THE SUPERVITAMIN QUARTERLY
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Letter from the President & CEO
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The CFE Fund’s mission is to grow the availability of municipally-led financial empowerment efforts, including through moving the market to offer safe, affordable financial products that governments can leverage in these efforts. The growing success of this field – now over 80 cities, and counting – has depended deeply from the very start on multi-sector cooperation and synergy. Shared financial empowerment priorities have brought together a broad range of sectors with both common and diverse motivations, including: local elected officials and public program administrators, state and federal regulators, community organizations, philanthropic players, financial institution, advocates, and researchers.
Recently in the banking access field, all eyes have turned to the reauthorization of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), the federal law that encourages financial institutions to serve the communities in which they do business, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. As federal regulators, financial institutions, and banking access stakeholders consider potential changes to the law, the criticality of multi-sector cooperation, and the encouragement of that cooperation, has been very much on our minds. Bank On has made great strides not just because banking access is critical to individual and family financial stability, but because each of the key players cooperating on the initiative are experiencing meaningful benefits from their work together. Financial institutions, specifically, have enjoyed enhanced community relations, strong demand from new customers, and CRA credit for their Bank On partnerships.
Any potential changes to CRA must ensure continued encouragement and credit to financial institution partners in their local communities. These voluntary partnerships are working well, nationally and locally, at bringing millions into the financial mainstream and helping to build the own and their communities’ stability.
Thanks, as always, for your partnership.
Jonathan
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The CFE Fund’s
FEC Public initiative
, with seed support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, and Capital One, The JPB Foundation, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Wells Fargo, supports local governments in working to launch professional, one-on-one Financial Empowerment Center (FEC) counseling as a free public service for residents in need.
Last month, the CFE Fund and the national FEC Public movement celebrated over 100,000 clients served. To date, in local governments across the country, the FEC movement has supported over 104,000 clients in reducing debt by over $146 million and increasing savings by $22 million.
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Across the FEC Public initiative, the CFE Fund is now working with 30 government partners, ranging from Planning Partners working to plan for their FEC initiatives, Implementation Partners who have launched their FECs, and Experts whose FECs have been operational for multiple years and are self-sustaining. Recently, the City of Houston, TX and the City of Rochester, NY moved to the implementation stage of the FEC journey and launched their FECs.
As the FEC Public movement continues to scale, the CFE Fund is now partnering with the National Association of Credit Counselors (NACCC) to support counselor training and ensure that all FEC services are consistently and expertly delivered by highly trained, professional counselors.
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The CFE Fund’s
CityStart initiative
,
with support from JPMorgan Chase and others, helps local governments kickstart municipally-led financial empowerment strategies for their city through a structured public bootcamp and blueprint process.
Throughout the past Fall and Winter, the CFE Fund’s CityStart team led site visits, culminating in intensive municipal financial empowerment bootcamps, in seven cities: Birmingham, AL; Columbus, OH; Jackson, MS; Jersey City, NJ; New Orleans, LA; Madison, WI; and Waco, TX. In each city, dozens of stakeholders and representatives from the community came together to learn about municipal financial empowerment opportunities, provide context and insights, and share their thoughts on local needs.
In November, the CFE Fund hosted a joint meeting of our CityStart partners and CFE Coalition members - an invitation-only group of cities committed to municipal financial empowerment at a “varsity” level. CityStart partners shared their efforts and had an opportunity to learn from CFE Coalition experts about best practices for launching and sustaining local municipal financial empowerment initiatives. Sessions included an overview of making the case for launching programs internally; securing public funding; navigating politics; and developing a citywide financial empowerment “ethos.” In addition, three CityStart partners from the 2018 cohort - the
City of Anchorage
, the
City of Tulsa
,
and the
City of Rochester
- presented their blueprints and gathered specific advice from CFE Coalition members and other CityStart partners about implementing, sustaining, and expanding their work.
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The CFE Fund’s national Bank On initiative, with seed funding from JPMorgan Chase & Co. and multiple additional funders, supports local coalition and financial institution efforts to connect consumers to safe, affordable bank and credit union accounts. Currently, 41 banks and credit union offer accounts certified as meeting the
Bank On National Account Standard
s
; these accounts are available now in over 22,000 branches across the country, in all 50 states and Washington, DC.
In partnership with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the CFE Fund collects centralized account data through a national reporting platform for banks and credit unions with a Bank On certified account. This
Bank On National Data Hub
was
first piloted
in 2018, collecting 2017 data, and findings demonstrated just how strong the demand is for safe, affordable, and functional Bank On accounts.
Stay tuned for 2018 data and an accompanying report coming soon!
The CFE Fund now offers Bank On coalitions a website template for their own local use, providing a branded, uniform web presence, at no cost, to any coalition who is interested. The CFE Fund piloted the template with
Bank On Milwaukee
,
Bank On Rubber Cit
y
, and
Bank On Atlanta
– check out their sites at the links! If you have any questions about the process or the template, please email
Kelsey Bradley
, Associate.
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During its sixth summer season, the CFE Fund’s
Summer Jobs Connect
(SJC) initiative, generously supported by the Citi Foundation, worked with municipal Summer Youth Employment Programs across 16 cities to embed financial education and banking access into their summer workforce programming.
In 2019, SJC partners connected over 40,000 young adults to direct deposit so they could easily manage their earnings, and further supported more than 120,000 participants with financial education on how to use bank and credit union accounts productively.
Thanks to the Citi Foundation’s support, the CFE Fund will assist a new cohort of up to 6 additional local municipalities with a planning grant to develop their approach to connect SYEP participants to the financial mainstream. Applicants must manage an existing municipal SYEP and have the ability to make the necessary programmatic, structural, and technological adjustments to build in a banking access component at scale.
Apply by March 31, 2020.
To learn more about the Summer Jobs Connect initiative, contact
I-Hsing Sun
, Chief Program Officer.
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With generous seed funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the CFE Fund is working with four local governments to launch local offices of consumer protection.
The CFE Fund seeks proposals from a new cohort of mayoral or county administrations interested in developing a strategic plan for building robust consumer financial protection capabilities within their local government; the CFE Fund has extended the submission deadline, and
applications are now due this Friday, March 13, 2020
.
The CFE Fund continues to work with the first cohort of cities under the
Local Consumer Financial Protection Initiative
: Albuquerque, NM; Denver, CO; Nashville, TN; and Salt Lake City, UT. These partners are working with the CFE Fund to develop consumer complaint systems and build out offices of consumer financial protection within their local governments.
Denver, Salt Lake City, and Nashville recently launched their local consumer complaint systems and are continuing to make progress enhancing the complaint system user interface, building referral processes and relationships with partner agencies, and exploring partnerships with organizations that can provide mediation services. Recently, Salt Lake City launched a
tax time education campaign
focused on ensuring residents are aware of opportunities for safe and affordable tax preparation. In the City of Albuquerque, the Mayor launched a
new initiative
to help residents remain resilient to scams and predatory services.
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To learn more about the Consumer Financial Protection Initiative, contact
Kant Desai
, Principal.
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Guest Column: Mayor Lovely A. Warren
City of Rochester, New York
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Progress and prosperity have often been shared unequally in cities around the country. In many ways, Rochester, NY, is no different — a city with a rich history of innovation and social progress, but also of disinvestment, poverty, and institutional racism. I see the suffering on the faces of far too many people in the community that raised me, and I hear their pain in the stories they share.
I also know that this city and its people hold unlimited potential to create new systems designed to work for the betterment of all, and not just the select few. At the beginning of my first term, I created the Mayor’s Office of Innovation and Strategic Initiatives to develop ways to combat poverty.
We have had many successes, including the rollout of alternative, affordable methods of transportation like Vanpool and Bikeshare; interest-free microloans through the crowdfunding platform Kiva Rochester; and a study detailing race- and gender-based wage disparities in our city.
Despite these wins, there was a missing piece. So, upon my inauguration for a second term, I announced the creation of the Mayor’s Office of Community Wealth Building (OCWB) — an ambitious endeavor to ensure everyone in Rochester benefits from the economic recovery of our city.
The OCWB’s first task was to determine
why
people living in our challenged communities were unable to build wealth. We found there was a lack of access to safe and affordable credit and banking services in certain areas of the city, so helping residents gain access to credit became a major goal.
We were awarded a grant to join the 2018 CityStart Initiative cohort, which began an incredible journey towards financial empowerment. We convened stakeholders and combined the lessons of their experience with the expertise of the Cities for Financial Empowerment (CFE) Fund to create a framework to organize the work we were already doing and identify opportunities for action.
With a strong framework in hand, we began planning to bring the Financial Empowerment Center model to Rochester in partnership with the CFE Fund. We reconvened many of the partners involved in the CityStart initiative and spent the next eight months putting building blocks in place, raising private match funding, selecting a counseling provider and setting priorities for partner organizations.
On March 30, we will officially launch our Financial Empowerment Center in partnership with Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Rochester and our robust network of community partners, ranging from workforce development providers to educational institutions. We are already changing lives for the better.
Personal finances are at the center of many of our city’s challenges and now we have powerful tools to help people to build stronger financial foundations. A great example of this is our work to help more people stay in their homes. We are currently working on a pilot project with the Rochester Housing Authority to use the FEC to provide early-intervention counseling aimed at preventing evictions.
Integrating financial empowerment into the practices of City government is a powerful strategy to help us achieve our most important priorities. As we work to create more jobs, safer and more vibrant neighborhoods, and better educational opportunities, we are wholly committed to advancing the financial empowerment of our families.
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News from the CFE Coaliton
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29
th
Coalition Forum in Denver
In November, the CFE Fund and the Denver Office of Financial Empowerment & Protection welcomed Coalition city representatives from across the country for the Coalition’s 29
th
Forum. Members shared best practices, constructed and deconstructed cutting edge programmatic and policy topics, and explored the Denver office’s current projects.
Boston Launches Tax Season and Grows Credit Building Efforts
Boston Mayor Walsh's Office of Financial Empowerment has
launched the 19th VITA tax season
at 30 local community-based tax sites, and continues to grow its credit building efforts in partnership with the United Way, LISC and the community. Additionally, Boston Builds Credit is commencing a system change effort to look at strategies such as rent reporting and the reform of predatory debt collection practices.
Lansing Announces New
BOLD Lansing Initiative
In his State of the City address, Lansing
Mayor Andy Schor announced
BOLD Lansing, a centralized resource where students and parents can get information about economic mobility services, including Lansing SAVE and the Financial Empowerment Center initiative.
NYC Expands its Network of Financial Empowerment Centers
The New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection
announced
the expansion of its network of NYC Financial Empowerment Centers (FECs) to more than double the number of Centers in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, including targeted neighborhoods with low-income and un- and underbanked households. There are now 34 Centers in all five boroughs and nearly all counselors are bilingual, speaking English, Spanish, Russian, and Haitian Creole.
Philadelphia Eliminates Free Library Fines
The City of Philadelphia
eliminated fines
at the Free Library, which will restore library access for over 88,000 residents whose accounts are currently blocked due to outstanding fines.
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Current Grant Opportunities
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Financial Empowerment "In the News"
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