In his 1992 campaign, President Clinton called for the creation of a nationwide network of community development banks. He created the Treasury Department's Community Development Financial Institutions Fund to turn that dream into a reality. By 2000, the CDFI Fund issued nearly $300 million in grants, loans, equity investments, and technical assistance grants to locally-based community development financial institutions, and another $136 million in incentive awards to banks and thrifts, increasing their community development activities by some $2.4 billion.