Conference Goals & Highlights

Highlights of the 2006 Assets Learning Conference?A Lifetime of Assets: Building Families, Communities & Economies

The 2006 Assets Learning Conference?A Lifetime of Assets: Building Families, Communities & Economies was the largest gathering of the assets field to date. It was also the most diverse, with participation by Native Americans, people with disabilities, and representatives from the financial services industry? in numbers greater than ever before. More than 1,000 participants from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors took part in four pre-conference sessions, five plenaries, 60 concurrent sessions, nearly 50 roundtable discussions, and countless opportunities for networking and sharing ideas. Conference participants also enjoyed the beauty of Phoenix and the Pointe Hilton Tapatio Cliffs Resort during the Cactus Cantina Welcome Reception, sponsored by the conference's local host, the Assets for Arizona Institute ? and sponsor, Citigroup.

The 2006 Assets Learning Conference offered sessions in "tracks" that focused on three areas in asset building: research, policy, and practice. The research track, sponsored by Citigroup, included 17 sessions presented by representatives of leading research organizations in the United States and abroad. The track also featured finalists in the call for research papers, issued by CFED and the Community Affairs Offices of the Federal Reserve System. The policy track, sponsored by Bank of America, included 16 sessions that examined asset-building policy initiatives at the local, tribal, state, federal, and international levels. And the practice track, sponsored by JP Morgan Chase, featured 27 sessions that covered current and emerging effective practices in asset building from across the United States and around the globe.

Hundreds of conference participants took advantage of four pre-conference sessions before the official opening of the event. One session helped practitioners become more effective advocates at the state and federal levels and another explored methods for determining the asset-building strategies that make the most sense for different communities. Still another pre-conference session provided an overview of asset-building practices to serve Native communities and the last session offered a quick overview of conference highlights.

CFED kicked off the 2006 Assets Learning Conference with an opening plenary titled, A Lifetime of Assets. Sponsored by Bank of America, the plenary featured Wilma Mankiller, the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation and author of Every Day is a Good Day; Andrew Plepler, President, Corporate Philanthropy, Bank of America; Robert Friedman, General Council and Founder, CFED; and Andrea Levere, President, CFED. Panelists discussed the assets field, which is growing and increasingly serving people of diverse cultures, skills, and stages of life and explored how the field could best support a lifetime of assets.

Breakfast with Accountholders , presented by Neighborworks America,was once again the favorite plenary of the conference. This year's panel featured Dan Iannicola Jr., Deputy Assistant Secretary, Financial Education, U.S. Department of the Treasury; Eileen Fitzgerald, Chief Operating Officer, NeighborWorks America; Kim Pate, Field Development Director, CFED; and accountholders Alex Pringle and Keoni Alvarez. Alex Pringle participated in the Denver, Colorado Mile High United Way savings program, funded through the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative and the SEED Program. Alex purchased a vehicle with his savings account and is currently saving for nursing training. Keoni Alvarez is a graduate of ALU LIKE, a nonprofit that works in Hawaii within the traditions and beliefs of Native Hawaiians. Keoni used his savings to realize a lifelong dream of starting a filmmaking business called Hawaiian Island Productions. The accountholders talked about how their lives have changed since acquiring assets while the other panelists shared their expertise in financial education and asset preservation.

The Strength in Numbers: Collaborating to Connect Asset Building with Financial Services plenary, was sponsored by The Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) and featured Bruce Murphy, President, Community Development Banking, KeyBank National Association; George Barany, Director Financial Education, Consumer Federation of America; Jason Griffin, Chairman/Co-founder, VALID Systems, and Jennifer Tescher, Director, CFSI. Panelists discussed the importance of collaborating with the financial services industry to facilitate access to both short-term transactional services and longer-term asset-building opportunities.

The Opportunities in the Asset-Building Policy Movement plenary featured Jennifer Brooks, Policy Director, CFED; Robert Friedman, General Council and Founder, CFED; and Ray Boshara, Director, Asset Building Program, The New America Foundation. The plenary highlighted the results of a groundbreaking policy survey conducted at the conference, charted new directions in asset-building policy at the federal and state levels, and revealed opportunities to join this accelerating movement. A fter hearing from the panelists, audience members shared their ideas for how the field could collaborate more on common policy goals and priorities. Audience members also stressed the importance of greater input from the field.

The closing plenary, Latest Developments and New Directions in the Assets Field, featured Ben Campbell, Chairman and CEO of the Arizona market, JP Morgan Chase; Sheila Maith, Assistant Director Community Affairs Officer, Federal Reserve Board of Governors; Josephine Robinson, Director of the Federal Office of Community Services, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Community Services; Alexander M. Sanchez, Senior Vice President, Community Impact Leadership, United Way of America; Bob Friedman, General Council and Founder, CFED; and Andrea Levere, President, CFED. The plenary, sponsored by JP Morgan Chase, highlighted new efforts to support and sustain the asset-building field and ended with a call to action fo r assets stakeholders to work toward improved outcomes in asset-building research, policy, and practice.

Finalists in the Closing the Wealth Gap: Building Assets Among Low-Income Households call for research papers, issued by CFED and the Community Affairs Offices of the Federal Reserve System, presented their findings during nine sessions and two special research forums. A total of 25 papers were presented on topics ranging from asset building among low-income households to tax policy and the federal asset-building budget. Abstracts of all research papers were available in a bulletin distributed to conference participants and is available at assetsconference.org.

Other important aspects of the conference included a dinner for Native American asset builders, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City; gatherings of grantees of the Department of Labor Weed and Seed program and the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Family Economic Success sites; and onsite technical assistance provided by the Assets Alliance.

Conference participants had the opportunity to convene small group roundtables to discuss specific asset-building topics of interest. During the three day conference, groups gathered to explore the following topics:

  • Innovations in Asset Building
  • Credit Unions and Asset Building
  • Improving Information Sharing on Asset Building Among Federal Agencies
  • Nuts and Bolts of Tax Preparation Site Management
  • Youth and Asset Development
  • Layering IDAs with Other Down Payment Assistance Programs
  • Making Connections: FES Coaches Meeting
  • Findings From the First Accounts Program for Reaching the Unbanked
  • Color of Wealth
  • The IDA as an Education Scholarship
  • Assets in the Second Half of Life
  • Homeownership: Using Section 8 Funding as a Leverage
  • IDA Program Design Comparison Discussion
  • MIS IDA Version 5
  • ROSS Program Listening Session
  • State Asset-Building Initiatives
  • Earned Income Tax Credit: Outreach to People with Disabilities
  • Assets Purchase Best Practices
  • Technical Assistance: Individual Sessions to Ask Questions, Share Ideas, or Get Additional Insights
  • Financial Education: Is it Making Our Clients More Financially Literate?
  • Including Low-Income Families in Asset Policy: Examples from Hawaii
  • Asset-Building Programs for Survivors of Domestic Violence
  • America Saves
  • Savings/Asset-Building Data and Credit Scores
  • Connecting Asset-Building Programs and Strategies
  • Weed and Seed IDA Roundtable
  • Motivating IDA Participants for Financial Education
  • Housing Counseling and IDAs
  • Predatory Lending
  • IDA Databases for Web-Based Application
  • Linking Asset Building to Leadership Development
  • The State of IDAs in North Carolina
  • Convening for Native IDA Initiative Training Participants
  • Best Practices and Innovations in Recruitment and Retention
  • Employer IDAs
  • Neighborhood Asset Funds in Immigrant Communities: The Experience of the Mission Asset Fund
  • Asset Building and People with Disabilities: The Medicaid Issue
  • Entrepreneurship Opportunities for Underserved Populations