Thank you to our many municipal and funding partners for making this pandemic-era program such a bold and nimble success. Across 31 cities and counties, trained navigators helped thousands of residents identify and then access public resources targeted to address their individual needs.
This program also has informed the CFE Fund’s new Emergency Financial Empowerment program. To learn more about either program, please contact Sol Vilera Ramos, Manager.
The Financial Navigators initiative helped residents deal with the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, providing remote assistance in navigating critical financial issues and making referrals to other social services and resources. With support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Citi Foundation, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and the Wells Fargo Foundation, the CFE Fund partnered with 31 local governments across the country, providing them with technical assistance and funding to launch a new public Financial Navigators program.
Trained Financial Navigators provided structured guidance over the phone to help people strategize around supports for disruptions to their income and other financial concerns. They helped residents triage financial issues, identify immediate action steps, and make referrals to other services. Assistance included managing expenses through prioritizing payments and when to make them, as well as maximizing income through ensuring receipt of federal payments, unemployment benefits, and other resources. In partner cities and counties across the country, helping residents navigate the financial impact of COVID-19 through the Financial Navigators initiative was a critical part of front-line emergency response efforts.
Building off the successes of the national Bank On and Summer Jobs Connect initiatives, the CFE Fund is testing different ways to integrate banking access into existing municipal and community programs; for example, the CFE Fund is supporting local partnerships that link high school age youth and their families to the financial mainstream through safe and affordable bank accounts, as well as innovative programmatic approaches to helping unbanked people open safe and affordable accounts when they start a new job.
Pilot partners identify ways to integrate banking access into existing youth and workforce development programs, and have established local connections with financial institutions to offer bank accounts certified as meeting the Bank On National Account Standards or the Youth Account Priorities. The goal of these pilots is to learn more about how existing programs can leverage payment touchpoints to support account opening for program participants.
The CFE Fund’s CityStart initiative, supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, offers local governments a structured approach to identify financial empowerment goals, convene relevant stakeholders for sustainable success, develop actionable strategies, and ultimately craft a blueprint that is rooted in local insights and opportunities – all with a deliberate racial wealth equity lens.
This two-phase action engagement connects critical insights about the impact of financial instability on municipal governments with tangible, sustainable strategies to improve families’ financial lives. The first phase of the initiative is a learning phase, where the CFE Fund and municipal partners look to analyze the local landscape, including systemic wealth extraction and accumulation impacting racial wealth equity; collect relevant data; and engage in intensive stakeholder roundtables to identify key challenges and opportunities. This also includes a deliberate resident engagement effort. Based on issues identified in the learning phase, as well as administration priorities, the CFE Fund works with local government partners on a design phase to craft a comprehensive, government-led financial empowerment blueprint. Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Greenwood Initiative, whose mission is to accelerate the pace of Black wealth accumulation in the U.S., is advising the CFE Fund and municipal partners on the design and execution of the CityStart program using a racial wealth equity lens.
The CityStart initiative stems from the CFE Fund’s extensive work with local government leaders, and connects critical on-the-ground insights about the impact of financial instability on families, communities, and municipal budgets with tangible, measurable, and sustainable municipal strategies to improve residents’ financial lives, especially those of Black residents. CityStart cities have historically leveraged their engagement with the CFE Fund to further their commitment to this work. The CFE Fund recently selected the third cohort of CityStart grantees with a specific racial wealth equity focus; grantees are Buffalo, NY; Chicago, IL; Indianapolis, IN; Little Rock, AR; and Philadelphia, PA.
If you have any questions about the CityStart initiative, contact Sol Vilera Ramos, Senior Associate.
Summer Jobs Connect is an ambitious initiative spearheaded by seed funder the Citi Foundation and the CFE Fund to support young adults seeking summer employment, enhancing these municipally-led programs by integrating structural linkages to safe and appropriate banking products, services, and education. To date, the CFE Fund has worked with 25 city governments and their local Summer Youth Employment Program partners to provide additional job positions to local residents of predominantly low incomes between the ages of 14 and 24, as well as connect them to appropriate bank and credit union products and meaningful financial education.
The CFE Fund is supporting cohorts of new cities or counties interested in learning how to integrate banking access and financial education into their Summer Youth Employment Programs (SYEPs), through Summer Jobs Connect Academy. Summer Jobs Connect (SJC) Academy will guide cities and counties through each step of planning out their SYEP programming to improve youth financial outcomes and includes significant CFE Fund technical assistance, access to planning resources and information, and participation in a robust national learning community. Mid-way through SJC Academy programming, partners will have the opportunity to qualify for a grant of up to $50,000 to launch banking integration partnerships in their community.
Through the CFE Fund’s leadership, our city partner’s efforts and the Citi Foundation’s seed support of almost $40 million, Summer Jobs Connect has provided over 15,000 young people with summer work experience and connected financial empowerment services. Other supportive funders include The Skillman Foundation and the PNC Foundation. Beyond a seasonal paycheck, Summer Jobs Connect positions early job experiences as entry points for lifelong success in the financial mainstream.
Bank On coalitions are locally-led partnerships between local public officials; city, state, and federal government agencies; financial institutions; and community organizations that work together to help improve the financial stability of unbanked and underbanked individuals and families in their communities. In addition to connecting people to safe and affordable accounts, Bank On coalitions also work to raise public awareness, target outreach to the unbanked, and expand access to financial education.
The CFE Fund’s Bank On national initiative builds on this grassroots movement, supporting local coalitions with strategic and financial support, as well as by liaising nationally with banking, regulatory, and nonprofit organization partners to expand banking access, including through the first-ever Bank On National Account Standards, updated for 2023 – 2024. The CFE Fund announced an online Bank On account validation and certification process; banks and credit unions across the country, at no cost, can submit for validation products they believe meet the national Standards. The list of financial institutions offering such products continues to expand across the country.
The CFE Fund and Capital One announced the winner of the Multi-City Financial Empowerment Hackathon, a national effort to create software applications (apps) focused on financial inclusion. Representing San Francisco, MEDAPulse, in partnership with the Mission Economic Development Agency, won the national competition with a tool that helps financial counselors better engage with clients by using technology to remind them of the goals that clients committed to achieving between sessions.
Through a grant from Capital One, the CFE Fund provided funding and technical assistance to Chicago, New York City and San Francisco to host regional hackathons. Combined, hackathons in these cities had over 110 participants who worked in teams to create numerous apps, including budget trackers, goal-setting applications, financial achievement badges and financial action plans.