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Revolving loan fund stakeholder roundtable heldUSDA Rural Development and partners held a revolving loan fund stakeholder roundtable on Jan. 17 in Lincoln and via videoconferencing in Kearney, Chadron, Norfolk and Scottsbluff. Thirty-six stakeholders attended, learning about the various revolving loan fund programs that USDA Rural Development offers. Partners who contributed to the roundtable included Executive Director Jen Wolf of Dawson Area Development, Business Loan Officer Craig Eberle of Southeast Nebraska Development District and Business Loan Specialists Jeff Christensen and Holly Quinn of Northeast Nebraska Economic Development District. A Revolving Loan Fund is a source of money from which loans are made for multiple small business development projects. The fund gets its name from the revolving aspect of loan repayment, where the central fund is replenished as individual projects pay back their loans, creating the opportunity to issue other loans to new projects. RLF lending aims to help new projects or business owners to become financially independent and eventually to become eligible for loans from commercial banks. RLFs are also excellent sources of gap financing; between the borrower's equity injection and the funds available from other traditional lending sources. USDA Rural Development offers five revolving loan programs. The Rural Business Enterprise Grant, Intermediary Relending Program, Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program have active revolving loan funds in all 93 Nebraska counties. Rural Development also offers the Rural Economic Development Loan and Rural Economic Development Grant programs. Nebraska Rural Development has 28 intermediaries with more than 300 ultimate recipients, which have created/saved nearly 1,700 jobs. There are 16 REDGs that have 27 ultimate recipients creating/saving 794 jobs and 17 REDLs creating/saving 388 rural jobs. For additional information, please visit Rural Development's new interactive web map. The data can be found at http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/RDSuccessStories.html. Date: 2/4/2013
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