Colorado Enterprise Fund (CEF) is a nonprofit community development financial institution serving small businesses along the Front Range in Colorado. Founded in 1976, CEF specializes in micro enterprise development, loaning more than $5 million to over 400 small businesses since 1990. Our goal is to foster access to economic opportunity through small business ownership and create jobs by providing loans and technical assistance to help people succeed in small business. We make loans up to $50,000 and provide pre-and post-loan assistance to help businesses generate sufficient cash flow to repay our loan and to help them grow their businesses within our target communities. As a subset of the general range of business sectors, CEF provides tailored credit and assistance to childcare businesses (both centers and home-based) as a specialty sector. Since 1998, CEF has assisted childcare facilities through a specialized childcare program offering loans and technical assistance. To date, this program has lent over $500,000 and has created or enhanced over 550 spaces for children in both home based and center based child care.