About Carolina Community Impact

We were founded by Consumer Education Services, Inc., (CESI) an accredited nonprofit consumer credit counseling agency. For more than two decades, CESI has counseled individuals across the country on how to improve their financial health. Often these individuals are not well served by large for-profit financial institutions.

Carolina Community Impact helps these individuals have better access to financial resources and educational support. In our work, we’ve seen:

• Traditional financial services firms fall far short in serving minorities and women. The financial infrastructure that many of us take for granted just isn’t available to all.
• When it comes to finances, it helps to meet people where they are and in ways that they feel comfortable engaging. Often it means over the phone or digital. One upside is it makes it easier to serve people in more places – cities, rural towns, suburbs.
• The American Dream of upward mobility through activities like investing in or starting a business is often blocked by chronic personal financial challenges, lack of access to funding and limited experience navigating the US financial system.

Since 2018, we’ve established the Community Loan Center of the NC Triangle, a low- interest, low-fee personal loan program for employees of enrolled employers. In 2019, CCI began making business micro loans. When the pandemic hit, CCI was hard at work as an NC Rural Center partner administering NC Rapid Recovery loans.

In addition to capital, CCI offers coaching and mentoring to underserved entrepreneurs. The service provides business and personal credit reviews, business plan critiques and assistance with financial statements

At CCI, we want to be a part of the community that supports under-resourced and underserved small businesses in North Carolina.