Location Category: dallas_tx

Dallas, TX

Financial Empowerment Cities

Financial empowerment efforts best achieve high-quality scale and impact when they are integrated into, and led by, local government. Across the country, city and county leaders have turned to financial empowerment strategies to build their residents’ financial stability, with a number of localities moving beyond a single program or policy to a dedicated Office of Financial Empowerment.

Across more than a decade of work and 100+ city and county partner experiences, the CFE Fund has seen the importance of dedicated leadership to catalyze other opportunities, like connecting financial empowerment to Mayoral priorities, fundraising opportunities, and policy efforts. With generous support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the CFE Fund is supporting cohort of local leaders to launch and lead a newly established local Office of Financial Empowerment through our Financial Empowerment Cities (FE Cities) initiative.

Through the FE Cities initiative, the CFE Fund supports cohorts of local leaders, trained in a two-year training program. Each OFE Leader will work with the CFE Fund to launch and lead a newly established local Office of Financial Empowerment, managing existing and launching new financial empowerment programs and initiatives. OFE Leaders will also serve as the local government’s internal financial empowerment consultant; bring a financial stability lens to a range of related issues; and leverage their leadership role to ensure financial empowerment is central to local anti-poverty efforts. OFE Leaders also will be well-positioned to bring financial empowerment services and expertise into local racial equity efforts.

If you have any questions, please contact Kant Desai, Senior Principal.

Five New Cities Chosen to Develop Free Financial Counseling

Posted on by Katie Plat

In this March 2021 press release, the CFE Fund, with support from seed funder Bloomberg Philanthropies, as well as Capital One, the Citi Foundation, The JPB Foundation, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and the Wells Fargo Foundation, welcomes five new local governments (Columbus, OH; Dallas, TX; Jackson, TN; Louisville, KY; and Pueblo, CO) to the newest FEC Planning cohort after a competitive application process. They join 30 other local governments that have already launched, or are working to launch, FEC services that have already served 116,000 clients, helping them to reduce $160 million in debt and build $26 million in savings. 

Financial Navigators

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.

CityStart

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 Baltimore, MD; 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.

Local Consumer Financial Protection Initiative

People work hard to provide for their families and improve their financial circumstances. And while community organizations and social services across the country invest heavily in helping them, at the same time vulnerable communities have long been targets of fraudulent, predatory financial products and services. Just as local governments play an increasingly meaningful role in financially empowering their residents, they also can play a unique role in protecting residents’ hard-earned assets.

Building off of work begun by former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray, and NYC Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) then-Commissioner Jonathan Mintz, the CFE Fund was tapped to help local governments across the country develop and enhance their capacity to offer their residents consumer financial protection and empowerment. Local consumer protection agencies can augment financial empowerment gains by protecting consumer assets through licensing, regulation, enforcement, mediation, and outreach and education. Learn more about opportunities for local governments to protect their residents in the consumer financial marketplace on our new mini-site, www.protectinglocalconsumers.org.

In 2017, with generous seed funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the CFE Fund selected four local governments to launch local offices of consumer protection. These cities have each successfully launched their efforts, developing consumer complaint infrastructure, identifying enforcement priorities, and pursuing legislative reforms. The CFE Fund selected a second cohort of local administrations in 2020 to raise consumer awareness of and protect residents from COVID-19 related scams, and continue planning for broader consumer financial protection capabilities within the city, and selected a third cohort in 2021. The CFE Fund recently released a new opportunity for a fourth cohort of municipal partners to join the Local Consumer Financial Protection initiative, with applications due August 14. To learn more about the opportunity, watch our recent informational webinar here (password JdE=+20K).

Please contact Kant Desai, Senior Principal, with any questions or to learn more.

Financial Empowerment Center Replication Initiative

Financial Empowerment Centers (FEC) offer professional, one-on-one financial counseling as a free public service to enable residents to address their financial challenges and needs as well as plan for their futures. In partnership with seed funder Bloomberg Philanthropies, and additional generous support from Principal Foundation and the Wells Fargo Foundation, the CFE Fund is promoting FEC replication through cohorts of local leaders who are developing, launching, and implementing financial counseling as a free public service, along with strategic research projects to enhance the success of financial counseling. Get in touch to join as a supportive funding partner.

The CFE Fund is supporting cohorts of new cities or counties interested in launching a Financial Empowerment Center through FEC Academy, an expanded entry point to the FECPublic movement. The CFE Fund’s FEC Academy guides government partners through each step of planning to launch the FEC model of professional, one-on-one financial counseling as a local public service. FEC Academy includes significant CFE Fund technical assistance, access to planning resources and information, and participation in a robust learning community. Upon completion of the FEC Academy, partners will be equipped to mobilize the building blocks to launch the Financial Empowerment Center initiative in their community, including through leveraging federal funding streams like the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).   

The Financial Empowerment Center Model

Financial Empowerment Center clients receive free, one-on-one professional counseling assistance with money management, budgeting, reducing debt, establishing and improving credit, connecting to safe and affordable banking services, building savings, and referrals to other services and organizations. Professionally trained counselors support their clients in navigating complex financial challenges and choices, helping them identify and meet present challenges and future ambitions. Local governments offer FEC financial counseling as a free stand-alone public service, but also via integration into other social services including housing and foreclosure prevention services, workforce development, prisoner reentry, benefits access, domestic violence prevention, and more.

Financial Empowerment Center Evaluation Findings

In 2013, the CFE Fund awarded its first grants to replicate the model in five cities through a $16.2 million, 3-year investment by Bloomberg Philanthropies. An Evaluation of Financial Empowerment Centers: Building People’s Financial Stability As a Public Service, demonstrates the success of the 5-city implementation, drawing on data from 22,000 clients who participated in 57,000 counseling sessions across the first 5 city replication partners.