Causa Local

#DisruptAccessToCapital

aka Causa Local   |   San Juan, PR   |  https://www.causalocal.org/

Mission

Causa Local aims to lead an inclusive financial system that provides greater access to low-income communities and individuals by facilitating access to capital, financial capability, and business development to committed and responsible small businesses in Puerto Rico, supporting their financial health, growth, and resiliency. We perform a qualitative and quantitative evaluation to comply with our racial equality program values, goals, and deliverables, creating a robust pipeline.

Notes from the nonprofit

Our organization is devoted to helping Puerto Rican-owned small businesses (LMI) access the capital they need to thrive and improve their financial health. But, in the case of our organization, we take it a step further by working with small business owners of color that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. Our Founder, Ana María Cintrón, founded Causa Local in 2018 and she came up with a local + structure + data driven + creative hand-holding small business model to help local low and medium income individuals/small business owners, to cover the local need in the island for financial health and lack of access to capital. Therefore, the Causa Local model drives impact to local small business owners through data driven decisions.  Phase 1:We receive hundreds of calls and emails on an annual basis and we support the small business owners that need help because they come from underserved communities and facilitate them our model so they can grow, and create jobs.

Ruling year info

2023

Founder & Executive Director

Ana María Cintrón

Main address

151 San Francisco Street Suite 200

San Juan, PR 00901 USA

Show more contact info

EIN

66-0905170

NTEE code info

Management Services for Small Business/Entrepreneurs (S43)

IRS filing requirement

This organization is required to file an IRS Form 990 or 990-EZ.

Communication

Blog

Programs and results

What we aim to solve

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

Our organization is devoted to helping Puerto Rican-owned small businesses (LMI) access the capital they need to thrive and improve their financial health. But, in the case of our organization, we take it a step further by working with small business owners of color that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. Facilitating access to capital, financial health, and opportunity.

Our programs

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?

Puerto Rico KIVA

Through our KIVA program, we help small entrepreneurs in Puerto Rico use KIVA, the most successful crowdlending platform in the world, to tap into non-traditional capital to grow their businesses. Entrepreneurs in Puerto Rico face numerous barriers to using KIVA. Some do not have a reliable internet access. Others do not know how to read. Our Puerto Rico KIVA program makes sure these barriers do not limit entrepreneurs' potential business growth by offering education and advisory services that allow them to use KIVA.

Population(s) Served

We are a data driven decision organization, and we collect all of our data and analyze it, in order to maximize resources and time, enabling our model to be as effective as possible to generate maximum impact.
Therefore, small business technical assistance is a primary and long-standing activity of our organization.
1. Small businesses contact us and/or we connect with them through our life/physical events. They complete a series of questions (intake form), hence, we understand their needs, opportunities, strengths, and weaknesses; then we asses, plan, and tailor our individual and punctual technical assistance to each small business owner to begin together a direct service results path.
2. Their financial capability is improved and empowered, and then they are ready to apply for a Kiva loan, up to $15,000 at 0% interest; we handhold them through this process of access to capital until they receive their loan and additional resources.
Then, we continue to support them through their repayment loan lifecycle, the reason we count with 97% repayment rate. During these 2 initial phases we measure our impact by their increase in financial health through a positive increase and maintenance in financial behaviour, access to capital and assets received, jobs created, increase in revenue generation, improvement in business model, expense reduction or increase in ROI, increase in online presence and new clientes/markets, implementation of resilient strategies in their business models to increase their business continuity plans, these are just some of our KPIs we measure to track our impact. We have deployed over 2 million in Kiva loans and other financial assets, impacted (ex: showed them how to fish and give them fish to grow), over 200 small business owners by helping them implement resilient strategies, increase minimum their revenue by 21.765%, create and sustain over 200 jobs, help them open a bank account, create credit, and a business continuity plan.
3. During phase 3 our small business owners have repaid their Kiva loan, therefore have created credit, and we support them in accessing additional access to capital, and growing their business by increasing their online presence and exporting, improving their business model, and exporting. Because we integrate qualitative and quantitative analysis during phase 1 we grow a responsible and committed pipeline that really wants to grow with us, which lowers our risk of repayment and other risks.

Population(s) Served
Seniors
Young adults
Ethnic and racial groups
Sexual identity
Religious groups

Where we work

Awards

Rubinger Fellowship 2021 Award 2020

LISC

Affiliations & memberships

Fundación Banco Popular 2020

ConPRmetidos 2021

Seriouscly Creative 2021

Our Sustainable Development Goals

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.

Goals & Strategy

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.

Charting impact

Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.

In the next years we aim to deploy over $50 million in non traditional access to capital to low-moderate income individuals and communities and increase their financial capability.

Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity.

The team, and passion this is done with.

We have been able to deploy over $2 million and support over 250 small business owners in PR, and increase by 100% the financial capability of every individual and small business owner that contacts us.

How we listen

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.

done We demonstrated a willingness to learn more by reviewing resources about feedback practice.
done We shared information about our current feedback practices.

  • How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?

    To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve

  • Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?

    We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We take steps to get feedback from marginalized or under-represented people, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We look for patterns in feedback based on demographics (e.g., race, age, gender, etc.), We look for patterns in feedback based on people’s interactions with us (e.g., site, frequency of service, etc.), We engage the people who provide feedback in looking for ways we can improve in response, We act on the feedback we receive, We tell the people who gave us feedback how we acted on their feedback, We ask the people who gave us feedback how well they think we responded

  • What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?

    It is difficult to get the people we serve to respond to requests for feedback, It is difficult to find the ongoing funding to support feedback collection

Financials

Causa Local

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Operations

The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.

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Connect with nonprofit leaders

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Build relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.

  • Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
  • Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
  • Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations

Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.

Causa Local

Board of directors
as of 02/22/2022
SOURCE: Self-reported by organization
Board chair

Rafael Flores

BioPharma COOP

Term: 2025 - 2018

Pedro Ortiz

POA Law

David de Sevilla

Centro para Emprendedores

Board leadership practices

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.

  • Board orientation and education
    Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes
  • CEO oversight
    Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes
  • Ethics and transparency
    Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes
  • Board composition
    Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes
  • Board performance
    Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Yes

Organizational demographics

SOURCE: Self-reported; last updated 4/23/2021
info Candid has made improvements to the race and ethnicity options.

Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.

Leadership

The organization's leader identifies as:

Race & ethnicity
Hispanic/Latino/Latina/Latinx
Gender identity
Female, Not transgender (cisgender)
Sexual orientation
Heterosexual or straight
Disability status
Person without a disability

Race & ethnicity

Gender identity

 

Sexual orientation

Disability

We do not display disability information for organizations with fewer than 15 staff.

Equity strategies

Last updated: 04/23/2021

GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more

Data
  • We ask team members to identify racial disparities in their programs and / or portfolios.
  • We analyze disaggregated data and root causes of race disparities that impact the organization's programs, portfolios, and the populations served.
  • We disaggregate data to adjust programming goals to keep pace with changing needs of the communities we support.
  • We employ non-traditional ways of gathering feedback on programs and trainings, which may include interviews, roundtables, and external reviews with/by community stakeholders.
  • We disaggregate data by demographics, including race, in every policy and program measured.
Policies and processes
  • We use a vetting process to identify vendors and partners that share our commitment to race equity.
  • We have a promotion process that anticipates and mitigates implicit and explicit biases about people of color serving in leadership positions.
  • We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
  • We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board.
  • We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.
  • We measure and then disaggregate job satisfaction and retention data by race, function, level, and/or team.
  • We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.