Last week, Sunrise Banks and Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) from across the U.S. converged in Detroit to celebrate industry leaders and share best practices and new ideas.  Over 1,200 practitioners, funders, investors, and policy makers attended the conference focused on the CDFI industry.

During the conference, three organizations were honored with the Wells Fargo NEXT Opportunity Award.  The Wells Fargo NEXT Awards is the nation’s largest awards program for CDFIs, and the awards in 2015 were focused on enabling CDFIs to expand leading-edge consumer finance strategies.

Sunrise Banks was honored to be one of the three NEXT Award recipients and received $2.2 million to expand TrueConnect, a small-dollar, affordable employer-based loan. In partnership with its technology partner Employee Loan Solutions, Sunrise has successfully piloted TrueConnect with three employers and is expanding the product nationally, starting with new employer partnerships in Ohio, California, and Minnesota.

It was a great honor to attend the awards ceremony and celebrate the success of Sunrise.  On top of that, it was exciting and inspiring to hear about what other industry leaders are doing to better their communities.  The other two winners, Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union (New York) and Freedom First Federal Credit Union (Virginia) had equally inspiring stories.

Learn more about Sunrise Banks’ award and the other winners here: http://nextawards.org/videos Off Site Link