What is the ATNI-EDC Revolving Loan Fund?

The ATNI Revolving Loan Fund is a private, non-profit, Indian controlled community development fund that provides loans and technical support to Tribal and Native American owned for-profit enterprises for the purpose of expansion, re-location, or start-up.

Our Mission is to assist Native American owned businesses to be successful, thereby strengthening the economies of Indian communities.  We do this by:

• Providing technical assistance to Native American entrepreneurs in creating and operating successful businesses
• Providing debt capital (loans and subordinated loans) to Indian businesses.
• Providing bridge financing between Indian businesses and commercial financial institutions.
• Partnering with banks and other financial institutions in providing loans to Tribal Enterprises.
• Providing the educational assistance and technical support to promote financial capacity building within the Tribes.

The policy of the RLF program is to complement, rather than replace financing from commercial lenders and other private and public financing programs. Our strategy is to create a “bridge” between Native businesses who need financing and financial institutions that want to make loans but for which Trust land, Sovereignty and the Tribal court system present an obstacle. Our goal is to assist Tribes to start and/or grow successful businesses in an effort to bring much-needed jobs and economic prosperity to distressed Indian communities.

ATNI research in the early 1990s, funded in part by the Northwest Area Foundation (NWF), identified the lack of access to credit and capital as a significant impediment to economic development in Indian Country. Based on this assessment, ATNI and its member Tribes created the ATNI Economic Development Corporation (EDC), in part, to address this lack of business investment into Indian Country.