ABSTRACT
In Britain, by contrast with de veloping coun tries, severe pov erty is urban rather than rural, and, as the Treasury’s mapping of fin an cial exclusion (reproduced in Figure 2.1) shows, it is in urban areas that most CDFIs are located. For this study, we carried out surveys of institutions in all bar one of the major conurba tions repres ented in Figure 2.1 (south-central Scotland, Lancashire, Yorkshire, the West Midlands and South Wales),1 excluding only greater London. Two purely business-lending organ isa tions are examined (DSL and the ‘Birmingham cluster’, containing four business lenders all involved with lending to ethnic minor it ies), three personal-lending organ isa tions (East Lancashire Moneyline, Yorkshire (Sheffield) Moneyline and Scotcash) and one organ isa tion covering both modalities (Derby Loans). The indi vidual personalities of CDFIs and their ‘architectures’, to adapt Kay’s (1993) term for the structures of relationships in which business corporations become involved,2 are im port ant in determining their differential performance, and therefore impact, and in this chapter and the next we try to relate what CDFIs are able to deliver to the manner in which they are designed. Our methodology combines, within each of our selected cities, quantitative methods, in the shape of ana lyses of impact drawn from questionnaires admin is tered by us, and qualit at ive methods, in the shape of exploratory inter views which encourage the client to ex plore the mo tiva tions and the patterns of causa tion which determine the effect iveness of CDFI instruments and which are the cause of changes in well being indic ators. The main survey instrument consists of a questionnaire,3 which is admin is tered both to the treatment and to the control groups. Our funda mental research methodology is with versus without – that is, we seek to isolate the impact of an inter ven tion, here the opera tions of a CDFI, by comparing the actual state of selected indic ators of well being with the situ ation which would prevail in the absence of that inter ven tion.4 Since the latter is hypo thet ical and cannot be meas ured directly, we simulate the situ ation in the absence of the inter ven tion by constructing a control group (also known as a comparison group) – a group which has the same socio economic charac ter istics as the group to which the inter ven tion has been applied, and indeed is selected to be sim ilar in every way to the treatment group, except for the fact that it has not bene fited from the inter ven tion. We then compare the change in
Figure 2.1 Major areas of financial exclusion (2004), with survey areas superimposed (source: adapted from United Kingdom, HM Treasury (2004), figure 1.1. Copyright of the map original rests with the Ordnance Survey and the figure is reproduced under licence number 100018617).
