Stay Informed!

By Sean Luechtefeld on 03/22/2010 @ 11:22 AM

Tags: Events, Assets & Opportunity Campaign, Innovation

On Wednesday, March 17, CFED and the Northwest Area Foundation (NWAF) hosted a Webinar titled Struggling to Make Ends Meet. The Webinar featured information about CFED’s 2009-2010 Assets & Opportunity Scorecard and results from Struggling to Make Ends Meet, the poll conducted by Lake Partners in 2009 to assess how American families perceive their financial situation as we emerge from an ailing economy. The Webinar included discussants Andrea Levere, President of CFED; Kevin Walker, President & CEO of NWAF; and Tresa Undem, Vice President of Research at Lake Partners.

The Webinar was, to say the least, fascinating. Certainly, those of us working in the assets field are all too familiar with the ways economic downturn has a real, tangible impact on American families. Sadly, we see this everyday in our communities and with the people we seek to serve. Yet Struggling to Make Ends Meet presented some interesting ways of thinking about some of these issues that not everyone typically recognizes when thinking about their financial situations. Furthermore, the information was presented in a way that was accessible and really allowed participants to wrap their heads around some of the jarring statistics that were discussed.

Because I found the Webinar so informative, I’ve decided to share some of the highlights and my thoughts with you here. If you attended, let blog readers know what stood out to you by using the comments section below. If you have questions, send me an email and I will do my best to send you in the right direction.

• Tresa Undem of Lake Partners reported on research done by her organization that found that although the federal poverty level for a family of four in the United States is set around $22,000 per year, two-thirds of families perceive needing around $40,000 per year just to make ends meet.
• Tresa also pointed to research findings that suggest that 60% of participants surveyed perceive people in their communities to be struggling due to conditions beyond their control. In other words, by a ratio of 2-to-1, participants perceived the financial situations of members of their community to be out of their control rather than within their control.
• Andrea Levere, CFED President, shared the finding that 22.5% of families are asset-poor. “Asset-poor” is defined as the condition whereby the individual or family could not survive at least three months at the poverty line without income.
• Andrea shared the chilling statistic that 1 in 3 households with children are considered asset-poor, showing just how vulnerable children and their families are to asset poverty.

Like I stated already, it isn’t like we’re unfamiliar as a field with the depth of the economic downturn and the way that it impacts low- and moderate-income families. Sometimes, though, it’s helpful to learn information like this to help put these issues in perspective. Hopefully you find this information valuable, too. If so, pass it along to your colleagues – starting a conversation is often the first step in planting the innovation seed.

I also want to thank the Northwest Area Foundation for hosting this Webinar with CFED. They do some amazing work, and we’re lucky that such a great organization is supportive of our work!

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