Heron Foundation

About the fund

The SOAR Fund was launched in 2021 to address the post-covid capital needs of historically underbanked communities across the South and Southeast. Small businesses in the South, particularly those in rural places and run by women and black business owners, were particularly hard hit by the economic downturn and in need of flexible capital for recovery. Managed by LISC with capital raising support provided by Calvert Impact Capital, the SOAR fund works through 13 participating CDFIs (community development finance institutions) to provide affordable capital and free business support to small businesses and nonprofits. The fund leverages an online origination model, Connect2Capital, to reach business owners that have historically had a difficult time engaging with banking institutions. In addition, the fund is unique in directly purchasing loans, a model that frees up CDFI balance sheets for additional lending. Active in 14 southern states, the fund has now raised over $62.5M, including a $2M commitment from Ceniarth. The fund has demonstrated early success deploying ~80% of all initial loans to women or minority business owners with a strong emphasis on enterprises with less than 10 employees and under $500K in annual revenue.