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Financial Security: A Breakdown
By Rashmi Joshi on 07/29/2011 @ 05:00 PM
As CFED begins its 2012-2014 Strategic Planning process, CFED Communications Intern Rashmi Joshi takes a look back at what we’ve accomplished during the 2007-2011 Strategic Plan phase in a series of blog posts. You can read last week's post here.
Welcome back to our new series that analyzes the successes of our Strategic Plan for 2007-2011! This week’s post will discuss the successes of the objectives that CFED initially set for Financial Security. For all four years (2007-2011), CFED set out to provide opportunities to achieve financial security for the millions of Americans who face hardships that prevent them from building wealth. One goal that was set throughout the lifespan of the Strategic Plan was to positively impact 50 million individuals through policies that provided asset-building opportunities. The assumption here, of course, was that CFED was part of a movement behind the passage of these policies. CFED performed consistently for the past four years, positively affecting an estimated 43 million Americans through policy change. Therefore, we achieved 86% of our goal.
The statement of these findings brings to light an obvious question is: How did CFED measure the number of individuals who were positively affected? We defined an individual asset-building opportunity as an Individual Development Account (IDA), Children’s Savings Account (CSA), Matched 529 Account, employer matched retirement account, and any other matched savings account. In order to calculate the number of individuals who held one of these accounts, CFED tracked the AFI funding as proxy, multiplied this number by two to determine the total funding (including non-federal matches), and divided that amount total by a set per-account amount.
What kind of state and federal policies did CFED support that allowed for these asset-building opportunities? The answer lies in the other measure used to track CFED’s progress in achieving its goals within the category of Financial Security. Starting in 2009, CFED set a goal of achieving 100 state or federal policy changes that supported asset building each year. This goal was met by 96% until the third quarter of 2010, when CFED dramatically increased its effectiveness in policy change. From Q3 2010 onwards, CFED has met its goal of creating 100 policy changes towards asset building at the state or federal level per year by 115%. (2011 figures are in the process of accumulating, and are therefore excluded from this study.)
Achieving 115% or even 96% policy changes that support asset building seems like a difficult task. In order to calculate this figure, we asked ourselves the question: Did a positive legislative or regulatory change happen? The answer was yes, several of the policies that we supported went above and beyond in meeting this criterion.
Overall, CFED met its goals regarding the first measure – providing asset-building opportunities to 50 million Americans – with a 96% success rate. From 2009 until late 2010, CFED held a 96% success rate for its goal of obtaining 100 federal or state policy changes. This, combined with CFED’s 115% success rate with which the goal was met in the last quarter of 2010, creates an average 98% success rate with which CFED accomplished the second measure within the Financial Security category of the Strategic Plan – that is, the measure of state and federal policy changes that supported asset building. These successes demonstrate CFED’s unique ability to transform abstract issues of low-income communities into real-life solutions that can sustainably improve their quality of life. In this way, CFED continues to make strides in providing pragmatic, viable solutions to the financial crises faced by underprivileged communities.
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