CDFIs in Action Tours - The 2026 OFN Conference

CDFIs in Action Tours are one of the highlights of the OFN conference each year. Take advantage of the unique opportunity to explore New Orleans through the lens of our locally-based, CDFI member co-hosts, as they showcase their work in communities across the city. These tours will offer an in-depth perspective on the diverse, vibrant landscape of the greater New Orleans area and a firsthand look at the tangible impacts of CDFIs in the region.

Please note tour availability is limited and there is a separate, non-refundable registration fee. 

Description: Step aboard the new Amtrak Mardi Gras line and experience one of the Mississippi Gulf Coast's most inspiring comeback stories. Curated by Renaissance Community Loan Fund (RCLF), this excursion takes you by rail from New Orleans to the charming coastal community of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi—a true example of resilient recovery, thoughtful planning, and small business-driven economic development.

RCLF and our Bay St. Louis community partners will welcome you at the Bay St. Louis Community Center to enjoy a light breakfast featuring local favorites, mimosas, and opportunities to connect with fellow attendees before hearing from community leaders who played key roles in the city's recovery and revitalization. Through conversations with local leaders, entrepreneurs, and community champions, you'll gain firsthand insight into how a city devastated by Hurricane Katrina transformed itself into a thriving destination known for its vibrant downtown, strong sense of place, and commitment to sustainable growth.

Following the program, enjoy free time to experience Bay St. Louis at your own pace. Stroll the award-winning historic downtown, browse locally owned boutiques and galleries, relax along the waterfront, and discover why this coastal community has become one of the Gulf South's most beloved destinations. Maps and recommendations will be provided to assist your exploration. Community Ambassadors will also be available to answer questions and provide transportation around the community via golf cart.

Mode of transportation: Train, Tour Bus, Walking

Fees: Member: $250, General: $350

Description: Ground your CDFI work in living history while building for the future. This tour will feature future-minded, weather-resilient investment projects in the Lower 9th Ward and a visit to the TEP Center. Located in a historic desegregated public-school building, the TEP Center showcases how historic preservation tax credits, targeted investments, and partnerships can honor civil rights history while driving equity.

Finance New Orleans, a publicly chartered, independent housing and development finance agency, will discuss their Resilient New Orleans Finance Plan and lead a visit to a resilient rental housing site.

A networking lunch at the TEP Center will be paired with a guided tour of the historic Civil Rights exhibitions.

Price includes food and beverage on the tour.

Mode of transportation: Tour Bus

Fees: Member: $250, General: $350

Description: GET ON THE BUS. GO BEYOND NEW ORLEANS. SEE THE CAPITAL AT WORK.

Four stops. One immersive journey in community finance.

You've come to New Orleans for OFN. Now go beyond the Crescent City and experience what community finance looks like when capital, collaboration, and a shared vision for place come together.

Join TruFund Financial Services for an immersive journey from New Orleans to Louisiana's capital city, Baton Rouge, where we'll leave the conference setting behind and take you directly into the communities, facilities, and investments that are helping reshape and reimagine North Baton Rouge.

This is not a traditional bus tour. It is a rolling case study in community finance, built around four real investments and the people, partnerships, and capital that made them possible.

The story begins with the Reimagine Plank Road initiative, part of JPMorgan Chase's AdvancingCities work in Baton Rouge. The initiative brought together community, public, private, and philanthropic partners around a shared vision for the revitalization of the North Baton Rouge Plank Road corridor. Through collaboration among TruFund, JPMorgan Chase, Build Baton Rouge, Louisiana Economic Development, and other partners, that vision moved beyond planning and into investments that participants will experience firsthand.

See the Investments. Meet the People. Experience the Impact.

Our first stop takes us to the Inspiration Center, where participants will explore a catalytic community development project financed in part through New Markets Tax Credits and learn how complex financing can be leveraged to create community-serving assets.

We'll continue to the Reimagine Women's Center, a space dedicated to creating opportunity for women and families. There, participants will also visit the TruImpact Training Room powered by TruFund, experiencing firsthand how investment in physical spaces can create platforms for training, entrepreneurship, workforce development, and economic mobility.

At All Star Community Care, participants will see another side of community finance: how access to flexible capital and real estate financing can help a growing community-based healthcare provider move toward property ownership while expanding access to essential services.

And then we'll arrive at the culminating stop, the Post Trauma Institute of Louisiana (PTI). OFN participants won't simply tour PTI. They'll be part of a milestone moment. The experience will culminate with PTI Louisiana's official grand opening and ribbon cutting, bringing together community leaders, investors, financial institutions, partners, and stakeholders who helped make the project possible. Participants will tour the facility, hear directly from the people behind the investment, join the ribbon-cutting celebration, and connect with partners during a closing reception.

Throughout the journey, leaders representing TruFund Financial Services, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Louisiana Economic Development, Build Baton Rouge, Entergy, and the broader Baton Rouge community development ecosystem will join participants at various stops to share the stories behind the investments, including what worked, what was challenging, and what it truly takes to move collaborative finance from strategy to impact.

And don't overlook the ride...

The journey from the Crescent City to the Capital City becomes part of the experience. Along the way, we'll unpack the Reimagine Plank Road initiative, explore the different capital tools represented across the four projects, and talk candidly about the partnerships required to move from an ambitious community vision to visible, tangible investment. By the time we return to New Orleans, participants will have experienced community finance not through a presentation or case study on paper, but by walking through the doors of the businesses, institutions, and community spaces that capital helped make possible.

Four stops. Multiple capital tools. One immersive journey in community finance.

GET ON THE BUS. GO BEYOND NEW ORLEANS. SEE THE CAPITAL AT WORK.

Price includes food and beverage on the tour.

Mode of transportation: Tour Bus

Fees: Member: $250, General: $350

Description: This tour will showcase the first developments in New Orleans that combine affordable housing with early childhood education (ECE) centers.

The Wilcox Academy campus and Inquisitive Thinkers / Firehouse developments are two innovative models situated in Central City, an area that has been facing displacement pressures resulting from significant redevelopment. You will hear how local ECE providers partnered with development firms to add more than 200 childcare seats along with affordable housing to the greater LaSalle Corridor in Central City. Partners will share how they built trust and partnerships, secured properties, assembled complex private and public development and operating funding, including tax credits and a local ECE grant resulting from a new voter-supported tax.

The tour will include a visit to the newest location of Wilcox Academy and Inquisitive Thinkers / Firehouse, both of which were completed in Summer 2026 and feature complementary affordable housing and ECE on the same campus.

These developments also book-end Harmony Oaks, a large HOPE VI public housing complex that was redeveloped after Hurricane Katrina.

The tour will conclude at Wilcox Academy at Southern University of New Orleans, another ECE center that has operated since 2023. Snacks will be provided at this final location. Both co-location sites are a testament to community development that serves children, families, educators, and the neighborhoods that they call home.

Price includes food and beverage on the tour.

Mode of transportation: Tour Bus

Fees: Member: $200, General: $300

Description: Come tour projects that are being developed by members of Enterprise Community Partners’ New Orleans Equitable Path Forward cohort.

Equitable Path Forward is a national initiative that addresses the needs of economically and socially disadvantaged housing providers by filling capital gaps, providing advisory services and technical assistance, building community and professional networks, and creating new career pathways to expand leadership opportunities in real estate.

After five years of progress made through Enterprise’s Equitable Path Forward (EPF)—namely, $1+ billion invested, more than 11,500 homes created or preserved, and over 100 developers supported, the result includes more affordable housing created by and for the communities who need it most.

Visit communities created by New Orleans-based EPF developers, including New Orleans Restoration Properties, People’s Housing+, Iris Community Development, and Jericho Road Episcopal Housing Initiative.

These EPF Peer Network members will showcase a diverse range of projects, from historic preservation and adaptive reuse affordable housing to mixed-use developments, single-family redevelopment, and innovative community-driven revitalization efforts.

Mode of transportation: Tour Bus

Fees: Member: $200, General: $300

Description: New Orleans is a city that counts itself in wards. Ask anyone here where they're from, and they won't give you a zip code; they'll give you a ward and a neighborhood. The 7th Ward is our second largest, and it is the ground where NewCorp is putting its newest work.

This is not a sightseeing ride. It's a visioning tour, and you're part of it. Along the route, we'll put real questions in front of you about ownership, capital, and what it actually takes to move a neighborhood from surviving to owning.

Here's the frame: Roughly 60 percent of New Orleans lives somewhere on the spectrum from impoverished, to working poor, to swimming upstream toward the middle class. Wages here are below sea level, so even our professional class struggles to reach the national average. Our communities are neither resilient nor sustainable. They lack resources, and they perceive themselves as having no power. They are wrong about that last part, and NewCorp exists to prove it.

NewCorp is in the business of ownership. With our newly awarded 501(c)(3) designation for the 7th Ward Revitalization Program, we're building the pathway for residents to govern and own their piece of the earth.

Come see the blueprint on the ground.

Price includes food and beverage on the tour.

Mode of transportation: Tour Bus

Fees: Member: $200, General: $300

Description: What does it take to build not just successful businesses, but thriving entrepreneurial ecosystems and resilient commercial corridors? Join TruFund Financial Services for an immersive journey that explores the powerful intersection of community finance, entrepreneurship, historic preservation, and place-based investment.

Your experience begins at Propeller, one of New Orleans' premier entrepreneurial hubs, where you'll discover how CDFIs, technical assistance providers, philanthropic organizations, government agencies, and ecosystem partners work together to help entrepreneurs launch, grow, and sustain their businesses. Through an interactive district tour, participants will meet local entrepreneurs and experience firsthand how mission-driven capital and collaborative partnerships fuel economic opportunity.

From there, the journey continues to historic Bayou Road, one of the oldest corridors in New Orleans and a nationally recognized center of Black entrepreneurship. Often referred to as New Orleans' Black Wall Street, Bayou Road tells a remarkable story of resilience, community ownership, and intentional reinvestment. Guided by Broad Community Connections (BCC) - the district’s lead community development corporation - participants will meet local business owners and cultural leaders and explore how this historic district is being reimagined as a model for inclusive economic development while preserving the rich cultural heritage that has defined it for generations.

The experience culminates in an intimate fireside conversation, where Dr. Kim Carter Evans, Executive Vice President of TruFund Financial Services, will moderate conversation with community leaders, entrepreneurs, and ecosystem partners. Together, they will explore the future of community finance, the importance of preserving historic commercial corridors, and the role CDFIs and place-based organizations play in expanding economic opportunity while strengthening the communities they serve.

This is more than a neighborhood tour. It is an opportunity to experience how strategic partnerships, mission-driven capital, and community leadership are working together to reimagine one of America's most historic Black business districts and to consider how these lessons can inspire similar transformations in communities across the country.

Price includes food and beverage on the tour.

Mode of transportation: Tour Bus

Fees: Member: $200, General: $300