Consulting
CDS offers a variety of consulting services to community development corporations, community development financial institutions, foundations, corporations and banks. CDS conducts market assessment and feasibility studies and assists with organizational business planning. We bring significant practical knowledge of development finance, community development venture capital, sector research and development, and workforce development. 

• Creating and Growing your CDFI:  CDS offers consulting to new and emerging CDCs and CDFIs on organizational development, fund-raising and capital formation, new products and services, and market assessments.
• Revolving Loan Funds: From capitalization to underwriting, CDS works with CDCs and CDFIs to create sustainable business lending programs.  We can help access capital, create partnerships with banks, improve portfolio management systems, and develop flexible and prudent underwriting standards.
• Sector Development and Regional Intervention: With a particular emphasis on rural communities, CEI has been a pioneer in the areas of sector development and regional intervention programs and can aid in identifying opportunities and creating programs to meet the needs of your markets.  Fisheries, farms and child care are some of our specialty areas of expertise.
• Measuring Social Impact: With funders and investors increasingly focused on performance measurement, CDCs and CDFIs are looking for ways to effectively track and capture their impact.  CDS can help you negotiate the issues from a practitioner's point of view.  Having developed a leading edge social information system (SIS), CDS will work with your organization to design its own measurement system.

Community Economic Development Training Programs

 CDS offers two-day training programs at our offices in Maine.  These multifaceted small group sessions typically blend classroom time with case studies and site visits to CEI portfolio companies and community partners. Our goals are to expose participants to CEI's CED model and other "good practices" in the field, as well as to provide participants with new tools and strategies for work in their own communities.  We strive to provide a full service, high quality experience.  As part of the training package, travel and lodging arrangements within Maine are arranged by CDS.  Meals during the program are also included. 

Revolving Loan Funds: Whether you are starting or expanding a loan fund, CDS can tailor a training program that covers any or all of these topics: 

• loan underwriting
• portfolio management
• loan systems - tracking, collections, and documentation
• review of funding sources

This program is especially useful for microenterprise lenders seeking to make larger loans.

Linking Workforce Development to Revolving Loan Funds: Enhance your loan program and mission by linking workforce development to your revolving loan funds.  Topics include: 

• Assessing prospective borrowers from an employment perspective.
• Facilitating agreements among partners (business, service providers, employees).
• The Employment Training Agreement - ETAG: A tool for meeting your mission
• Servicing the portfolio.

Strategies for Rural Small Businesses and the Internet: Three to four-day seminars that take place in your community to identify and capture the e-commerce/Internet potential for your small business customers.  Designed with you to meet the needs of your community, the program components include:

• An overview of the opportunities and challenges of doing business on-line.
• Real-life examples of successful rural merchants using the web.
• A computer lab workshop for reviewing model web sites and for building a simple web site.
• Discussion includes ways to market and promote a web site and sessions for select businesses or groups of similar businesses to evaluate strategies for using the Internet

Sectoral Approaches to Community Development:  Identifying and targeting underserved sectors enables community development organizations (especially in rural communities), to effectively serve a diverse region.  Natural resources, child care, and environmental enterprises are our focus areas.  Two days of training will cover market scans and needs assessments, project development, and implementation. 

Microenterprise Development for Refugees and Immigrants: CEI has created an innovative program to assist refugee and immigrant entrepreneurs to start or expand home-based or small businesses.  The two-day training program will cover topics including promoting economic self-sufficiency, accessing capital and loans, and developing technical assistance and training programs specifically designed for populations with cultural and language issues.