A Savings-Based Approach to Financial Bailout

The idea of $700 billion in taxpayer money to lessen the pain for irresponsible Wall Street firms is extremely hard to swallow, even when I contemplate the predictions of Bush, Paulson, Bernanke and others that we’re on the edge of some deep precipice for our economy. Yes, I believe things could get much worse and cause a lot of pain to people who had nothing to do with the excesses of Wall Street and the real estate boom, but will it really be bad enough to warrant a bailout in which the big winners are the already well-off (who stand to lose the most)?

I’m no economist, so I’ve gone looking for what some economists have to say about this bailout.

Apparently there are many who don’t buy in to the fear of imminent Armageddon if Congress doesn’t pass a bailout package in a matter of days, and who are collectively calling for much greater discussion of how the government should respond to this crisis.

One of those economists, Alex Tabarrok, recently wrote on the blog Marginal Revolution of his notion that we need to more strongly incentivize savings as the core of our national response to the crisis, including increased tax benefits for retirement savings accounts and a possible retirement savings match for people below a certain income.

Not many of his fellow economist readers were quick to rally around his idea in their comments: perhaps a lot of the readers of this libertarian-tilted blog have a strong suspicion of government action of any kind, including tax-based incentives for thrift and savings by average households.

Nevertheless, his larger point seems to be that our country’s negative savings rate is a huge part of our economic problem, and that we won’t make fundamental progress without finding mechanisms to grow the savings of American households.

I wonder if Alex is a fan of the savings-focused policy proposals of the New America Foundation’s Asset-Building Program. 

One of the commenters on Alex’s post mentioned the existing Saver’s Credit, which is much like the savings match component of the proposal that Alex made.  New America and CFED and others in the asset-building field want to see the Saver’s Credit made refundable, which would significantly enhance the impact for low-income savers, allowing it to be a more powerful savings incentive of the kind that Alex proposes.

It sounds like the Wall Street-focused bailout is a foregone conclusion at this point.  What interests me more is whether this economic crisis will help legislators come together around savings-based policies when a major tax bill is considered during the next session of congress, or if it will simply further deplete the government’s financial capacity (and the will and imagination of our legislators) to integrate asset-building into major federal initiatives?  We’ll see.

Assets Learning Conference: Farewell “Asset Development,” Hello “Matched Savings Account”

Many leaders at the Assets Learning Conference talked about how phrases like “asset development” and “individual development account” don’t mean anything to the average person and shouldn’t be used outside a very narrow community of practitioners. I heard numerous speakers discuss moving beyond those words entirely. It felt a bit like the poor word “assets” was sitting in the front row for its own funeral.

For me, it was the session called “A Path to Stability: Matched Savings Accounts for Foster Youth” that put the nail in the coffin for “assets.” It really opened my eyes to a new way of thinking about this work.

For the partnerships participating in the exciting “Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative,” relatively formulaic notions of what constitutes asset-building (first time home ownership, small business investments, etc.) have been tossed aside. The matched savings are typically “invested” in non-permanent expenses like rental housing, vehicles, etc., which is about all that would make sense for youth transitioning out of foster care. They often spend their savings in small increments, and can remain in the program for as many as 10 years — saving and spending, saving and spending.

So in this case, it’s not just that the words “asset development” don’t mean much to the average person. It’s that these foster youth IDA programs have really shifted the emphasis from achieving some big asset goal (which is how I’ve often viewed the individual development account) to engendering a continuous process of individual capacity-building by teaching financial and other basic life skills, encouraging small steps toward independence, and allowing the youth to take responsibility, make mistakes and learn from them the way middle class youth might do.

I started to see the act of saving and the decisions about how to invest those hard-won savings — whether it be for a first home or for a first set of steak knives — as having perhaps a greater influence on personal development than the “asset purchase” itself.

In a previous post I noted how disappointed I was not to be able to attend a session on the Family Independence Initiative and its non-paternalistic approach to unleashing a family’s capacity for financial security. That concept of a relatively hands-off approach to delivering matched savings really intrigued me for being so different from the standard fare. These foster youth programs, although not so hands-off, are also pushing us to think more expansively about building assets through the tool of matched savings, positioning the savings as much more than a means to a specific end.

I’m not sure how this evolution will influence my work going forward, but I suspect it will show up in some significant ways.  Thanks to Christine Johnson of CMJ Consulting, Kippi Clausen of Mile High United Way, and Dominique Jones of the New York City Administration for Children’s Services for sharing their innovations.

Assets Learning Conference: Plenary III on Nonprofit Innovation in Serving the Unbanked

I should have known it would be hard to focus on blogging the conference while also meeting everyone I want to meet, figuring out innovative new strategies and initiatives, asking questions, eating, sleeping a bit, and even remembering to call the wife and kids back home this evening (one of whom, not my wife, has apparently contracted a case of head lice from God knows where and wishes I were there to help comb out the louse eggs: how can the Assets Learning Conference compete with that for entertainment value!).

Anyway, I’m sure the conference will be fodder for blog posts for weeks (that’s my way of saying don’t expect too much today), but I’ll take some time now to reflect a bit on the Plenary about Nonprofit Innovation this morning, which was a real highlight for me.

After an introduction from Andrew Plepler, President of the Bank of America Foundation, Jennifer Tescher of the Center for Financial Services Innovation took the podium. She noted that we have shifted from a society of savers to a society of borrowers, and that to a certain extent our zeal for home ownership has obscured the importance of some other financial service needs. 

With CFSI’s recent nonprofit financial service innovation RFP, they received more than 130 proposals and selected 4 pioneering organizations, including organizations directed by two of the panelists.

Looking over the entire portfolio of applications, Jennifer noted certain categories of innovation that were being put forward with some frequency:

1. Innovative product design in financial services: Pre-paid debit cards (nascent industry, but it’s exploding); Products linking transactions to asset building; Responsible payday loan and refund anticipation loan substitutes, often incorporating savings features; and more.

2. Innovative marketing and distribution: meeting customers where they are, such as at tax sites, and incorporating financial education into popular media such as the Nuestro Barrio telenovela, as on view in the screening room, and more.

3. There’s a lot of work being done around non-traditional credit-building tools.  In this economy of tightening credit, we simply can’t over-estimate the importance of the credit score.

4. Innovative partnerships aimed at providing better service delivery.

Jennifer reminded us there’s something important we can’t forget when designing financial services with an asset building purpose: as the United Way’s Brian Gallagher said, we need to offer true integration, not just collaboration.

Which brings us to the big question: how do we reach scale? What are the mechanisms that allow financial services to effectively build assets in a scaleable market? That would be the over-arching theme for the panel.

Jennifer introduced Steve Zuckerman of the Center for Community Self-Help, which operates one of the largest community development credit unions in the country. Steve’s project in Self-Help’s California office was to look at the gap being filled by check-cashers, understand how that market works, and try to develop a service that would meet the same need at more affordable rates through a micro-branch model.  Their idea is to meet the customers where they are, and also add the products and services that create a stepping-stone to asset-building.  It’s a strategy in formation.  They haven’t actually opened a micro-branch yet, but they received the CFSI grant and the necessary charter approval.

Jeff Zinsmeyer, Director of the D2D Fund, talked about an innovation I’ve mentioned previously on this blog: prize-linked savings. They recognized that savings is boring, but that gambling isn’t boring.  And we’re a country that spends more on gambling than on fresh fruit.  They had a study that told them 4 out of 5 low-income people believed that the lottery was the only way to obtain significant wealth.  So the innovation they’ve been exploring is how to join those two things together — the boring (but virtuous) thing, savings, with the exciting (if not so virtuous) thing, gambling. The innovation is something that has been done successfully in a number of other countries. And after some interesting pilot tests in the U.S. market, they’re now trying to bring together a big group of credit unions to be able to offer significantly more prize money and test out the effects of larger prizes.  A fascinating project.  There must be many circumstances in which we could imagine introducing a substantial prize incentive to boost asset-building behavior.  I’m sure I’ll be thinking about variations on this concept for a long time to come.

The third speaker, Johnette Hartnett of the National Disability Institute, didn’t really stress a single innovation that was being brought to market, so her remarks were a bit less structured, but she did point out that they have some 550 partners on the ground in the Real Economic Impact tour, which provides quite a laboratory in which to research and monitor progress.

Some interesting points came out in the Q&A. For example, I was struck when Steve noted that in some cases Self-Help has had to acknowledge that a for-profit check-casher might have the most valuable pre-existing relationships on the ground, so Self-Help wanted to find ways to partner with those check-cashers and build on their relationships (the nonprofit is not always the one with the most direct contact to the target low-income customer).

Regarding building partnerships with financial service firms, Jeff said they often find that the most important person to talk to is an operations person as opposed to a CRA person.  They might have the CRA/community affairs person make the introduction to operations, which is where they’ll determine if they can really build an alliance around this idea of prize-linked savings.

With sponsor Andrew Plepler of Bank of America having left the room, Jennifer jokingly said she felt comfortable pointing out that credit unions are obviously front and center in this work, as we can see simply from the projects being featured on this panel.  Why such a big role for credit unions, she wondered.

Jeff pointed out that although you can work well with commercial banks, there’s often a trade-off.  They might be able to scale faster because of their size. But the bureaucratic levels you go up to make decisions can be stifling.  D2D found that the credit unions could move very quickly, which is important for innovation.  In a single meeting you can talk to the entire operations staff, and then you walk into the office of the CEO and the decision gets approved. Jeff acknowledged, however, that to get into more urban markets and denser populations, eventually you need to be working with commercial banks, too.

Addressing marketing and distribution, Jeff explained how D2D has done a lot of work around messaging and imagery regarding the practice of saving.  Typically, you see a lot of people walking on the beach and sitting in rocking chairs.  This works for the middle class.  But D2D found through an intensive interview process that the middle class imagery actually creates anxiety for lower-income families, thus reducing the chance of saving. The imagery that works for lower-income people tends to revolve around saving for children.  So they’ve gotten some of the credit unions to re-cast their imagery, making it less abstract.  The imagery needs to be more family-oriented.

After the panel, CFED’s President Andrea Levere came to the podium to make some remarks. She noted yet again that innovation is why we’re here: we’re all innovators.  And she knows that some people have wondered what’s with the light bulb we keep seeing around the conference venue? It’s part of the symbolism for a brand-new CFED program called “innovation@cfed.”  What they’re trying to do is accelerate the process of innovation by bringing together the different sectors and raising up the work that’s not well known but needs to expand. The initiative has 3 core elements:

1. “Innovators in residence.” CFED will seek out some of the most creative innovators who are ready to move to action and maximize their work through collaboration with CFED.  $50,000 stipends will be provided to help refine and expand their innovations.  The innovator can be physically or virtually in residence; in other words, you don’t have to pull up stakes and move to DC. The first round of applications will be due in January, it sounds like. Wow, what an exciting prospect for this field, to have a kind of innovation lab available.

2. Showcase innovative ideas, not just those from the limited number of innovators in residence. CFED will be looking to feature these ideas online, at events, etc. And there are CFED staff at the conference who are already on the lookout to collect ideas.

3. Organize an innovation summit, staring in 2009 (the first one will be part of CFED’s 30th anniversary celebration).  This will allow innovators to exchange views, strengthen collaborations, and find new partners. 

Andrea said we should all go to innovation.cfed.org to check it out. I wonder if I’m the first person to be signed up as a user of the site. (I didn’t see an obvious link yet from the main CFED site, so don’t start out looking there.)

She concluded with a nod to Langdon Morris for his contribution to CFED’s plans for this innovation project. He brought systematic thinking to how they would structure it. And they feel there’s been no more important time to inject new resources for innovation into th field.

I couldn’t agree more, and I look forward to learning all about CFED’s plans to support innovation and about how the field will respond.

Assets Learning Conference: Plenary II on Bringing Asset Building to Scale

The question of scale seems to be on everyone’s mind here, and it’s a favorite topic of mine, so I was glad we had an early foray into the topic with “Plenary II: Leveraging Leadership and Markets to Bring Asset Building to Scale.”

The panel members included:

Andrea Levere, President, CFED

Margaret McKenna, President, Wal-Mart Foundation

Brian Gallagher, President and CEO, United Way of America

Ken Wade, CEO, NeighborWorks America

Jeff Hayward, Senior Vice President, Fannie Mae

Ron Grzywinski, Chairman, ShoreBank

Andrea Levere recognized the conference sponsors, and asked the “scholarship” attendees (generally younger newcomers to the field) to stand up and be acknowledged.

She also gave a nice shout-out to me for my blog posts, and gave a top 10 exciting new things at this year’s conference: my blog came in at number 8 (not bad).

After going over a lot data from the new assets scorecard, she suggested that we borrow a term from the financial sector and think about advancing our work into “diverse asset classes.” We need to push the full range of asset-building opportunities (if you push the financial sector metaphor, diversifying our assets work might reduce risk for our field in situations when certain asset classes are performing poorly but others may be making gains — which is an interesting way of looking at it).

Andrea added that for many years, we (and many policy experts) have tended to focus on increasing the home ownership rate as the holy grail. But really we need to focus on the rightful role of home ownership within a broader strategy.

She feels we and our elected officials have systematically underappreciated the importance of small business ownership for asset building. In our current major policy efforts, the account structures do not encourage business investments to be made with matched savings, which is a real drawback. We have 4-6 million businesses operating underground. We need to use the tax code (that exciting Schedule C for self employment income) to bring those businesses aboveground and help them grow wealth. CFED has a new major initiative to change that.

Recognizing that “human capital development is the economic development strategy of the 21st century,” CFED is partnering with United Negro College Fund to match UNCF’s ability to organize scholarships with CFED’s ability to do financial education and manage savings and matching funds. CFED feels that these tools need to come together to have a significant impact on building aspirations. That combination is an interesting one.

She concluded by referencing a Jack Johnson song, “Better Together.” That’s what this conference is all about, she said. We should think of our wildest ideas and figure out how to make them happen. That’s what CFED wants to spur.

I’ll just hit on some highlights (for me) of the what other speakers discussed during this plenary:

1. Margaret McKenna of Wal-Mart Foundation said they’re about to announce a big program for veterans. 1.6 million returning vets need something to help them transition into careers. The new GI bill has money, but 90% of the returning vets who use it have been dropping out (really?). Their foundation wants to help them get the support they need to stay in school and make a successful transition. I hadn’t heard of the gravity of this problem, so that got me thinking.

Brian Gallagher, President of United Way of America, said a phrase he uses a lot is “We’re not going to social service our way to change in our country.” That’s definitely a statement that must shake up the United Way agencies around the country. (As a local United Way boardmember in charge of allocations, I’ll have to think about whether I can say that in front of a room-full of agency directors, many of them social service directors.)

Brian also noted that United Way’s EITC effort with Bank of America has resulted in $400 million more in EITC money for the communities in which the programs have operated.

Ken Wade of NeighborWorks America argued that we’re going to have to create a sustainable model for home ownership counseling for everyone, even in rural places. The mortgage origination process is just too complicated now for most people to navigate on their own. When it’s fee-driven, you can’t expect to get responsible advice all the time. Consumers need a trusted advisor, whether it’s a home purchase or a re-finance, which can be just as devastating. We need to figure out how to fund the availability of that trusted advisor for everyone, especially low-income families.  This is an important point on the question of getting to scale.

Jeff Hayward of Fannie Mae noted the importance of their manufactured housing initiative. Manufactured Housing can be a source of really affordable, non-subsidized housing. But as a product it has some systematic flaws. Since the transaction doesn’t involve land, just the house, people weren’t able to get a standard loan. So they couldn’t take tax deductions, etc. But that’s changing. This new initiative is helping people to own their communities (the land underneath) with the help of ROC USA that formed out of the successful model created in New Hampshire. This is a model of wealth building that can be replicated around the country. Fannie Mae has made a $10 million commitment to make that happen (and apparently commitments like that aren’t threatened by the conservatorship in which Fannie Mae has been placed by the federal government)

Jeff also re-iterated that he believes savings is the absolute key for wealth. He seemed to echo some of the conversations going on around creating a culture of thrift, pointing out that we need to get back to a world in which people take pride in bringing their nickels to the bank. And that’s going to take a focus on education early, early, early in life.

Ken Wade of NeighborWorks said we really need to do a better job of understanding what motivates folks to make the decisions they make. We live in a highly consumer society, and the notion of savings runs counter to that environment. We need to understand what drives people to make financial choices, and try to work in alignment with their actual motivations. Sounds like another plug for behavioral economics.

Brian Gallagher of United Way is of the opinion that increasing incomes needs to be a priority that comes ahead of savings because people simply need more income before they can save. Personally, I agree that both areas need attention, but I haven’t seen as many promising strategies on the income question as on the savings/asset question, and I like the strategy of building on strength. I’d like to know who’s doing a great job of raising incomes in a particular community, and how they’ve done it, so maybe I’d have a better idea of what works. Brian didn’t get into specifics, so that may be a topic for some other conference.

Assets Learning Conference: Opening Plenary

Our first plenary of the conference , titled “Advancing the Assets Agenda,” featured:

Merle Lawrence, Senior Manager-US, Worldwide Community & Corporate Citizenship Department, Levi Strauss Foundation (sponsor of this session)

Josh Nasser, Vice President for Federal Affairs, Center for Responsible Lending

Peter Orszag, Director, Congressional Budget Office

Carol Wayman, Senior Legislative Director, CFED

Ray Boshara, Vice President, Domestic Policy Programs, New America Foundation

Elsie Meeks, Executive Director, First Nations Oweesta Corporation

CFED’s President Andrea Levere made introductory remarks, asking us to reflect on the anniversary of 9/11 with a moment of silence. She mentioned that they chose Washington DC this year to show the full power of the movement we’ve created, and to help us dedicate ourselves to bringing the movement to scale. Today, there are 73,000 IDA accounts, and there’s new data on the impact that we can use to build the movement.

With today being legislative advocacy day at the conference, Merle Lawrence noted that this is the largest gathering of asset advocates ever, with over 1,100 people in attendance.

Merle said she had 5 simple messages for her 5 minutes:

1. It’s about taking action now.
2. Organizing our constituents is more important than ever in a time of economic crisis.
3. We need to continue to accelerate innovation in our field, and she foresees much happening at the municipal and neighborhood level.
4. This movement is fundamentally about equity across diverse communities.
5. Yes, you can lobby, and you must.

Their foundation understands that public policy work is hard, sometimes controversial, but they believe it must be done. With modest resources, they’ve found that public policy advocacy is one of the most important things they can do. It’s a highly leveraged investment. They were the first corporate funding of the American Dream Demonstration. They provide support for state coalition building. And the list goes on and on.

She concluded by saying that challenging times like we have today are a catalyst for change: we’ve tested the tools; we’re in it for the long term; we can make much more substantial change happen if we’re willing to remain dedicated to this work we’re doing today.

Andrea Levere returning to the podium to repeat the axiom that one of the true measures of leadership is who you hire, so she feels pretty good about herself for hiring Carol Wayman, who has really “gone for it” in her role as Senior Legislative Director. She has brought in an amazing diversity of partners.

Carol reminded us of the broad policy objectives laid out at the 2006 Assets Learning Conference in Phoenix.

1. Remove disincentives
2. Expand savings and asset building infrastructure
3. Provide savings incentives
4. Preserve the asset gains once they’re made

She noted that people can handle incremental change. It’s true of your personal life, and true of policy. In that spirit, the field has succeeded in its push for reform of asset limits on food stamps, succeeded with automatic enrollment into retirement plans, succeeded in action on split refunds. We’ve now got $8 million for VITA sites. We’ve preserved AFI and ORR funding for IDAs, and increased funding for microenterprise development. We’ve passed the Beginning Farmer and Rancher IDA program. We shouldn’t feel that this is a do-nothing congress when it comes to asset-building.

Josh Nasser of the Center for Responsible Lending then took the podium to note that the bad economy has highlighted the importance of everyone’s work around responsible lending, where his organization is focused. He’s encouraged by the recent action at the Federal Reserve to put in place new rules for mortgage lending, which would have prevented many of the problems we’re having today. He hopes the Senate will take up anti-predatory lending legislation, and he’s happy to see that the House Financial Services Committee is putting forward a credit card reform bill, aimed at curbing abusive practices.

Josh noted that this period we’re in now has demonstrated the need for stronger consumer protection practices, so that when the sub-prime market comes back, it operates in a much more responsible way.

Peter Orszag of the Congressional Budget Office kicked off his remarks by noting that his children refer to it as the “Congressional Boring Office,” but he’ll try to keep us from dozing off. He offered a Cliff Notes version of his remarks to start us off, which the blogger in me loves to hear. Just two major points, he said:

1. More Pscyhology 101, less Economics 101 when it comes to public policy on retirement and a host of other issues. In area after area, “norms” have a far bigger impact than the typical understanding of economics would suggest. (He didn’t mention Thaler and Sunstein’s “Nudge,” but I think he’s talking about the same basic concept.

2. Health care costs are crowding out so much else (bad news), but we have substantial opportunities to get some big gains in efficiency by replicating what works well in the states/regions that keep costs low while still providing top-quality care (good news).

On the first point, he said the most compelling example comes from retirement savings (participation rates in company 401k plans). When you look at the actual data, a large match rate doesn’t get you the same kick in participation as automatic enrollment (regardless of the size of the employer match). Policy makers haven’t paid sufficient attention to the power of these “defaults,” but that needs to change.

Regarding the other problem — an unsustainable fiscal course related to health care costs — Peter elaborated on his Cliff Notes version to note that we could potentially save $700 billion by not “overpaying” for care that fails to demonstrate better outcomes (based on medicare data).

The jaw-dropping anecdote for me was Peter’s point about the placebo effect,which is frequently discounted, but it’s often more important than intervention effects. He described a study in which researchers monitored hotel housekeeping staff after telling a group of them that they were engaged in physical exercise in the course of doing their job, while telling nothing to the rest of the housekeeping staff. Simply as a result of learning that their job is equivalent to physical exercise (no other intervention than that, thus making it a placebo effect), that group’s weight went down significantly. That’s pretty extraordinary.

Next we moved on to Ray Boshara of New America Foundation and Carol Wayman again to describe the 4 major legislative priorities of the asset-building field, which were also discussed in the earlier Lobbying 101 session (which I blogged about here).

Ray made a strong point that we shouldn’t talk about “assets” in most circumstances, even with policy professionals on Capitol Hill. We need to use language like “enduring aspirations” and the “raw material of the American Dream,” because then it feels more real than the asset development lingo that our field often uses.

The plenary ended with comments from Elsie Meeks of First Nations Oweesta Corporation. The terminology she likes to use is “wealth-building.” She said that when she talks to policy makers about how you really can build wealth for the poorest group of people in this country, native Americans, those policy makers pay attention. And although one might think that “native country” isn’t big enough to command much attention from members of congress, she feels that in general they’ve really been on board with it. The legislators want to know solutions. They want to be in on fixing real problems. So her final words of encouragement, directed primarily toward those heading off on Hill visits in the afternoon, are: “Don’t be afraid. Don’t apologize.”

Assets Learning Conference: Lobbying 101

I wasn’t able to do a “Hill visit” today, but I was still curious about the advice CFED would give to those headed out to meetings with legislative staff.

Merle Lawrence of Levi Strauss Foundation gave an introduction, thanked the participants, and said she believes that public service advocacy work is absolutely essential, that participants would be doing their American duty by conducting such advocacy.

Then Rosalyn Crain and Carol Wayman, CFED’s Legislative Manager and Senior Legislative Director respectively, took over this first session of the conference with strategies on lobbying for an asset building agenda.

Carol said that 43 states would be represented in today’s Capitol Hill assault, with over 350 people getting on the buses to go up to the Hill for a total of more than 800 meetings!

She noted that the congressional staff that people will meet with are primarily the tax policy people, so the visits should focus on support for 4 matched savings/investment account acts that are built around the tax code. With what is going to be a huge tax bill next session (as we approach the expiration of President Bush’s tax cuts), there will be major opportunities for new tax legislation, and we want that legislation to include savings opportunities. And just as important as the bills themselves, we need to build strong relationships with those legislative staff.

In the spirit of relationship-building, Carol gave some thoughts on how to open up the conversation. Since almost everyone in the room operated an IDA program, participants were encouraged to talk about their IDA savers and the inspiring stories or data from the program.

In the hill visit packets, the participants were given a list of 18 different bills that relate to savings and asset development, and people were told to look for whether their legislator has co-sponsored any of the proposed bills so they could thank the staffmember for their support of key issues.

The packet also contained a picture of the legislator for that district, the location of the meeting, and many other items to help people be prepared for the visit, including talking points about the 4 major bills that CFED encouraged people to focus on.

The most important piece of advice, in my opinion, was to be sure to ask directly for the legislator’s support for those 4 major acts. As a long-time fundraiser, I know how important it is to get to the ask. The same is true in advocacy. Yes, you want to build rapport, but at a certain point you need to make it clear what you want. If you ask politely but with conviction, they’ll respect you for having a very clear objective and telling them so. I love that CFED provides a form in each packet so that at the end of the visit, when people return to the conference, they can indicate whether or not that member of congress is likely to support the different pieces of legislation based on the response to asking them for co-sponsorship of each bill. Everyone is strongly encouraged to turn in that form when they return to the conference so CFED will have a better understanding of the positions or hesitations of various legislators whose support could ultimately be critical to passing any of these bills.

Then Rosalyn told us a bit about the bills themselves, with some input from Justin King of New America Foundation.

1. ASPIRE Act, HR 3740, would provide a $500 government contribution for each child born in the U.S., plus a match for low-income children. So far, only a small handful of legislators have co-sponsored it, but the big push will be in the next session of congress. On the Senate side, it hasn’t yet been introduced, but at the appropriate time Sen. Schumer is primed to introduce the legislation.

2. Saver’s Bonus Act would expand the opportunity for low-income people to invest in savings vehicles from their tax return, and it would provide a match for people up to 120% of the EITC eligibility who choose to save in one of those approved ways. Looking for additional co-sponsors in the Senate (NJ Senator Menendez is the lead sponsor), and it still needs to be introduced in the House.

3. Savings for Working Families Act would support major expansion of IDAs by providing a tax credit vehicle for financial institutions to match up to $500/year for an IDA saver and receive a credit for it. This is intended to relieve a lot of the burden for raising local match (it wouldn’t replace AFI, but would complement it). Carol suggested that participants should probably lead the meeting with this bill, since it relates so directly to the work on the ground by IDA programs (which is what the majority of the participants are most involved in).

4. Retirement Savings for Working Families Act, HR 2724, would expand the “Saver’s Creditby making it fully refundable, which would allow it to reach 60 million low-income people. Carol reminded people that although this is thought of as a retirement bill, those savings can be tapped for home ownership. So if you get people into a 401k with an employer, utilize an employer match, and then get the Saver’s Credit on top of it, a person can put together some real money pretty for a modest personal savings contribution each year. And they still have the right to “borrow” up to $10,000 from the retirement account as a one-time home ownership investment, and funds can also be borrowed to use for higher education costs.

Someone smartly asked how to respond to the “How will you pay for it?” question. Carol suggested that we can remind the congressional staff that we’re talking about relatively small amounts of money for these bills serving low-income people compared to the $100 billion-plus annually for mortgage interest and property tax deductions (which many lower-income people don’t get to take advantage of), and $100 billion-plus for retirement account support through tax deductions (once again low-income people often aren’t getting much benefit). For families with household income over $1 million, the asset subsidy is about $167,000 per year. If you earn under $20,000 per year, your asset subsidy is under $3 per year (the earned income tax credit counts as an income subsidy in that calculation, I suppose because it’s not directly tied to ownership of an asset).

Justin King pointed out that the Saver’s Bonus Act hasn’t been “scored” yet for exact cost analysis, but their rough estimate is that bill will cost $1-3 billion in total over 10 years., a fairly low cost item compared to most of what’s in the tax code.

Carol noted that they’re so focused on tax-related strategies because for every $1 dollar in asset-building discretionary funds (AFI, Office of Refugee Resettlement, etc.), there are over $500 in tax code-related asset subsidies (most of which go to higher-income people, as noted above).

She also reminded participants that although they want to be prepared, they shouldn’t feel that they have to know how to answer every question; they can refer the congressional staff to CFED and New America for more information, and try to bring the conversation back to the importance of getting some assistance to low-income people and the stories they can share of what a difference it makes.

Assets Learning Conference: Thursday Screening Room

Here’s an Assets Learning Conference tidbit that I didn’t know about until this evening: A number of films about asset building will be screened in the hotel theater at various points during the conference, funded by sponsor Merrill Lynch.

The individual screenings aren’t listed in the conference program (they’ll be announced in the “newsletter” tomorrow, the program notes), so consider this my first-ever news scoop (of course, I should mention that I didn’t have to meet an informant in a dark underground parking lot to get this scoop — someone at CFED just emailed the roster to me, and I’m pretty sure she was well aware I would put it on the blog).

All showings will be held in the “Screening Room” on the lower “Ballroom” level. The list below is just for Thursday (look for Friday’s schedule in a post tomorrow); the descriptions are straight from CFED:

8:25 a.m. – 8:35 a.m., SEED Video

What would it look like if every child in America were born with an account in his or her name at birth, and could save over their childhood for their goals and their dreams of a home, a business or an education? A new video by CFED takes a look at the Savings for Education, Entrepreneurship and Downpayment (SEED) Initiative which seeks to answer that question by spotlighting children and youth who are saving in SEED accounts in Arkansas, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Colorado. These young savers are just a few examples of the 1,300 children and youth testing the idea of Children Development Accounts as part of the SEED Initiative in twelve community organizations across the country.
CFED, 2008 (10 mins)

8:40 a.m. – 9:00 a.m., Pursuit of the Dream: Cars and Jobs in America
Low-income workers who are trying to reach self-sufficiency, stabilize their finances and move up the economic ladder must be able to connect to good jobs and meet family obligations. A car is often a necessity. However, common obstacles such as overpriced and unreliable cars, sub-prime (high interest rate) loans, high down payments, hidden purchase costs and the limitations caused by poor credit histories can prevent them from improving their lives through car ownership. Pursuit of the Dream; Cars and Jobs in America, produced by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, explains the importance of affordable, reliable transportation for building the economic success of low-income families and their communities. The documentary features the stories of three real-life families who struggled with the pitfalls that low-wage workers often face when purchasing a car, and shows how they overcame them.
Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2008 (22 mins)

9:05 a.m. – 9:30 a.m., Nuestro Barrio – Episode 4
Manuel and Marisol Diaz are Latino immigrants who have it all: their own family restaurant, great marriage, beautiful home, two handsome sons, and a community of friends who look up to them for their financial savvy. There’s just one problem; Salvador, the vengeful owner of a local night club, wields an old secret that Manuel knows could destroy him. As the secret unfolds, it soon becomes clear that there is even more at stake than Manuel had feared. If you and your family didn’t catch Nuestro Barrio during the recent TV broadcast, you can enjoy it here at the 2008 Assets Learning Conference. Come along and live each person’s story. At the heart of all the twists and intrigues, you may even discover the financial secrets that will help you realize your own dreams. Spanish with English Subtitles (13 episodes, each 25 mins)
Community Reinvestment Association of North Carolina, 2006

2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m., Living With a Hole in Your Pocket
Working families face one challenge after another trying to survive and get ahead. A new documentary, Living with a Hole in Your Pocket, produced by CFED, Northwest Area Foundation and the Twin Cities Public Television Network explores why living in poverty makes saving and getting past day-to-day struggles difficult.
CFED, Northwest Area Foundation and Twin Cities Public Television Network, 2008 (60 mins)

4:00 p.m. – 4:10 p.m., SEED Video

4:15 p.m. – 4:30 p.m., Mission Asset Fund: Investing in the American Dream
The Mission Asset Fund is a new neighborhood-based, community-led, asset-building organization that seeks to expand access to financial services, savings and investment opportunities for low-income immigrant residents of San Francisco’s Mission District. With support from the Levi Strauss Foundation, MAF commissioned this video to share insights from our two-year planning process where we engaged over 300 low-income Mission residents to gain their input into the development of MAF’s mission, structure and programs.
Mission Asset Fund/Louise Vance Productions, 2008 (14 mins)

Assets Learning Conference: Game On

Just arrived at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City for the 2008 Assets Learning Conference. Only 15 minutes left for people who want to register today and receive the lovely Mercado Global Conference Bag (made by “women artisans in cooperatives throughout Guatemala’s Highlands — now that’s a tote bag worth keeping!) containing the program, name badge, etc. Later arrivals will have to wait until tomorrow to be fully accessorized for the conference. A man who was sitting in the lounge chair across from me is now down on the floor looking under the chair for his name badge, which he managed to lose in the course of walking about 25 feet from the registration table; he’s very agitated about it.

There’s a nice buzz in the air. Some people are just getting out of their pre-conference sessions on “Financial Education” and “Native Asset-Building.” A man and a woman nearby are deep in conversation about some asset-building tools they’re working on — I’m not proficient enough at eavesdropping to really get the scoop.

Someone just walked by carrying a three-foot long statue-like object made of newspaper. Not sure if that’s related to the conference events.

A couple of groups of people who clearly haven’t seen each other in a long time are reuniting over by the registration table, while the CFED staff there are trying to wrap things up for the day.

I see a number of young men in red shorts and blue blazers with some kind of insignia on the lapel. Are they part of our conference, or could they be participants in the much more exciting “World Schools Debating Championships” happening here simultaneously, featuring the champion debate teams of 39 different countries? Maybe I’ll go blog some of that too. Stay tuned.

Assets Learning Conference: How on Earth Will I Choose (Part Four)

Less than a week till we head to DC for the 2008 Assets Learning Conference. Less than a week, and I still haven’t previewed three of the four sets of concurrent sessions offered at the conference. I just haven’t had time to really focus on which three sessions I’ll attend out of some 35 or 40 options in those three time slots (my thoughts on the 2nd set of concurrent sessions are posted here, and my thoughts on the two sets of roundtable sessions are here and here).

So next I’ll tackle the Thursday afternoon time slot from 1:45 – 3:15pm (Concurrent Sessions 1). My job is made a bit easier by the fact that Thursday afternoon is when “Hill visits” are scheduled (when attendees are encouraged to make group visits to Senators, Representatives and their staffmembers), so there are no policy track sessions offered during this time slot.

I’ll move right along to the practice track sessions. Option 1 is “Involving Teens in Banking and Investing.” As a father of two, I think a lot about what it will take to prepare my daughters for the financial challenges of their adulthood (and those challenges don’t seem to be getting any easier). FDIC Community Affairs Specialist Lisa Kanemoto will speak, along with Robert Wynn of Wisconsin-based Asset Builders of America and LaKia Williams , community development specialist for conference sponsor Capital One Bank. Many communities have financial education programs for teens, and many of those programs don’t do a great job of connecting with teens. I hope these speakers have inspiring examples of programs that really impact teens; that would be a valuable service.

One question I often have about EITC campaigns: would many of the participants not have filed for the EITC were it not for the campaign. I think free tax filing is great, primarily because it discourages the use of refund anticipation loans and saves considerable amounts of money on tax preparation. But one of the big selling points is often how much EITC money is brought back to the community as a result of the campaign, but I haven’t seen research on EITC campaigns demonstrating how many of their participants wouldn’t have filed for the EITC otherwise (by utilizing a control group, for example). Anyway, that’s why I was struck by the opening sentence of the session description for “Advancing the Assets Agenda to Americans with Disabilities:”

“The real Economic Impact (REI) Tour has mobilized over 400 community-based practitioners and national partners to bring awareness to serving and reaching workers with disabilities who are neither filing nor receiving the EITC.”

That’s strongly asserted, so perhaps their program more directly addresses my previous question of how many participants wouldn’t have filed for the EITC otherwise, which would be exciting to hear about from speakers Tobey Davies of the Center for Community Economic Development and Disabilities, Richard Keeling of the IRS, and Johnette Hartnett of the National Disability Institute. (And I’m sure there are other good examples of research on the impact of EITC campaigns getting people to file for the credit who would not have otherwise done so — I encourage anyone to share them with me.)

Conferences often have a few sessions that end up being infomercials for the services of consultants to the field (not that the field doesn’t benefit from being aware of those consultant services, and those professional consultants are often very engaging speakers, but such sessions still typically end up being less exciting to me than those that come from field practitioners themselves). At first I was ready to put “Assets for Life: Extend Your Agency’s Capacity with Allied Professionals” into that category, but two things make me take it more seriously. First, the “allied professional” being featured (Saundra Davis) is not a national consultant who seems to be out looking for business, but instead appears to be focused on the San Francisco community and isn’t likely to find work from the asset development programs in all the other communities around the country that constitute most of the 1,200 or so attendees at the conference. Second, the other speaker for the session is Emily Waterbury of EARN, one of the premiere asset development organizations in the country. That gives me a lot of confidence that this session will have genuinely helpful ideas on how best to identify and involve outside experts in your program.

“Portable and Relocation IDAs: Moving Beyond Place-Based Asset Building” is a concept that appeals to me for its potential to open up the IDA tool to a larger community of savers who might be able to benefit from it. RAISE Texas appears to have a solid foundation in asset development and would provide a strong introduction to asset-building in Texas for anyone interested. I’d also be interested in connecting with Odessa Adams-Payne, another speaker at this session, who runs an IDA program for the United Way of Greater New Orleans. I know that many United Ways around the country support IDA programs (I’m on the board of one that does), but I believe it’s a smaller number of United Way that actually operate IDA programs themselves, an approach that I would be curious to hear more about.

The session hosted by the Family Independence Initiative in Oakland sounds very exciting to me. I sometimes find myself feeling uncomfortable with the sense of paternalism that can accompany an IDA program like mine — the custodial accounts, the restrictions that only allow the match funds to be spent on an approved asset purchase. FII seems to reject (or at least strongly reconsider) those aspects of asset development: trust and non-paternalism are their key values, even at the risk of awarding funds to families that could theoretically make poor choices with the money. FII seems to encourage the creation of networks of family members sharing responsibility for financial decisions, and they claim to have impressive results — a pilot program in which twenty-five low-income families increased their net worth by 300% in three years. If I were not attending the business roundtable all afternoon on Thursday, “Summoning the Power of Family and Community in Building Assets” is the concurrent session I would attend.

The final practice session on offer Thursday afternoon is hosted by the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions about the expanding role of credit unions in delivering asset building services. I’m glad there’s an opportunity for the credit union community to be featured in a session at the Assets Learning Conference — they are crucial to the web of services available to low-income families — but I feel pretty well acquainted with the role of credit unions and don’t know that I would learn a lot of new material from this particular session.

Moving on to the research track, I’m glad to see that folks from the Institute on Assets and Social Policy (IASP) at Brandeis University in Boston are participating in a key research session on “Re-thinking the Middle Class: Financial Insecurity Among the Non-Poor.” IASP is the closest asset research center to me (two and a half hours away), and I’ve started to become familiar with their work: they are conducting an evaluation of asset development programs run by a network of community action agencies in Massachusetts, and I chair an advisory board for the program operated by Berkshire Community Action Council serving Berkshire County. This particular research session doesn’t seem to be focused on IDA programs per se, but rather a more general assessment of financial insecurity.

Not surprisingly, the other two research sessions during the Thursday afternoon time slot are heavy on influence from the Center for Social Development (CSD) at Washington University in St. Louis, the amazingly active asset research center chaired by the almost mythical (to me) Zeus-like creator of IDA accounts, Professor Michael Sherraden. A session on “Building Assets in Native Communities through EITC and Tax Preparation” will be led by Kristen Wagner at CSD, along with Linda Austin of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo near El Paso, Texas.

It took a little sleuthing to notice that the three speakers for the session titled “SEED Research: A Test of Children’s Development Accounts” all have ties to CSD. Margaret Clancy serves as Policy Director for CSD and has authored or co-authored many of the papers on SEED. Edward Scanlon, on the faculty at the University of Kansas, got his PhD at Washington University, as did Trina Williams Shanks (pdf format link), who’s now on the faculty at the University of Michigan. As I’ve mentioned previously, the idea of universal children’s development accounts is of great interest to me, so I’d love to learn about the research on SEED, but with my participation in the business roundtable I think I’ll have to be content with reading research papers online.

Four sessions in the innovation track are being offered Thursday afternoon. The first is “Community Development Approaches to Home Ownership,” featuring Oramenta Newsome and Annetta Jenkins of LISC’a offices in Washington DC and South Florida respectively. LISC (Local Initiatives Support Corporation) is a central fixture of the larger community development world in which asset development initiatives occur. If “asset development” is a toolbox, then “community development” is the entire hardware store. I’m sure LISC wouldn’t claim to own the store, but they’re certainly one of its most dependable workers, trying to put the right tools in the right hands for an amazing assortment of projects. It would be great to hear the experiences of several LISC experts on home ownership strategies.

The Center for Financial Services Innovation has several opportunities to show off its exciting work at this year’s Assets Learning Conference (CFSI, founded in 2004, has really hit its stride in the last couple of years). One of those opportunities is “Prepaid Cards: Innovations in Creating Financial Access for Underbanked Consumers.” My community, although it has a large low-income population, has a really exceptional network of locally-based banks that do a terrific job of meeting the financial services needs of most people in the community (check-cashing shops are practically non-existent). So I’m less familiar than I would like to be with the role of pre-paid cards for the underbanked. CFSI’s Sarah Gordon, along with partners Tam Doan of the Center for Community Change and Jean Hunt of the Campaign for Working Families, will be covering that ground in this session.

“New Innovations in Asset Building that Leverage Markets to Reach Scale” is an appealing session title, but the rest of the description leaves me unsure whether I would find the material all that valuable. The speakers (Carl Rist of CFED, Peter Barnes of Tomales Bay Institute, and John Logue of the Ohio Employee Ownership Center) are certainly an interesting group. I know that Peter Barnes is quite involved in proposals for a carbon cap and dividend program (as opposed to a cap and trade program) to make sure that fees paid for carbon permits are distributed to households to offset the increases in fuel costs. But I don’t know how you get from there to building assets by leveraging the carbon absorption capacity of the sky. There must be a connection somewhere. The employee ownership concept certainly has a more obvious relevance to asset development; I’d be interested to hear more from John Logue about his work in Ohio. And I have no clue what’s meant by “new forms of economic risk insurance to protest assets. Could be interesting, or could be a waste of time. Hard to know.

The notion of “shared ownership” opportunities, as mentioned in the session description for “Building Assets/Building Wealth through Shared Ownership — National Perspective,” seemed vague to me at first, and I didn’t immediately make the connection to the more specific concept of “shared equity” homebuying that was familiar to me already. The Center for Housing Policy, with support from Beadsie Woo (pdf link) of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, seems to have done the most in-depth research on the practice of shared equity for making home ownership more permanently affordable. I’d be interested to hear what CHP has learned from studying shared equity initiatives.

That’s all for tonight. More to come soon.

Assets Learning Conference: How on Earth Will I Choose (Part Three)

Next stop on my preview tour of the upcoming Assets Learning Conference in Washington DC: “Roundtable Sessions 1,” scheduled for 3:45 to 4:45 pm on Thursday, September 11, the first day of the conference. (In my backwards way, I already previewed the “Roundtable Sessions 2″ on Friday, as well as “Concurrent Sessions 2,” also on Friday.)

Living in rural Vermont, option 1 is definitely of interest to me: “Finding Better Ways to Reach and Serve Rural Communities.” The idea of recruiting IDA participants at Farmer’s Markets is intriguing, and it may become routine practice for certain organizations as federal funding for farmer IDAs becomes available through the most recent Farm Bill. Carol Coren of Cornerstone Consultants, who will lead the session, seems to have worked hands-on in every area of the asset development field (and many other fields), including rural development, job training and cultural economic development.

I commented briefly on the “Outcome Tracker” roundtable session in the third paragraph of my last post, so I won’t bother to repeat myself. VistaShare is offering what appears to be the same session during both roundtable periods for those who are interested in learning more about their IDA account management software.

As a huge fan of the acclaimed but short-lived TV show “Arrested Development,” I feel like I really should attend the session “What If You Didn’t Get the EITC All at Once?” I don’t recall any Arrested Development episodes about the EITC (most of the members of the Bluth family were full-time unemployed so wouldn’t possibly have been able to earn the EITC). But the Arrested Development reference is rattling around my head because this roundtable session is facilitated by Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution and Steve Holt of HoltSolutions. Try googling Steve Holt: you’ll find a Canadian musician, a vegetarian bodybuilder, the guitarist for Alaskan Metalcore band 36 Crazyfists, and of course the fictional class president/moron/perpetual senior on Arrested Development. My apologies to this particular Steve Holt, who I don’t think is any of those mentioned above — this one obviously has terrific expertise with issues surrounding the EITC, and I was glad to read his informative background paper on “Periodic Payment of the Earned Income Tax Credit,” a concept which seems like it could potentially complement the efforts of IDA programs and other asset-building initiatives that aim to promote regular saving habits. Nevertheless Steve, if during your roundtable you see someone waving a fist in the air and shouting “Steve Holt!” at random moments, you’ll know why.

Option 4 during this time slot is a roundtable hosted by HUD staffers Anice Schervish and Kathryn Greenspan, “Asset Building in Public Housing.” Anice is affiliated with HUD’s Resident Opportunity and Self-Sufficiency (ROSS) Programs, and Kathryn’s programmatic focus seems to be the Housing Choice Voucher Family Self-Sufficiency Program. Both of those HUD programs provide significant resources for asset-building in communities served by public housing authorities. Personally, I find the language of HUD somewhat difficult to parse (the distinctions between homeownership voucher programs and FSS programs, for example), so a session like this might be helpful just to grasp some of the basics, although it sounds like it would be a case of learning the language by immersion.

The fifth roundtable option is perhaps the most intriguing to me: “Financial Social Work: A Successful Long-Term Financial Behavioral Change Model.” This session is led, appropriately enough, by Reeta Wolfsohn, Founder of the Center for Financial Social Work in Asheville, North Carolina. I would be delighted to attend this session if it offers an approach to financial education that truly goes deeper than what we typically think of as financial training. I’m sure that most financial trainers understand that imparting knowledge is not the same thing as changing behavior and they try to bring motivation as well as education into the classroom. Still, if the Center for Financial Social Work knows how to create behavioral change more consistently with replicable strategies, then practitioners throughout the field ought to learn that model. On a side note, I recently saw that Reeta took the initiative to submit an online “project idea” to the American Express Members Project, in which cardmembers vote to determine which social change ideas will receive a piece of AMEX’s $2.5 million pie. I haven’t studied all the entries this year to see if any others appear to be coming out of the asset-building field, but I hope that her financial social work proposal will garner lots of votes and lots of money: click through to vote starting September 9. (My asset-building Members Project idea last year didn’t pick up steam, but never fear, I’ve kept working on it since then because I do think it has legs, and I’ve connected with some like-minded people to see if we can make it happen even without a jumpstart from AMEX.)

The roundtable on “Market Expansion: AFI and People with Disabilities” will focus on AFI program models developed by Allies, Inc., in New York and New Jersey. Strangely, there’s no listing or bio for the session facilitator, Emad Samad, on the staff page of the Allies, Inc. website. Perhaps Emad works on the IDA program as a consultant rather than a salaried employee. Anyway, asset-building is all about inclusion in financial opportunity, so I love learning more about how organizations like Allies, Inc. open up asset development tools for people with disabilities.

The 7th Roundtable option Thursday afternoon is “Social Security and the Assets Agenda: Complementary Roles.” This sessions appears to ask the question, can you be in favor of individual savings through asset-building programs while not being in favor of the privatization of social security that would allow individual workers to save their FICA contributions into private accounts? The session is facilitated by Matthew Baumgart of the Aspen Institute’s Initiative on Financial Security and Virginia Reno of the nonpartisan National Academy of Social Insurance. I’m particularly interested in the work of the Aspen Institute, whose financial security initiative is billed as “the nation’s leading policy program that uses a business-driven approach to create smart solutions that help Americans save, invest and own.” I took a look at their “Savings for Life” report (pdf format), which covers their major proposals for universal savings vehicles delivered through the financial services industry with government-funded matching incentives for low-income savers. I like where they’re coming from, and would be glad to see their savings proposals get traction. I’m sure Matthew will have compelling thoughts on the relationship between social security and asset-building efforts, but I have to say I’m even more interested to hear from Lisa Mensah, Executive Director of the Aspen Institute’s Initiative on Financial Security, when she makes the case for children’s savings accounts during the third round of concurrent sessions on Friday afternoon.

Another roundtable option on thursday afternoon is “Does Your Native Community Need an IDA Program?” led by Leslie Newman of First Nations Oweesta Corporation. I didn’t see a bio for Leslie on Oweesta’s website (maybe they’ll include it here as a comment — Oweesta’s VP Stewart Sarkozy-Banoczy was kind enough to add some detailed comments to a previous post about the conference in which I discussed another session involving folks from Oweesta, and perhaps he’ll chime in again, hint, hint). In any event, I’m confident that anyone associated with Oweesta will facilitate a terrific conversation about when IDA programs make sense for native communities.

If you want a break hearing from asset development experts and instead want to hear from experts in web-based technology for nonprofit social change in general (about how to better use the web for your asset-building initiatives), attend the roundtable titled “Learning the CCC: Create Media that Connects with Your Consumers.” One Economy Corporation has a strong track record in that area. Not that One Economy’s Lee Davenport isn’t an asset development expert in his own right (the massive tax prep program he built at New York’s FoodChange has been on my radar for a while as I’ve thought about the intersections of nutrition, agriculture and asset development), but he has brought that direct experience in our field to an organization that looks across a wider spectrum of social needs from a technology slant. And he will be joined as co-facilitator by One Economy’s Director of Communications and Media Relations, Austin Bonner.

And finally, before I could finish this post CFED added a 10th option for the Roundtable 1 sessions (they want to keep me busy): “Homeownership Done Right: Communicating About Homeownership in the Face of the Housing Crisis.” Certainly no organization knows more about homeownership done right than NeighborWorks America, so to have this session facilitated by Neighborworks’ Applied Research Manager Lindley Higgins makes perfect sense. And with CFED presenting “findings from the Assets and Opportunity Special Report on the role of homeownership in household wealth,” I expect this to be a meaty discussion. I’ve blogged previously about how great it is to have facts from CFED on the relative success of IDA home buyers in weathering the foreclosure crisis; it just adds further credence to our claims about why asset development strategies are so important. I expect that many more good talking points will emerge out of this Roundtable session.

Which of these 10 will I attend, you ask? Actually, none of them. I was lucky enough to be invited to sit in on the Invitational Business Roundtable that afternoon, in which employers and policy experts will discuss workplace asset-building strategies. I’m sure you’ll hear something from me afterwards about that, and if any of you want to send me favorite snippets from whatever roundtable you attend that afternoon (assuming you don’t make a Hill visit instead), I’d love to post thoughts from other conference attendees on this blog. Don’t be shy. It takes a village to blog a conference. I’m at blair93 (at) gmail.com.  I hope to hear from you.