Stay Informed!

Contact:

Jan 6, 2009

Innovation@cfed To Find Next Generation Of Poverty-Alleviation Strategies

Innovation@cfed To Find Next Generation Of Poverty-Alleviation Strategies

Contact: Kristin Lawton, 202.207.0137

Washington. D.C. — Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED), a national nonprofit dedicated to expanding economic opportunity for low‐income people, announces the inauguration of innovation@cfed to accelerate the next generation of strategies that help Americans build assets and putthem on surer financial footing. innovation@cfed will harvest new ideas for policy, practice and programs, recognizing CFED’s historic mission and track record in innovation and a commitment to continuing and expanding its investment of organizational resources to the innovation process.

innovation@cfed will work to advance new and effective approaches in three ways. First, through an open and wide‐ranging process, CFED will identify a number of promising Innovative Ideas and showcase them broadly. Innovative Ideas will be used to stimulate discussion and exchange, and speed changes that will expand economic opportunities for disadvantaged Americans. These Innovative Ideas will serve as a pipeline for development. Innovators‐in‐Residence will be selected from a pool of innovators with good, solid, promising and tested innovations, those who would benefit from support and resources to refine and expand the application of those innovations to reach thousands, if not millions of Americans. Innovators‐in‐Residence will receive a $50,000 stipend and technical support and a virtual or onsite CFED residency to refine and grow their innovations to marketable scale or to advance them through expanded real‐world application. Both Innovative Ideas and Innovators‐in‐Residence will be featured at a series of CFED Innovation Summits starting in fall 2009.

“At CFED, we believe it is possible and profitable — within a generation — to provide every American the resources to pursue higher education, start a business, buy a home and save for the future,” said Andrea Levere, President of CFED. “We’ve been proving this is possible for three decades in communities across the nation and now is the time to take the innovative ideas to the next level. Our goal for innovation@cfed is to identify two ideas that have the potential to benefit one million low‐income American families in the next five years.”

A set of distinguished individuals will serve as Strategic Advisors to explore ideas and new directions, provide guidance, and lend their highly sought‐after expertise. innovation@cfed Strategic Advisors are: Deepak Bhargava, Center for Community Change; Angela Glover Blackwell, PolicyLink; William J. Bynum, Enterprise Corporation of the Delta; Denise Cavanaugh, Cavanaugh, Hagan & Pierson; John Cleveland, Innovation Network for Communities; Sara K. Gould, Ms. Foundation for Women; Luis Granados, Mission Economic Development Agency; Langdon Morris, InnovationLabs; Dana Pancrazi, F.B. Heron Foundation; Chuck Parrish, private consultant; Pete Plastrik, Innovation Network for Communities; Geeta Rao Gupta, International Center for Research on Women; Doug Rosen, Alco Investment Company; and Jennifer Tescher, Center for Financial Services Innovation

This month innovation@cfed will begin formally accepting the ideas and the innovators with whom it will work to make real, scalable progress in expanding economic opportunity. CFED will select the first two Innovators‐in‐Residence by summer 2009. The Innovators will start their 12‐24 month tenure at CFED then. Both Innovators and selected Innovative Ideas will be featured at the first Innovation Summit in fall 2009.

For more information, please visit innovation@cfed.

# # #

CFED expands economic opportunity by helping Americans start and grow businesses, go to college, own a home and save for their children’s and own economic futures. We identify promising ideas, test and refine them in communities to find out what works, craft policies and products to help good ideas reach scale, and develop partnerships to promote lasting change. We bring together community practice, public policy and private markets in new and effective ways to achieve greater economic impact.

Established in 1979 as the Corporation for Enterprise Development, CFED works nationally and internationally through its offices in Washington, DC; Durham, North Carolina; and San Francisco, California.