The Progress Fund: Financing and supporting businesses in the PA Wilds and beyond

Elk County | Elk Country of the Pennsylvania Wilds

The Progress Fund is a non-profit Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) that is focused on providing flexible financing to new or expanding tourism-niche businesses.

Providing services across Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maryland, The Progress Fund is headquartered in Greensburg, PA. Since 1997, it has financed accommodations, attractions, entertainment, farms, outdoor recreation, restaurants, retail, service business, wine and spirits makers and other small businesses. Through these investments and support, the organization also encourages job creation, historic preservation, diverse business ownership, local agriculture and trail-based development.

The organization lends money for the purchase of real estate, purchase of business equipment, building remodeling/restoration, working capital to cover operating expenses, and more.

As a CDFI, The Progress Fund is able to offer flexible financing that can be structured to meet each borrower’s unique needs, including flexible collateral requirements, competitive interest rates, seasonal interest only payments, etc. It can work with Local Development Districts, banks, chambers, Economic Development Corporations, Industrial Development Corporations, etc., or act as a sole lender in a project.

Learn more about The Progress Fund or leave a review/recommendation on the organization’s Wilds Cooperative of PA profile here.

RECENT WCO MEMBER SPOTLIGHTS

• 
  Mountain View Sheep Farm: Creating Products to Help ‘Ewe’
  Bonnie Troemel began Mountain View Sheep Farm in 2018, but her love for sheep started far before that. She began breeding and raising Shetland sheep back in 2010. She has been using their wool for fiber arts and their milk for soap ever since, now running her farm in Emporium, in the Dark Skies and Elk Country landscapes within the Pennsylvania Wilds region.
• 
  Full Circle Bioconversion LLC: Turning food waste into a business
  As a child, the Pennsylvania woods were Aubrey Fornwalt’s playground and the stream was her pool. After a life change in 2016 led her back to her childhood home in Lycoming County, Fornwalt took a risk and bought some black soldier flies for a composting business, taking inspiration from the woods and insects she loved as a child. Two years later, it grew into what would become Full Circle Bioconversion, based in the city of Williamsport in the Pine Creek Valley and PA Grand Canyon landscape and I-80 Frontier landscape of the Pennsylvania Wilds region.
• 
  Blackbird Distillery: Making shine and making friends
  Not too many businesses can say they create their product completely from start to finish, but the folks at Blackbird Distillery can! Located in Brookville along the I-80 Frontier landscape and the Cook Forest and the Ancients landscape within the Pennsylvania Wilds, Blackbird Distillery is a one-of-a-kind place that takes pride in showing visitors the magic of how their product is made.