Celebrating Our Year of Impact A Letter from Ellis Carr

By: Ellis Carr, President and CEO

As illustrated in our Annual Report, 2023 was an exciting year for us at Momentus Capital. 

First and foremost, we celebrated the second anniversary of bringing together Capital Impact Partners, CDC Small Business Finance, and Ventures Lending Technologies to create the Momentus Capital branded family of organizations. We also celebrated the expansion of our continuum of capital offerings with the launch of Momentus Securities, our mission-driven broker-dealer. You will find more on that below.

After considerable time thoughtfully uniting our organizations, this year we began to see the true power of what #onemomentus actually means for creating impact and opportunity.

We came together because we knew we could do more to support entrepreneurs and community development leaders. There is no doubt the events of 2023 served as a good reminder of why we took on this ambitious effort in the first place. 

Rising interest rates, inflationary pressures, and economic volatility required many to rethink their business and investment plans. Since the pandemic, the economy has been tough for everyone to navigate, but even more so for the small businesses and community-focused organizations we support. Simultaneously, we saw decisions handed down by our courts that upended race-conscious college admissions, various programs supporting diverse individuals or businesses, rolled back LGBTQ+ protection from discrimination, and kept racially-based voting rights restrictions in place.

Taken together, these challenges disproportionately impact underestimated communities – adding to the historical challenges that have compounded for generations. They also represented continued challenges to the principles of equity and inclusion that are foundational to our mission and values.

With the support of our partners, we remained steadfast in helping our borrowers and communities meet these challenges. This included expanding our continuum of financial, knowledge, and social capital solutions by launching a variety of initiatives and programs that help communities and businesses thrive:

• We publicly launched Momentus Securities – a registered broker-dealer and FINRA member – to develop “social impact” as an investable asset class for mainstream institutional investors and connect these investors to mission-based organizations working to drive more capital into underserved and underbanked communities.
• We partnered with both New York Life and City First to increase our 504 First Mortgage Commercial Real Estate lending through Momentus Direct Capital. These new partnerships show the diversity of organizations out there who are ready to support our mission.
• Already the leader in the CDC space, Ventures Lending Technologies is now serving the CDFI sector through its offerings of end-to-end loan management solutions.
• We enhanced our programs supporting real estate developers with the launch of Momentus Academy, an online Learning Management System built to deliver training and share knowledge in a way that met the needs of developers and their busy schedules. This platform saw more than 450 enrollees and continues to grow.

While that number is impressive, our focus remains on ensuring that we are living our core values by being collaborative and intentionally inclusive in who these investments support. I’m proud to report that over 50% of our capital and investments have gone to BIPOC-led projects and businesses, as we work to close the racial wealth gap through income, ownership, and wealth creation. And in doing so, we have helped our borrowers and partners to create or retain over 5,000 jobs.

We paired that capital with over 13,000 hours of free business advising services, while also training over 100 emerging community-based real estate developers of color.  Even more exciting, we provided over $14 million in loans to our business advising clients, while we supported the alumni and current participants of our real estate training programs with $57 million in loans and over $8 million in grants. This is a real demonstration of our continuum of capital in practice.

Our annual report provides other exciting examples of how we have applied our work to support traditionally overlooked members of our communities.

I am also humbled by the recognition we received as we remain dedicated to building an organizational culture that motivates and engages our team. This year, both CDC and Capital Impact were named to the NonProfit Times Best Places to Work list recognizing best-in-class organizations making an impact across the country. In addition, a number of our staff were individually recognized for being local champions in their communities, and I invite you to see that list in the awards section of the annual report.

We also continued to demonstrate that our focus on social impact paired with financial innovation is valued by independent credit agencies. S&P Global raised our institutional credit rating from A+ from its previous A rating, while Fitch ratings affirmed our previous rating of A+. This recognition is a reminder that doing good for communities while doing well financially does not have to be mutually exclusive.

When we celebrate what Momentus Capital is doing, we are also acknowledging and thanking the people who make it possible – that’s all of you. We are all part of a larger movement to ensure that we live in a country where everyone has the health, wealth, and power they need to author their own story. 

On behalf of all of us at Momentus Capital, I am truly grateful for your support and continued partnership.