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Working Paper
Increasing financial capability among economically vulnerable youth: MY Path
The Make Your Path (MY Path) initiative provides disadvantaged youth with peer-led financial capability trainings, a savings account at a mainstream financial institution and incentives to set and meet savings goals. The program focuses on youth earning their first paycheck?a critical ?teachable moment? to promote savings and connect youth with mainstream financial products. In 2011-12, Mission SF Community Financial Center (Mission SF) tested MY Path by delivering its suite of services to ten agencies participating in San Francisco?s largest youth employment program, the Mayor?s Youth ...
Working Paper
The subprime crisis in suburbia: exploring the links between foreclosures and suburban poverty
In this brief, we provide an overview of patterns of subprime lending, as well as trends in foreclosures and REOs, in suburban communities compared to inner-cities. We also explore the relationship between foreclosures in suburban areas and the increased suburbanization of poverty. We find that the vast majority of foreclosures ?nearly three out of four (73.1 percent)?have been in suburban areas, and that suburban neighborhoods with higher rates of poverty are more likely to experience higher foreclosure rates. This is of concern because the mechanisms for addressing the challenges associated ...
Working Paper
From cashing checks to building assets: a case study of the check cashing/credit union hybrid service model
This case study examines the pilot effort of Community Trust Prospera (CT Prospera), a division of Self-Help Federal Credit Union, to combine the accessible services of a check-casher with the longer-term depository and lending relationship opportunities of a mainstream financial institution. CT Prospera is based upon the ?micro branch? business model, which centers around a retail branch that has a small physical footprint, similar to a check cashing outlet, and is designed to create an inviting, safe, and accessible environment for clients who may not feel comfortable entering a traditional ...
Working Paper
Comparative advantages: creating synergy in community development
The goal of this paper is to provide insights and tools to help community development practitioners, policymakers, funders, and other stakeholders better understand how to maximize the effectiveness and impact of different types of organizations at the local and regional level. Understanding your comparative advantages is critical to addressing complex community development initiatives from foreclosure prevention, to sustainable energy, to urban education, to job creation.
Working Paper
The new way forward: Using collaborations and partnerships for greater efficiency and impact
This paper uses seven short case studies of nonprofit housing and community development organizations to explore three different collaborative strategies that increase their efficiency and impact. These case studies include both recent and long-standing partnerships in affordable housing, community development finance, neighborhood stabilization, and transit-oriented development. It concludes with recommendations based on the examples, including effective strategies for successful innovation, collaboration, and partnership formation.
Working Paper
The new family philanthropy: investing for social and environmental change
The impact investing marketplace is gaining traction?investment vehicles now span asset classes, infrastructural improvements are enhancing transparency and investor confidence, and social enterprise is maturing with a new generation of entrepreneurs. On the investor side, industry growth is being driven by large institutional investors such as public sector pension funds, banks, and private foundations. Today, we are also seeing a growing movement by families who seek to realize their core values, and effect societal change, through their family assets. This paper focuses on family investing ...
Working Paper
CRA collaboratives and the San Joaquin Valley
California?s San Joaquin Valley is one of the nation?s most impoverished areas. Recent developments such as the foreclosure crisis and the Matosantos decision have heightened the Valley?s needs, and there is also evidence that the Valley is beginning to garner more attention from financial institutions and federal regulators. These developments create an opportunity for community-based organizations (CBOs) and financial institutions to work together in a mutually beneficial way. This paper describes how stakeholders have successfully collaborated to increase reinvestment in other locales, ...
Working Paper
Urban sustainability and community development: Creating healthy sustainable urban communities
Increased urbanization has also led to many challenges for urban residents. In the United States, land use and zoning, transportation and infrastructure, lack of affordable housing, and disinvestment have severely affected the quality of life of poor urban populations. Despite these challenges, opportunities do exist to make economically disadvantaged urban communities more sustainable, livable, and healthy. This working paper discusses the challenges facing urban communities and then considers the opportunities that exist to develop sustainable urban communities given our current economic ...
Working Paper
A new way to talk about small business: The time has come for a common language
There is a steady call for policies and programs to help small business lead the charge in hiring more workers and helping to restore prosperity to areas that have been hurt by the recession. To be successful, however, it is time for academics, policymakers, investors, community leaders, and business owners to have a more fruitful discussion about what small business actually needs. Such a discussion is imperative now, during a time of financial crisis, but it is also necessary if we are to help move the sector forward in the coming years. In this paper, we are proposing that we adopt a ...
Working Paper
Lessons on cross-sector community development: the Las Vegas Healthy Communities Coalition
The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, launched the ?Healthy Communities? initiative in 2010 to explore how the health and community development sectors can collaborate. A regional meeting took place in Las Vegas in January 2012, which led to the formation of the Las Vegas Healthy Communities Coalition (LVHCC), a collective impact initiative with a mission to ?foster collaboration and coordination across multiple sectors and stakeholders, to generate healthy outcomes for all Southern Nevadans.? This report details the formation and ...