New Jersey Community Capital, a registered trade name utilized by Community Loan Fund of New Jersey, Inc., is a financial intermediary aligning investment and intellectual capital in New Jersey’s emerging markets. Founded in 1987, New Jersey Community Capital, through its various affiliates, provides financial and technical assistance in the form of loans, grants and equity to organizations either lacking access to or unable to afford the cost of capital from conventional sources. The organization’s objective is to build the economic self-sufficiency of low-income individuals and communities through a variety of financial and technical assistance programs and services.

New Jersey Community Capital serves as the lead agency in the design and coordination of a collaboration providing training and technical assistance to child care organizations through a program called Building Stronger Centers. This initiative is designed to produce measurable results in enhancing access and availability of high quality, affordable child care to low and moderate income families within a context of community-based development and to provide financing and related technical assistance to child care organizations. Building Stronger Centers has worked as partners with child care agencies to strengthen the child care centers as businesses offering quality service and to improve the quality of their programs and expand operations to accommodate additional low and moderate income children. Building Stronger Centers is an innovative and collaborative program that effectively responds to the special needs of community-based agencies who are providing child care services and addressing child care needs in their communities. Since its first offering in 1997, the initiative has assisted 108 centers serving over 7,700 children to expand and improve quality of service.

Based on the outstanding reputation developed with Building Stronger Centers, the organization was sought to develop the Newark Lighthouse Initiative, a multi-year, collaborative technical assistance program that works with three early care and education centers within the city of Newark to create early learning centers of excellence as models for other centers in Newark and throughout New Jersey.

In light of its strong financial and technical assistance programs, New Jersey Community Capital was awarded the 2003 CDFI Excellence Award for Community Impact by its national trade association for its exceptional efforts in serving its communities. Special mention was made of the organization’s results in the early care and education field, including both the provision of financial products and services and the development of meaningful consulting and training programs designed to improve the level of quality provided by early care centers.