LEADOn! Article

LEAD PARTNERS Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund

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Cities for Financial Empowerment LogoThe Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund (CFE Fund) supports municipal efforts to improve the financial stability of households by leveraging opportunities unique to local government. By translating cutting-edge experience with large-scale programs, research and policy in cities of all sizes, the CFE Fund assists mayors and other local leaders to identify, develop, fund, implement and research pilots and programs that help families achieve financial stability, build assets and grow their financial resources. The CFE Fund is a national partner with the LEAD Center to develop integrated economic advancement strategies for people with disabilities.

Financial empowerment spans four key disciplines:

  • Professional financial counseling and education
  • Access to safe and affordable mainstream banking products and services
  • Short- and long-term asset building
  • Consumer protection in the financial services marketplace

The CFE Fund is building a movement of municipal leaders who have begun to integrate financial empowerment strategies into city service delivery. Launched by a pioneering field of municipal government leaders who have taken the charge to identify promising financial empowerment practices and to deliver these innovations and strategies at scale, the CFE Fund represents a vast array of approaches that have been designed and tested by cities, that leverage municipal platforms of power and politics to shift the way public antipoverty programs are designed and delivered.

With the ambitious agenda of formalizing and embedding financial capability and empowerment work into the fabric of local government, rather than only in the nonprofit sector, the CFE Fund works with local governments and those who partner with them to identify, implement and provide resources to innovative programming and program delivery streams. The CFE Fund is a project of Living Cities, a philanthropic collaborative of the world’s largest foundations and financial institutions dedicated to improving the lives of people with low incomes and the cities where they live. To learn more, visit http://www.cfefund.org/.