Durham Reporter

The head of the Chamber of Progress (CoP) said the Durham-based Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) “doesn’t represent any consumers” and is an “astroturf” group.

"The Center for Responsible Lending doesn’t represent any consumers,” Adam Kovacevich, CEO of the CoP, told Durham Reporter. “It was founded and is funded by a credit union that attacks new competitors against incumbent banks and credit unions”

“If the Center for Responsible Lending was truly pro-consumer, it would recognize how fintech services have bridged the gaps of traditional financial services and accelerated financial inclusion,” Kovacevich said. “Lawmakers shouldn’t be duped by this astroturf group."

CRL was founded by Durham resident Martin Eakes, also the founder Self-Help Credit Union (SHCU), and has received more than $25 million during the past ten years from a foundation started by a N.C. couple who Time magazine ranked among “25 people to blame from the (2008) financial crisis.”

That’s according to a review of U.S. Internal Revenue Service non-profit 990 filings from the Sandler Foundation, founded by the late Herbert and Marion Sandler, the billionaire subprime lenders and founders of World Savings Bank.

The filings show a sum of more than $25 million in payments from 2016 to 2022 from the Sandler Foundation to the CRL.

CRL-related groups unsuccessfully lobbied for a bill in South Carolina last year that would’ve limited small dollar loans. The credit union, and CRL, have a history of lobbying at the state level, reported Palmetto State News in Jan. 2024.

Eakes is also the founder of an entity called Self-Help Ventures Fund.

Self-Help Ventures Fund and SHCU have received over $502 million from the U.S. Treasury Department's Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund), reported Federal Newswire.

Federal Newswire made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the U.S. Treasury Department in Nov. 2024 seeking communications between the CDFI Fund and representatives of Self-Help Ventures Fund, SHCU, and CRL.

The FOIA request follows an Oct. 29 Federal Newswire report that Christopher Allison, program manager for the New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) Program at the CDFI Fund, is a former employee of Self-Help Ventures Fund.

“Let’s find out if Mr. Allison, through his various conflicts, has been self-helping himself to our money,” Edward “Coach” Weinhaus, managing partner at FOIASolved, a law firm with a multi-state presence focusing on FOIA-related litigation, told Federal Newswire.

As of publication time, Federal Newswire had not yet published information from that FOIA request.

The CDFI Fund was founded through an Act of Congress in 1994 to generate “economic growth and opportunity in some of our nation's most distressed communities.”

Self-Help Ventures Fund alone received $277,989,503 in federal awards for 107 separate projects through the NMTC program between 2004 and 2020.

Though CRL lists its address as Durham, it also has a building in Washington, DC the CoP says is actually owned by CHCU. 

"CRL is headquartered at 910 17th St NW, Washington, DC – the “Barr Building," said the CoP's website. "According to 2023 IRS filings, the building is owned by Self-Help Credit Union."

CRL "frequently testifies before federal and state legislators and lobbies them behind closed doors without disclosing how its parent company Self-Help benefits from its advocacy," said the CoP website.  

The CoP linked to an Oct. 2023 letter signed by CRL and other groups asking then-U.S. House Financial Service Chairman Patrick McHenry (R-NC-10) to oppose the "Financial Services Innovation Act of 2023."

Headquartered in McLean, Va., the CoP is a technology industry coalition that says it supports "public policies that will build a fairer, more inclusive country in which all people benefit from technological leaps."