NEW ORLEANS – Hope Enterprise Corp. and its Hope FCU will be disbursing $20 million in loan capital to needy small businesses in the Gulf as part of Goldman Sachs & Co.’s 10,000 Small Businesses program.
The low-interest loan will be disbursed by the community development corporation, providing new opportunities for member relationships and loan participations for its credit union affiliate, according to Bull Bynum, president of the development corp. and the credit union. “We’re pretty excited about it,” Bynum told the Credit Union Journal yesterday.
New Orleans and the hard-hit Gulf is the third stop for the Goldman program, with which the Wall Street bank hopes to lend out as much as $500 million to small businesses in economically depressed markets. Earlier Goldman launched local initiatives in its Manhattan home and in Los Angeles.
The Gulf program will focus initially on New Orleans and the surrounding communities, then expand elsewhere in the Gulf, including Mississippi, according to Bynum. “These areas are still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, the recession and the BP oil spill,” he noted.
While the funds will be disbursed by the development corp., the credit union will have opportunities to market its services to participating businesses and to participate in loans, he noted.
“I think credit unions certainly have the ability to help deliver this program in many markets,” said Bynum, of the potential for other credit union participants.
