NEW YORK, NY / AGILITYPR.NEWS / April 10, 2026 / Only three organizations nationwide invited to present innovative ideas on how to capitalize the CDFI field

NEW YORK — April 10, 2026 — Ascendus, a nonprofit community development financial institution (CDFI) that has supported small business owners for more than 30 years, today announced it has been selected as one of only three CDFIs nationwide invited to pitch innovative capitalization solutions in Austin. The selection follows Ascendus’s Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) Excellence Award for its work in the six-month Capital Solutions Accelerator.

More than 50 CDFIs across the United States applied to OFN’s Capital Solutions Accelerator. Seven were selected to participate in the six-month program. Of those seven, three — including Ascendus, Northern Initiatives and Next Street— will travel to Austin to present ideas on how to capitalize the CDFI field more effectively.

At the center of Ascendus’s work is the Ascendus Borrower Index (ABI), a proprietary framework improved during the accelerator. The ABI assesses small business clients’ readiness to graduate to traditional bank financing, mapping each client against the specific requirements of bank partners and mainstream financial institutions. The tool turns years of informal graduation work into a measurable and repeatable pathway.

The framework is grounded in real client outcomes. One Ascendus client, a Venezuelan entrepreneur who started her business in 2017 without a credit history or FICO score, received her first Ascendus loan in 2019 and a second loan during the pandemic. By 2023, she had graduated to a $220,000 bank working capital line and two SBA 504 loans, allowing her to own — rather than rent — her two business properties. During the accelerator, Ascendus validated the ABI against clients like her and found that up to 80 percent of its current portfolio could benefit from a similar pathway.

“Graduation cannot be accidental or incidental. It has to be intentional from the very beginning,” said Paul Quintero, CEO of Ascendus. “When we treat capital as circulation rather than deployment, we compound both the mission impact and the financial strength of our institution. Being invited to Austin alongside other peers is a clear signal from the field that this approach matters, and we are ready to make the case for it.”

“This recognition reflects the focus and passion our team brings to clients’ graduation and ascension every day,” said Andrea Ierace, Senior Vice President of Lending at Ascendus. “The ABI is a framework for work we have been doing alongside our clients for years. Making it measurable and repeatable is what allows us to serve more entrepreneurs with the same capital base.”

Over the next 12 months, Ascendus will pilot the ABI with three small business clients and one to three bank partners. The framework is designed to be measurable, but never mechanical: every graduation in Ascendus’s portfolio begins with a relationship — a lending manager who knows the client by name, understands their business, and walks alongside them for years before the handoff to a bank partner. In Austin, Ascendus will make the case that this relational, human-touch model is the very reason the pathway works — and that when CDFI capital circulates through trusted human relationships, the same dollar can lift more entrepreneurs, more times.