private/public economic development agencies and has extensive not-for-profit board leadership and committee governance for local and statewide agencies.
Goal: Broadening access to capital
The city said it began exploring CDFI Friendly efforts in 2021 as a strategy to create a long-term, independent way of bringing access to capital to historically underfinanced, underestimated and often undervalued communities and people.
City Council voted to provide $3 million to launch CDFI Friendly Fort Worth in late 2021. In January of 2022 the organizing effort kicked off with a public event, lending efforts began, and by June the founding board of directors was named.
Since January 2022, CDFI Friendly Fort Worth has been able to connect local borrowers to CDFIs that offer the type of financing they need, so far totaling more than $10 million.
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