CDFI Survey Results Over Time

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Introduction

This spring, the Richmond Fed led efforts to collect data on community development financial institutions (CDFIs) through the 2025 Federal Reserve CDFI Survey. In general, this year's survey respondents reported relatively strong demand for CDFIs' products, noted the importance of federal funding for their organizations, cited staffing and technological challenges, and expressed hopes to expand in the future.

Since 2019, the Federal Reserve CDFI Survey has been conducted every two years (with the exception of a special COVID-19 CDFI Survey in 2020). Understanding the current industry landscape can provide awareness on how CDFIs expand access to credit, and looking at past results can shed light on how the CDFI industry has shifted over time.

The following patterns emerged:

• Credit unions have represented an increasing number of respondents over the past three surveys. The share of CDFIs that primarily provide commercial real estate and housing finance has declined.
• While the majority of CDFI respondents still report increasing demand for their products, this share decreased slightly between 2023 and 2025.
• As capital sources have fluctuated over time, the top two sources for survey respondents remained the same: income earned from fees and interest, and federal funding.

The share of credit union respondents has increased over time, while the share of respondent CDFIs focused on real estate has declined.

The breakdown of CDFI Survey respondents has changed throughout survey years, consistent with shifts in the overall industry. Although loan funds tend to represent around half of all respondents, the number of responses from credit unions has increased as more have entered the community development finance space. The share of bank respondents has remained relatively steady, but the share of respondents who identify as holding companies, venture capital funds, or other organizations has steadily declined since 2021.

To coincide with the shift in types of institutions represented, how financing activities were represented changed as well. In general, CDFIs primarily deal in small business finance, consumer finance, residential and commercial real estate, and residential mortgages. Given that CDFI credit unions primarily offer consumer finance products, it makes sense that the representation of this primary business line in the sample has grown the most.

However, changes in composition of CDFI types do not necessarily explain other shifts in primary business lines. Though the share of CDFIs that primarily offer small business lending has remained steady - generally between 25 to 30 percent - the share of CDFIs that focus on residential and commercial real estate finance has slowly declined over time.

Over time, the share of CDFIs reporting increased demand has remained higher than those reporting decreased or unchanged demand; however, this shifted slightly in 2025.

Questions regarding demand for CDFI products and services were core components of the 2019, 2023, and 2025 surveys. Though most CDFIs report that demand increased in the prior year, this share was slightly smaller in 2025 (71 percent) than in 2023 (75 percent). The share of CDFIs that reported demand remained the same increased by 5 percentage points from 2023 to 2025.

Over time, decreasing shares of small business-focused CDFIs reported demand increases, falling from 78 percent in 2019 to 69 percent in 2025. The share of CDFIs focused on residential real estate that reported increased demand shrunk from 2019 to 2023 but grew again slightly in 2025. Meanwhile, the share of consumer finance-focused CDFIs reporting increased demand was highest in 2023 (74 percent) but dropped by over 20 percentage points in 2025. The share of CDFIs that reported increased demand for commercial real estate financing stayed the steadiest (about 75 percent).

CDFIs have also been asked about their ability to meet demand. Most indicated they were either fully or mostly able to meet demand in 2023 (82 and 79 percent, respectively), but they were more likely to respond that they had fully met demand in 2023 (46 percent) than in 2025 (33 percent).

CDFIs primarily source capital from earned revenue and federal funding. There has been an uptick in the share that accepts deposits and a downtick in the share that relies on other financial institutions.

In 2025, the CDFI Survey contained a question it hadn't included since 2019: "What are CDFIs' top funding sources?" The top two funding sources in both years were earned income (i.e., fees and interest on loans) and federal government funding. The importance of federal funding was further reinforced in the 2025 CDFI Survey, when organizations were asked which public program enabled them to deliver their most valuable contributions to the financial market: Seventy-four percent of CDFIs responded with programs administered on the federal level.

Next, reliance on deposits has shifted, with an additional 10 percent of respondent CDFIs citing deposits as one of their top three funding sources from 2019 to 2025. The influx of credit union respondents may be responsible for this shift as they are depository institutions, whereas loan funds are not.

The share of CDFIs that reported capital from other financial institutions was a top funding source decreased by 14 percentage points from 2019 to 2025. Banks loan money to CDFIs to help meet the banks' Community Reinvestment Act obligations, but survey results indicate a decreased reliance on these loans.

As CDFIs navigate shifting capital sources, a portion are exploring secondary market sale of loans to increase their access to capital. The share of CDFIs that reported selling loans on the secondary market increased slightly from 21 percent in 2023 to 24 percent in 2025, with 9 in 10 selling a total loan volume less than $50 million.

Conclusion

The results of the last few years of CDFI surveys indicated an increase in the number of CDFI-certified credit unions and relatively sustained demand for CDFI products. CDFIs primarily source capital from revenue and federal programs, but the survey data point to modest shifts in other capital sources, including increased deposits and decreased funding from banks.

As we continue to review the results of the 2025 CDFI Survey, we will publish more Regional Matters posts related to this data, including follow-ups on CDFIs' geographic coverage and policy needs later this fall, as well as a public data release in early 2026.

Views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond or the Federal Reserve System.