2024 Annual Report
A message from our CEO
At Self-Help, we strive every day to offer financial services that are fair, responsible, and rooted in the needs of our members. We provide caring, personal service and fair, affordable financing to help our members get on solid financial footing and reach their goals.
At Self-Help, we believe homeownership can be accessible to more people, with the right support. Our Equity Boost and SAFE programs assist borrowers with down payment requirements, affordable monthly payments and savings for home maintenance. These are often paired with our free financial coaching to set our borrowers up for success.
Self-Help brings solutions to the affordable housing sector that are comprehensive and inclusive. Where our previous focus was on single-family homes, we have shifted to include a broad spectrum of housing types, from collective housing, to new-construction single-family homes, to high-quality affordable rental units. In all cases, we are focused on creating community.
Financial coaching can provide participants with the knowledge and agency to manage their financial lives. Self-Help's financial coaching program served 775 members in 2024.
North Carolinians across the western part of the state faced down the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene and showed us all what community looks like. As a Community Development Financial Institution, we were there in the immediate aftermath, and we’ll be there for our Western North Carolina neighbors in the years-long recovery process that lies ahead.
Self-Help’s commercial lending is an important part of our impact. Using our unique approach to underwriting commercial loans, we provide financing for a broad spectrum of business types across our geographies.
Our charter school lending program helps create educational opportunities for thousands of students across the country. For nearly three decades, we've provided financing to public charter schools offering challenging, diverse and equitable learning environments.
As an organization, we endeavor to go where we can have the most impact. From complex historic preservation projects like Revolution Mill, in Greensboro, N.C., to the locations of our new branches, such as our newest Raleigh, N.C., branch, to our presence in Lower Yakima Valley in Washington State, we make careful decisions to ensure we remain rooted in communities across the country.
Self-Help was founded on the idea that change can create meaningful impact. In 2024, we continued to work towards expanding access to clean energy through our financial products, and our sister organization, Center for Responsible Lending, did valuable advocacy work in their ongoing fight against predatory lending. We also celebrated the launch of the Julian Bond Institute for Financial Equity Research.
Our mission is creating and protecting ownership and opportunity for all, especially people of color, women, rural residents and low-wealth families and communities. The pursuit of this mission requires an inclusive approach and a collective mindset. Join us. Together, we can expand economic opportunity for all.