By Matt Royles, conference attendee

Although this is just the second annual Microfinance USA conference, I was hardly surprised to learn that over 400 individuals will be attending the event.  Anyone in the industry with a Google Alerts account can tell you that the past several years have brought unprecedented attention to the field.  Every week seems to bring another mainstream media article, a new program, or a new investment in a U.S. microfinance institution.  Surely the national dialogue about decreasing access to traditional business credit has spurred the growing interest in microfinance.

To me, some of the most interesting developments have involved new sources of capital for the field.

Earlier this month, Citi announced a $200 million fund to spur small business lending among CDFI loan funds. Back in December, Citi Microfinance announced that it has generated $6 million in loans through its 2008 agreement to purchase up to $30 million in microloans from ACCION Texas. Last year, Kiva.org began raising funds for microloans disbursed by Opportunity Fund and ACCION USA. The list goes on.

Sessions about funding and capitalization abound at this year’s conference.  That’s not surprising, given the challenge among U.S. microfinance institutions raising capital.  Breakout sessions like “Scaling Global Microfinance: Funder Perspectives;” “Where Does all that Loan Capital Come from, Anyway?;”  and “Funding U.S. Microenterprise: Why Now?” top my list.   What motivates donors and investors to support microfinance? How do they calculate the return on their investment? How do they source new ‘deals’?  These are a few of the questions that I hope to answer by meeting the stakeholders that will star in the Google Alerts of tomorrow.

Matt Royles is Associate Director for Resource Development at ACCION USA, and has worked in the CDFI field for six years.  In addition to the Microfinance USA 2010 blog, he also contributes to Main Street Microfinance, ACCION USA’s blog.