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.
Financial Empowerment Centers offer free, professional, one-on-one financial counseling to enable residents to address their financial needs and plan for their futures.
In this February 2014 press release, the CFE Fund and Bloomberg Philanthropies announce a second wave of In-Kind Technical Assistance grants to seven cities: Cleveland, OH; Hartford, CT; Hawai’i County, HI; Los Angeles, CA; Miami, FL; San Francisco, CA; and Seattle, WA. Participating cities raised private funds or redirected public funds to support direct program costs. To supplement these city efforts, the CFE Fund will provide robust technical assistance and capacity building resources to each city, fueling the expansion of the model and helping the cities to replicate and customize the public counseling model to meet local needs. The technical assistance grants come in response to overwhelming demand for Financial Empowerment Centers following the success of the expansion of the Financial Empowerment Centers to five cities in March 2013.