Coastal Enterprises - Child Care Loans

CEI targets home and center-based businesses that strive to provide the highest quality care to young people. We encourage child care providers to follow Maine Roads to Quality training, and to pursue National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) accreditation. We finance businesses that serve low-income families, families with children that have special needs, and immigrant and refugee families. In each of our financing agreements, 20% or more of available slots are dedicated to these families.

For a loan application, click on Apply for a Loan on the left and then download the child care loan application.

If the complete application meets CEI preliminary credit criteria, the CEI loan officer will share your application and all submitted information, except personal financial information, with a child care consultant who has been contracted by CEI to review all child care applications. Some of the areas that this specialist will look at include:

compliance with state regulations
review of all written materials provided with the application, including the parent handbook
review of the market needs that the applicant is planning to address
pricing
overall viability of the plan presented by the applicant.

In most cases, the child care consultant and the loan officer will personally visit the business. The decision process can approximately 2-4 weeks, depending on the complexity of the transaction.

CEI IN THE NEWS!

U.S. Finance Expert Encourages Banking Investment in Maine Communities
At CEI's 32nd Annual Meeting, Ellen Seidman, Exec. VP of ShoreBank in Chicago, and Sr. Research Fellow with the New America Foundation in Washington, DC, urged Maine bankers and community activists to consider “greater community investment…meeting the actual needs of the community, not just counting dollars invested.” See full speech.

See annual meeting remarks by Ron Phillips, CEO, on triple bottom line investing and the next 5 years for CEI…

See the 12/14/09 article on CEI and the state of investing in communities. It’s where mission happens…

CEI Receives $125 Million in NMTC Through its subsidiary, CEI Capital Management LLC, CEI will use the allocation to attract private capital investments for primarily rural economic development projects. See press release here.

CEI Receives Investment Funds
In partnership with Manufacturers Association of Maine, CEI will receive $765,000 over from the Federal Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Community Services (OCS), to finance several job-generating small-to-medium enterprises. This funding will create 78 full-time, year-round jobs. Read press release here.

Bangor Savings Bank and CEI offer low-interest loans to small and medium-sized enterprises in disadvantaged areas in Maine. Read more here.

Kids R Special Child Care Center - The business of child care

For Peggy Soucy, owner of Kids R Special Child Care Center, her business is a "work of love." The center has grown from serving a handful of children in 1992 to 37 children today, half of whom come from families with low incomes. Like other businesses, running a child care center in rural Maine requires planning, capital, and a strong sense of market trends in order to thrive. When Peggy needed a loan to build a new structure on her property for school aged kids, she turned to CEI. The loan officer saw Peggy's solid track of growth and was impressed with the high quality of care she provided. CEI loaned Peggy $40,000 to construct the new building. This fall the building was finished and is fully equipped with computers, puzzles, games, arts and crafts, an air hockey table and more.

Peggy is looking at other ways of improving her business. With the help of CEI's Women's Business Center, she is developing a web page to advertise to prospective families and communicate with parents. Peggy recognizes that more families are connected to the internet and wants to take advantage of technology.