pittsburgh_pa | Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund

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.

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

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 2025 – 2026. 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.