CSL Receives Five-Year Grant to Expand Wealth-and Asset-Development
September 2, 2022 | By: Doug Cowan, CSL President & CEO
Over the years, I’ve written a few blog posts about CSL’s work in helping connect families to wealth- and asset-development opportunities. As you can read here, most of our work in this arena has been part of HUD’s Family Self-Sufficiency Program, and we’ve helped our neighbors at Hawthorne Place Apartments save more than $500,000 over the last five years. Twenty graduates have used their savings to buy a house which can have a multi-generational impact on wealth and asset-development.
That work at Hawthorne will continue in earnest in the future, but we’ve been brainstorming ways to use private funds to create opportunities to grow wealth and assets. To that end, I’m pleased to announce that the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation has approved a five-year, $875,000 grant to support further wealth- and asset-development programming at CSL. This is the largest philanthropic grant commitment ever received by CSL.
This wealth- and asset-development program will support a targeted area in NW Independence and Sugar Creek. Over the five-year engagement, enrolled families will develop their own savings, qualify for matched savings through this program, and will be in an active financial coaching relationship. Funds accumulated through the savings match will be kept in a separate account managed by CSL and withdrawals will be approved for pre-defined uses such as down payment for purchase of a home, capital to start a business, educational expenses, purchasing a car, or other purposes supporting individualized goals as determined by the participant and the Financial Coach.
Low-income families often struggle with unexpected/unbudgeted expenses and oftentimes don’t have the mechanisms to save money that allows the opportunity for asset development. This program will, among other outcomes, allow families to develop financial resilience and stability, and to use this as a springboard to economic opportunity. In preparation for this application, CSL staff hosted three listening sessions (one in Spanish) to gather staff and community input on the benefits of a program like this, and to help us address any blind spots we might have. Those listening sessions helped refine the program goals and outcomes.
For this new grant, CSL will be hiring a dedicated, bilingual staff member, and the program will be housed out of CSL’s BlendWell Community Cafe. Over the five years, CSL will be learning from the program and participants, and measuring neighborhood-wide impact so that future opportunities may be scaled to even greater heights and greater impact. This program will roll up through CSL’s Community Development wing, which is led by Jennifer Manuleleua, Vice President of Community Development, and we expect staff to be hired and the program up and running in Fall 2022.
On a visionary note, this is an area of work that will help define CSL’s future. We must continue to look for ways not simply to sustain families, but to bring them to economic empowerment and opportunity. When families have the means to have choice and voice, their futures are limitless. When we uplift families to great heights, we will transform neighborhoods, and stop generational cycles of poverty. The future is very, very bright at CSL, and this grant, especially in our post-COVID world, is an incredible lift and provides a great platform for our next generation of service.
Thanks,
Doug Cowan
