Location Category: montgomery_al

Montgomery, AL

CityStart

The CFE Fund’s CityStart initiative 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 to consider and expand access to wealth.

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 wealth extraction and accumulation impacting access to wealth; collect relevant data; and engage in intensive stakeholder roundtables to identify key challenges and opportunities. This also includes a 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; check out past CityStart blueprints from the City of Cincinnati and the City of Newark.

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. CityStart cities have historically leveraged their engagement with the CFE Fund to further their commitment to this work.

The CFE Fund is currently accepting applications for the next CityStart cohort. If you have any questions about the CityStart initiative, contact Sol Vilera Ramos, Principal.

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.

Since 2017, with generous funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the CFE Fund has been working to build a new movement of local government-led consumer protection efforts by supporting the launch of local offices of consumer protection, strategic planning efforts, targeted consumer financial awareness campaigns, and an ongoing national learning community.

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