In development · Launching with the platform, September 2026
For CDFIs
Good Circles for CDFIs
Good Circles is building two things for Mississippi CDFI small-business lending: a first-loss capital pool seeded automatically from the platform's bridge-commission revenue, and live, consented merchant performance data in the communities where you lend. Both are in development and launch with the marketplace — this page explains the design honestly, and how to shape it as a founding partner.
The problem, from the loan officer's chair
CDFI small-business lending in Mississippi runs on stale information: self-reported financials, cold outreach to find creditworthy borrowers, and manual TLR prep at reporting time. The merchants most worth backing — young, growing, LMI-tract local businesses — are precisely the ones whose paper trail understates them. The cost isn't just effort; it's good loans never made.
Design piece 1 — a commission-seeded first-loss pool
When a Good Circles shopper buys something no local merchant offers, the purchase bridges to an external retailer and the platform earns an affiliate commission. That commission is split by rule: 50% to a shared nonprofit pool (donor-advised fund), 5% to a small-business lending safety pool, and 45% to platform operations. The 5% is the first-loss seed: a recurring, activity-driven cushion designed to absorb initial losses ahead of partner capital, so a CDFI can responsibly extend credit to borderline-on-paper local merchants.
We're deliberate about the honest scale here: the pool starts small and grows with platform volume. Its value in year one is structural — a mechanism that deepens automatically — not a headline number, and we'd rather design its governance with partner CDFIs than announce a figure.
Design piece 2 — live merchant data where you lend
Because Good Circles processes local transactions, partner CDFIs can — with merchant consent — see performance as it happens: revenue trend, transaction volume, repeat customers, and QIA/LMI location context. Pipeline changes from cold outreach to warm introduction; underwriting changes from PDFs to living data; and structured merchant snapshots are being designed to map onto TLR-style reporting from day one. The same transaction rails power the municipal spend-retention dashboards.
What a founding CDFI partnership looks like
- Now (design phase): a briefing, then input on data schemas, consent flows, first-loss governance, and TLR mapping.
- At launch (September 2026): visibility into consenting merchants in your footprint as the Jackson metro comes online — with Meridian & Lauderdale County already in early access ahead of it.
- As volume grows: the first-loss pool accrues automatically, and founding partners shape how it deploys.
The model that generates all of this is simple and public: shoppers save about 10%, merchants keep 89% of profit on a 1% fee, and 10% of profit funds shopper-elected nonprofits — see how it works.
Questions
CDFI partnership FAQ
What is first-loss capital in community lending?
First-loss capital is money that absorbs the initial losses in a loan pool before other capital is touched. For a CDFI, a first-loss cushion de-risks lending to borrowers who look thin on paper — like young local businesses — letting the same balance sheet responsibly say yes more often.
How does Good Circles seed a first-loss pool?
From bridge commissions: when a shopper buys an external (non-local) item through the platform, Good Circles earns an affiliate commission and allocates 5% of it to a small-business lending safety pool. It’s a structural, recurring seed that grows with platform activity — designed to sit alongside CDFI capital, not replace it.
What data would a CDFI partner see?
The platform is designed to give partner CDFIs consented, live visibility into merchant performance in their footprint — revenue trend, transaction volume, and location context in Qualified Investment Areas — replacing stale self-reported PDFs in the pipeline stage. Structured merchant snapshots are being designed to map to TLR-style reporting.
Is this live today?
No — and we won’t pretend otherwise. The lending-data platform and first-loss pool are in development and launch with the marketplace (September 2026, Jackson metro first). Now is the design phase, which is exactly when a partner CDFI’s input matters most.
Which CDFIs is this for?
Treasury-certified CDFIs lending to small businesses in Mississippi — banks, credit unions, and loan funds with LMI-area mandates. If your pipeline depends on finding creditworthy local merchants before they walk in the door, this is being built for you.
Help design it before it launches
Founding partnership briefings for Treasury-certified CDFIs serving Mississippi.