Giving Credit

We have yet to meet someone who has not participated in community finance. We hear stories every day from people across socio-economic statuses. Yet, limited data exist on the prevalence of peer lending. We challenged the students of Carnegie Mellon University - Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy to help us solve this. They delivered with an interactive tool that maps peer lending behavior across the United States. For the first time, we have a visual mapping that predicts the prevalence of: ? Borrowing from friends or family because of an emergency ? Borrowing from friends or family to cover spending that exceeds income ? People who are owed money by others in their social network ? Amount of money people are owed Check it out for yourself and your community: https://lnkd.in/e_Xgi2qS Using machine learning models trained on national survey data - the Survey of Household Economics and Decision making (SHED) and the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) - the tool predicts critical aspects of peer lending at the Public Use Microdata Area (PUMA) level using inputs from the American Community Survey (ACS). Thank you to Nate Brooks, Baixuan Du, Yu Gu, Henri Neblina, Enzo Rodriguez, and their faculty advisor Andrew Garin. And, thank you to our non-profit partner, Community Finance, for leading the field with research.

As we launch into 2025 and officially spin out Giving Credit as a public benefit corporation, we are pleased to share that the non-profit entity has a fresh name: Community Finance. Community Finance will have a refined focus on building the field of community finance through capitalization, recognition, research, and incubation. Community Finance will partner with Giving Credit and other values-aligned organizations to create a financial system for everyone. For Giving Credit, this dual corporate structure will allow us to stay focused on building the credit reporting agency for community finance while continuing to utilize philanthropic money to capitalize social credit networks on the Giving Credit platform. Thank you to Diego May, Sarah Dieleman Perry, Parisa Esmaili, and Emeric Dongmo for joining Ashley Sherwin and David Henderson on Community Finance's Board of Directors. We encourage you to follow Community Finance on LinkedIn and check out https://lnkd.in/gEv9ZWWd

Giving Credit is best summarized as: We are Experian for community finance, not Venmo for peer lending. We are focused on collecting and aggregating community finance data in financially excluded communities to expand access to wealth-building mainstream credit products. Giving Credit is the credit reporting agency for community finance, and we are excited to announce a critical product feature that supports this vision. ?? Product Announcement - Community Finance Data Reports ?? ?? Giving Credit users can now access their Community Finance Credit Report, which provides a detailed overview of their lending and borrowing activity on Giving Credit. ??Users can share their reports with values-aligned financial institutions, providing transparency into community finance for the underwriting of mainstream products and services for the first time. ?? Our first credit union partners (to be announced soon) will use this data to serve their members and their communities better. We are expanding our financial institution partners. If you want to explore how community finance can help you better reach low-income communities, reach out today! Ashley Sherwin David Henderson

?? Exciting news from Giving Credit! ?? Read more in our monthly updates (now being released on LinkedIn, as well).

We're excited to announce that David Henderson, founder of Giving Credit, has joined the Roddenberry Fellowship. Giving Credit's mobile app is revolutionizing community finance by allowing individuals to lend and borrow with friends and family. By aggregating community data, they're unlocking access to credit for over 108 million underserved individuals in the US. ?#RoddenberryFellowship #FinancialInclusion #EmpoweringCommunities #UnlockingCredit #MobileFinanceSolution

??NEW VIDEO ALERT: Excited to share David Henderson's Press Play: Radical Tracks video featuring Giving Credit and our work in building the community finance credit reporting agency. This project was created as part of David's Camelback Ventures Fellowship experience. Watch now: #PressPlay2024 #CamelbackFellowship #CamelbackFam

Giving Credit is honored to be one of 17 startups to join the MassChallenge 2024 Social Impact Ventures Cohort!

Congratulations to Giving Credit's founder, David Henderson, on being named a 2025 Roddenberry Fellow alongside nine other social entrepreneurs! The Roddenberry Foundation

The National Strategy for Financial Inclusion, released last month, called for "increasing access to safe and affordable credit," specifically through "consumer-permissioned alternative data to underwrite more consumers for affordable credit." Giving Credit is doing exactly this with peer lending data and partnerships with financial institutions. To learn more, join David Henderson for the upcoming The Aspen Institute Financial Security Program webinar on December 10th, where he will discuss the role of community finance data in mainstream underwriting. Kate Griffin Erin Bor? (Thiemann) Evelyn Stark Ida Rademacher John Fenstermaker Kimberly Gartner Michelle (Boros) Young https://lnkd.in/eVv4mzEE

"My vision is one where everyone has access to the resources they need to do the things they want. This is what sociologist Fred Wherry calls "Financial Justice". Specifically, I hope to be part of shifting commercialized finance to recognize and develop intersectional products that meet people where they are, putting "community finance" on the same level as 'mainstream finance'." ??Meet 2024 #CamelbackFellow David Henderson, Founder of Giving Credit, who is tapping into technology to amplify community finance by mapping, supporting, and capitalizing social credit networks in communities. ??Learn more about David's founder journey: https://lnkd.in/gzp8QidU . . . . . #entrepreneur #entrepreneurs #entrepreneurship #socialgood #socialimpact #socialentrepreneur #socialentrepreneurship #inspiration #tech #techforgood #conscioustech #finance #credit #camelbackfellowship #camelbackfam #camelbackfellow2024 #socialimpactinvestment #investment #venturecapital