Advancing Economic Security & Community Prosperity

Final clips are still being uploaded, but individual recordings, the list of sponsors and more information is available at our website. Read more

Dear Friends,   Please watch your mailboxes and inboxes for copies of my first annual report since arriving at Woodstock Institute in August 2020.   I wish you a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving. I wanted to let you know we will also be reaching out on Giving Tuesday, November 30, to ask you to invest in our work. I know you have many worthy causes to choose from and we would be honored if you will consider our request this year.   Thank you for your continued interest in and support of our work and for all you do to advance economic security and community prosperity.   - Horacio Mendez, President and CEO

Oportun Extends Credits and Refunds to Over 3,600 Illinois Borrowers Beginning October 29 of this year, Oportun, one of the nation’s leading installment lenders, began voluntarily giving refunds and credits to Illinois consumers who received loans from Oportun before Illinois’s 36% rate cap became law. The rate cap, implemented by the Predatory Loan Prevention Act (PLPA), took effect on March 23, 2021, but it applies only to loans made on or after that date. Read our release Coming Soon: Fact Book 2019 Data Edition Perhaps not the holiday stocking-stuffer you were dreaming about, but you can start making plans to gift wrap a print edition of our Community Lending Fact Book 2019 Data Edition– reorganized and … for the first time in 36 years … in color! Sorry to those who were hoping for a “Scratch & Sniff” edition. Maybe next year!   The 2019 and upcoming 2020 data editions represent an update from previous years, that reflect improvements to underlying data sources on one hand and our sense of what’s most useful to community leaders, lenders, and government and elected officials based on conversations with users and experience handling community loan data. We look forward to sharing it with you in December!

How about a presumption of ‘Needs to Improve?’   “Prioritizing racial equity is the most important CRA reform the Fed can tackle,” said Woodstock Institute President and CEO Horacio Mendez at the New York City-based Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development annual conference in October.   His modest proposal: enforce the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Fair Housing Act as if you actually want them to work, and flip the ”Presumption of Satisfactory” rule on its head. Horacio’s comments were shared via the National Community Reinvestment Coalition blog.

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Candid.org awards Woodstock Institute Gold Seal of Transparency In November, Candid awarded Woodstock Institute its Gold Seal of Transparency for providing financial data and other pertinent information about our organization so donors can have a fuller understanding of who we are and whom we serve. We’re honored to receive this recognition.

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Woodstock Institute says goodbye to Facebook  Reflecting on recent revelations in the Wall Street Journal’s Facebook Files series and elsewhere, it is clear that our values and those of Facebook are not aligned, so we have decided the platform no longer feels like an appropriate place for us to tell our story.    We hope you’ll continue to keep up with us on social media via Twitter and LinkedIn (plus our YouTube channel), and that you’ll consider whether Facebook is the right platform for you.

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Woodstock in the news Evanston Now: State law causing payday loan stores to close (11/4) Consumer advocates say the short-term lenders preyed on the poor. Such businesses in Evanston were closing even before the state law took effect. Read article

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