CDE Advisory
Winning NMTC allocation is the start of a seven-year obligation, not the finish line.
New Markets Capital Advisors advises Community Development Entities across the full life of an allocation — the application, the deployment, the seven years of compliance, and the exit. The work is done by the practitioner who scoped it: 25 years in the NMTC program, with $432.5 million in federal allocation authored and managed across nine rounds.
01
For CDEs preparing a competitive application — first-time, re-entering, or returning after a loss.
Application strategy. Built around how the CDFI Fund actually scores: business strategy, capitalization, management capacity, community impact, and track record.
Authorship or senior review. Full application authorship, or senior review of a draft your team has produced.
Pipeline development. Named, sized, and staged projects that demonstrate real deployment capacity.
Track record reconstruction. Deployment and outcomes data rebuilt and documented for the current cycle, not carried forward from the last one.
Capitalization strategy. Documented investor relationships sufficient to close QEIs against the award being requested.
02
For organizations standing up a CDE for the first time: certification, AMIS registration, governance and community-accountability structures, and a first application built to be competitive rather than aspirational.
This work starts with a feasibility assessment, and the assessment is honest. Becoming a CDE means entering the financing business, with a seven-year compliance tail on everything you deploy. Most organizations that explore it are better served as project sponsors or borrowers working with an existing CDE — and when that is the case, we say so before anyone spends a cycle learning it the hard way.
03
Winning allocation creates a seven-year obligation. Deployment, compliance, and investor relationship management are not administrative tasks — they are the substance of what the CDFI Fund and IRS evaluate, and errors during the compliance period can result in credit recapture.
Deployment
QLICI underwriting support and transaction structuring, Sub-CDE structuring and closing coordination, and deployment pacing against the allocation agreement's timeline.
Compliance and asset management
Substantially-all testing and QALICB qualification monitoring, CDFI Fund reporting (CIIS/AMIS) and investor reporting, and portfolio monitoring and audit support through the full compliance period.
Exit
Put/call coordination and unwind structuring at the end of the compliance period.
04
Existing CDEs: allocatees preparing their next application, and CDEs that need deployment or management capacity they do not carry in-house. And, selectively, organizations forming a new CDE where the underlying case — a real service area, deployable pipeline, and institutional commitment to run a financing business — is genuinely there.
We take a small number of engagements at a time. Application and management work done properly does not scale by volume.
05
Practitioner, not adjacent
Most NMTC consultants have worked next to the process — as investors, lawyers, or accountants. This practice has authored the applications, managed the deployments, maintained the investor relationships, filed the compliance reports, and executed the exits.
Independent
New Markets Capital Advisors is not affiliated with any CDE, investor, lender, or transaction party. The advice is not shaped by a deal pipeline or a fee arrangement on the other side of the table.
One accountable principal
The person who scopes the engagement does the work. Nothing is handed to a junior team after the sale.
Next Step
Every engagement starts with an assessment conversation: where the application, the portfolio, or the idea actually stands, and whether we are the right help for it. If we are not, we will tell you who is.
Contact Chad