THE SUPERVITAMIN QUARTERLY
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Letter from the President & CEO
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We last sent out the
Supervitamin Quarterly
in early March, in an entirely different world. The COVID-19 pandemic has upended how we work and how we live – our most basic priorities. And yet, with the world askew and in crisis, our professional priorities are almost surreally the same: individuals and families in financial crisis … pressing problems facing local governments that must be addressed … and that can be addressed.
Simply put, the relatively new field of municipal financial empowerment comes to the fore as anything but a luxury; instead, it is a fundamental aspect of help and recovery. Across the nearly hundred cities and counties with which we work, local government leaders are turning to financial empowerment as a central component of their emergency response efforts. Alongside critical public health efforts, cities are prioritizing responding to the financial impact of the pandemic on residents – especially with high-quality financial counseling, access to safe and affordable banking products, and consumer financial protection efforts.
City leaders are marshalling Financial Empowerment Centers to help residents connect to public benefits like unemployment, budget in the face of income volatility, and work with creditors to figure out more advantageous interest rates or payment plans. Our FEC partners have completely pivoted to offer remote services, ensuring that vulnerable residents can access trained, professional, data-driven assistance with their finances from home – and in response, FECs are seeing increasing demand for these services. The CFE Fund is also working to support cities without FEC initiatives in helping residents navigate financial issues; we recently released an RFP for a new Financial Navigators initiative, described in more detail below.
In addition, Bank On's premise that people need safe, mainstream banking accounts is never more true than now. Given both financial distress and social distancing constraints, people must be able to affordably and reliably receive remote deposits (including wages, stimulus payments, unemployment benefits, and more) and electronically pay their bills. The CFE Fund has been supporting Bank On coalitions across the country in leading the charge to connect their residents to certified accounts, and federal regulators helped supercharge these efforts by directing the public right to them.
Consumer financial protection is also unfortunately a part of disaster response; predatory actors often look to take advantage of vulnerable populations during an emergency, such as with fake virus-mitigation products, scams meant to steal stimulus payments, and false claims of government program benefits. The CFE Fund’s first cohort of city government partners in our Local Consumer Financial Protection initiative have been leveraging the consumer alert platform and policy powers that mayors can deploy; we
today announced
a new cohort of government partners who will work on COVID issues as a first step towards building broader consumer protection capacity. Cities without this infrastructure have also been working to solicit tips and complaints, make price gouging illegal, and
warn consumers about and
prosecute financial scams.
For cities and counties with existing financial empowerment infrastructure, these critical programs and services were ready to grow to meet the challenge; for dozens of others, they are starting quickly. For the field, this sad proof of concept is a strong motivation to barrel forward, and so we do, together.
All of us at the CFE Fund hope you stay safe, healthy, and productive.
Thanks, as always, for your partnership.
Jonathan
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The CFE Fund’s
FEC Public initiative
,
with seed support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, and Capital One, the Citi Foundation, The JPB Foundation, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo, supports local governments in working to launch professional, one-on-one Financial Empowerment Center (FEC) counseling as a free public service for residents in need.
In the face of the COVID-19 crisis, partners across the country quickly realized the critical role that FEC needs to play as part of local government’s emergency response efforts. Local government leaders quickly began highlighting the availability of FEC counseling services within their emergency response messaging; partners used press releases, daily briefings, and city and county social media accounts to promote FEC services as a COVID resource.
As residents lost income through layoffs or reduced hours, many partners reported an increase in demand for services from new clients – some as high as 40%; in addition, all counseling services had to pivot to remote counseling in light of COVID-19 social distancing requirements. The CFE Fund made a number of enhancements to its national FEC infrastructure to facilitate remote financial counseling for FEC Public government partners. These include changes to the FECBOT database, such as developing electronic consent forms and creating new COVID-related indicators to help partners better track counselor efforts and report on FEC impact. The CFE Fund also disbursed significant additional funds to expand FEC capacity with additional trained counselors.
The CFE Fund also convened an ongoing FEC Learning Community around COVID-19 issues, bringing FEC counselors and managers from cities and counties across the country to share best COVID-era counseling best practices and lessons learned from their own experiences. Finally, the CFE Fund is investing in additional financial counseling content development and training in anticipation of a range of new needs as a result of COVID-19, ranging from budgeting with unemployment insurance, managing economic stimulus funding, access to banking, and dealing with consumer protection issues.
Finally, the City of Aurora, IL; the City of Sacramento, CA; and the City of Shreveport, LA all recently launched their own local FEC initiatives. The CFE Fund currently is working with 30 cities and counties to replicate the FEC model, and will release an RFP for the next Planning cohort of FEC partners later this year – stay tuned!
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In response to COVID-19, city and county partners without existing FEC infrastructure identified the importance of helping residents navigate the financial impact of the pandemic. In response, the CFE Fund created the new Financial Navigator program, with generous emergency support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, Citi Foundation, JP Morgan Chase & Co., and Wells Fargo.
Financial Navigators will triage residents’ financial issues, and provide warm referrals to resources that support financial stability, such as unemployment insurance, and public benefits. The CFE Fund recently released a Request for Proposals from cities and counties across the country to launch a Financial Navigators initiative. Stay tuned for the CFE Fund’s announcement of selected grantees.
To learn more about the Financial Navigators initiative, contact
I-Hsing Sun
,
Principal.
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The CFE Fund’s
CityStart initiative
, with support from the JPMorgan Chase Foundation and others, helps local governments kickstart municipally-led financial empowerment for their city through a structured public bootcamp and blueprint process.
Current CityStart partners are working on completing their blueprints, which outline their vision for municipally-led financial empowerment efforts. Many partners are framing their blueprints around COVID-19 and its financial impact on residents.
The CFE Fund will release the next CityStart opportunity in the Fall, which will include a focus on financial empowerment efforts related to COVID-19
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The CFE Fund’s national Bank On initiative, with seed funding from JPMorgan Chase Foundation and multiple additional funders, supports local coalition and financial institution efforts to connect consumers to safe, affordable bank accounts. Bank On played a critical role in facilitating COVID-19 federal stimulus payments.
In response to COVID-19 and the availability of Economic Impact (stimulus) payments, the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
(FDIC), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) all guided stimulus payment recipients to the CFE Fund’s new
COVID Banking
webpage on their sites, particularly highlighting those certified accounts that could be opened entirely online by new customers and steps on how to use the account to receive stimulus funds and other payments. The CFE Fund also widely distributed a new partner toolkit to facilitate local highlighting of the importance of Bank On certified accounts for stimulus and other emergency payments and how to connect to online-openable certified accounts The CFE Fund has now updated these resources to more broadly highlight the importance of safe bank and credit union accounts during COVID-19, including or receiving unemployment benefits.
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The CFE Fund recently announced a new milestone: there are now over 50 banks and credit unions offering accounts certified as meeting the
Bank On National Account Standard
s
!
These accounts are available in over 24,000 branches across the country, in all 50 states and Washington, DC.
Finally, the CFE Fund has joined field staff from the FDIC, as well as Bank On certified account partners, in dozens of virtual financial institution roundtables across the country. During the roundtables, financial institution partners learn about the Bank On movement and the value of Bank On account certification, and can ask questions about the certification process.
To learn more about Bank On, or request the CFE Fund’s assistance in producing your own local banking roundtable, contact
David Rothstein
,
Principal.
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E
arlier this month, the CFE Fund and the Citi Foundation announced the seventh year of the Summer Jobs Connect initiative.
This summer, most of the 16 SJC partners are pivoting to virtual employment programs for youth participants, such as online work readiness and career exploration training, accompanied by financial education, social and emotional learning, and digital literacy instruction. Other opportunities will include virtual internships with public and private employers; assisting with COVID response efforts (conducting community needs assessment/surveys and contact tracing); supporting US Census outreach efforts; and in-person job experiences where cities have re-opened after COVID restrictions. In addition, the SJC team has worked with Summer Youth Employment Programs and their financial institution partners to develop remote bank and credit union account opening options for these young workers.
In addition, the CFE Fund welcomed seven new Summer Youth Employment Programs into the Summer Jobs Connect community. Municipal SYEPs in Baltimore County, MD; Denver, CO; Jacksonville, FL; Madison, WI; Oakland, CA; St. Paul, MN; and Syracuse NY have been awarded Planning Grants to develop innovative approaches to connect SYEP participants to safe and affordable banking products, services, and education. These cities will plan toward launching their SJC projects next summer.
Finally, the CFE Fund kicked off its annual #SummerJobsConnect social media campaign. The campaign engages youth participants from SJC cities to share their experiences working a summer job, managing their paycheck, and using a safe banking account. Follow along on Twitter and Facebook using #SummerJobsConnect, and check out our Summer Jobs Connect
Instagram account
!
Also see more about Newark’s Summer Jobs Connect pivot in our guest column below by their mayor
, Ras J. Baraka.
To learn more about Summer Jobs Connect, please contact
Jonathan Barrata
,
Associate.
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With generous support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the CFE Fund is excited to announce today the selection of 5 new partners who will work to build out local consumer protection efforts. Chattanooga, TN; Detroit, MI; Philadelphia, PA; Shelby County, TN; and St. Paul, MN will begin planning a communications campaign to raise consumer awareness of and protect residents from COVID-19 related scams, and continue planning in the coming months for broader consumer financial protection capabilities within the City.
The first cohort cities in this initiative, with the support of both the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation,
(
Albuquerque, NM
;
Denver, CO
; Nashville, TN; and
Salt Lake City, UT
)
successfully launched their local efforts, and continue to build their consumer financial protection capacity. For example, Albuquerque recently launched a voluntary mediation program for tenants facing eviction in partnership with the local municipal court, and passed a COVID-responsive anti-price gouging local law; Denver recently began a new partnership with its District Attorney’s Economic Crimes Unit to provide outreach support on issues of elder financial abuse and scam prevention.
To learn more about the Consumer Financial Protection Initiative, contact
Kant Desai
,
Principal.
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Guest Column: Mayor Ras J. Baraka
City of Newark, New Jersey
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It is no surprise that summer in the City of Newark – like summer all across the country – is different this year. This summer, in addition to the protests around police brutality and systemic racism that have spread across the country, our community is dealing with the health and financial impacts of a global pandemic.
Against this backdrop, for the first time in three decades, the City of Newark’s Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) is faced with a challenge so great that, in order to remain viable and safe for the upcoming summer session, radical adjustments are needed. Due to social distancing requirements, many businesses that were slated to host SYEP internships are closed; in-person work is just not feasible. However, my administration knew that these summer jobs would be critical for young people to meet the economic and employment gaps that the pandemic has caused. Summer jobs are more than temporary work – they are a chance to earn a paycheck, explore a new career, enter the financial mainstream, and take steps towards a stronger financial future.
With support from the CFE Fund and the Citi Foundation, we worked to quickly pivot our summer jobs program to meet the needs of the young people in our community. In 2020, the City of Newark SYEP will serve 3,000 young people through a new "Learn and Earn" model. Youth will earn a weekly stipend for participating in a combination of college prep, financial literacy, and career development webinars led by local leaders; self-guided work readiness training modules powered by LRNG (such as workplace communication, personal branding, resume writing, social media etiquette); and project-based learning (including projects co-designed with employers and local organizations that meet long-term business needs).
One critical piece of our SYEP has been the financial education and banking access that we’ve been able to add into the program as part of our participation in the CFE Fund’s Summer Jobs Connect initiative. As our program moves to a remote model, the financial empowerment components are coming, too! The Young Money Managers program, where youth provide financial coaching and mentoring to other SYEP participants, will be available over video conferencing. Young Money Managers introduce their fellow participants to banking options, help them develop and budget for a savings goal, and track their progress together; last summer, nearly 2,000 young people set a savings pledge, and committed to saving almost $400,000 of their summer paychecks. Youth will also have access to MyPath, an online platform that promotes savings and provides resources like online budgeting tools and savings calculators; we have also added additional financial education components to the LNRG work readiness training. Finally, young people will be able to register for direct deposit online for their stipends, so they will quickly and safely receive these funds.
This summer has presented new and complicated challenges for the City of Newark, but throughout everything we’ve never lost sight of the importance of giving young people the tools to continue to learn and earn – to turn a summer job into the building blocks for a promising future.
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News from the CFE Coaliton
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Boston OFE Launches Stimulus Hotline
The Boston OFE set up a
Stimulus Hotline
,
assisting low to moderate income residents with their Economic Impact (stimulus) payments. Through the hotline, residents can also get directly connected to resources, including
Bank On accounts
, and ask other questions about their finances. The hotline has already received over 16,000 calls.
NYC Launches Financial Counseling for Taxi and Limousine Drivers
The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) launched its Driver Resource Center, offering legal services, financial counseling, health and mental health referrals, and public benefits application support to all TLC-licensed drivers and medallion owner-drivers. Financial counseling and legal assistance services at the Driver Resource Center are operated by the City’s Office of Financial Empowerment (OFE).
Philadelphia Joins Fines and Fees Network
The City of Philadelphia
joined
Cities & Counties for Fine and Fee Justice.
San Francisco Releases Brief on Kindergarten to College Savings During COVID-19
The San Francisco Kindergarten to College (K2C) program is set to
release a brief
showing that COVID-19 has resulted in slightly decreased savings, but high engagement. Despite the shelter-in-place order, almost 100 families still traveled to a branch and made in-person deposits in April 2020.
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Current Grant Opportunities
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Career Opportunities at the CFE Fund
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Financial Empowerment "In the News"
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