While CDFIs are integral to community development finance, there is still much we don’t know about their impact. In June 2008, the CDFI Fund at the U.S. Department of the Treasury hosted a research conference to enhance understanding of the CDFI field. Over the next 12 years, the overall amount of these financial institutions, asset size and data availability all continued to grow; however, an avenue to highlight, present and discuss CDFI research had yet to exist since the 2008 conference. In response, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, in partnership with the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta, Minneapolis, Richmond and San Francisco, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the CDFI Fund collaborated to organize a symposium of CDFI research. This issue of the Community Development Innovation Review includes six of the papers selected for presentation.