Are you making the most of your NCRC Membership?

Learn what resources, services, content and networking opportunities your membership includes and how being a NCRC member can help you in your fight for a #JustEconomy. NCRC staff share tips for making the most of your membership and provide a walk-through of NCRC’s newest member features.

Speakers

• Caitie Rountree, Director of Membership and Events, NCRC
• Diane Ashong, Membership Engagement Manager, NCRC
• Ralph Cyrus, Membership Engagement Specialist, NCRC
• Tara Flynn, Policy Director, NCRC
• Jacelyn Matthews, Director of National Training Academy, NCRC

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Rountree 0:06
Well, welcome to this conversation on what it means to be an NCRC member. We’re excited to have you here. Whether you are a longtime member learning a little bit more about our membership benefits, a newer member, an organization exploring membership, or maybe you are a staff person at an organization that’s been a member for a long time, but you’ve never actually directly engaged with NCRC. Wherever you’re coming from today, we’re glad you’re here.

Just a little bit of housekeeping before we jump into our conversation today. This event, as all our events, whether virtual or in person, is subject to NCRC’s code of conduct. Please take a look at that if you need a refresher on like to engage in spaces respectfully. But high expectations of all of you. One note: we do not allow AI chatbots on the webinar. This webinar is being recorded, and the recording and slides will be shared afterwards. So our staff will be removing chatbots, but don’t worry; the content will be shared with all registrants afterwards. Please submit questions along the way in the Q and A button at the bottom of your screen. A small thing: if you have updated Zoom recently, you may look for that box and find that it has moved. If you don’t see it where you normally do, click on the more icon with the three dots and look for the Q and A box there. And we’ll answer some of those as we go along. And we’ll also pause along the way to answer verbally. And make sure to follow us on our social media accounts so that you can stay in the loop with new developments.

All right, I would love to introduce the rest of our speakers today, and before we get to that, I’ll I’ll tell you a little bit about NCRC as an organization. So we’re a national advocacy organization, a network of over 700 member organizations working to advance wealth equity by improving how capital flows into communities. We convene leaders just like you across sectors to advance policy change, expand opportunities, and strengthen a financial system that better serves communities and shares prosperity. We do that through three primary strategies: by boosting knowledge, by building capacity, and by bridging access. Together, these strategies help create an economy where communities have greater power to shape local growth, where families have a fair opportunity to build wealth, and financial institutions are more accountable to the people and communities that they serve. That’s the foundation that NCRC was built on. So the natural next question is, what does that mean for you, and why does it make sense to be a part of this coalition?

So NCRC combines advocacy, coalition building and accountability strategies to drive systemic change. As a national convener, we bring together community organizations, policymakers, financial institutions and corporate leaders to develop solutions that strengthen communities and expand opportunity. Our network-driven approach connects local experience, policy expertise and investment initiatives that ensure that communities have both a voice and a seat at the table. You’ve heard what NCRC is and what we do, but membership isn’t measured by a list of benefits. It’s measured by what those benefits actually make possible. So instead of giving you a catalog of services, I’d actually like to show you membership in action. We’re going to talk about a real member, anonymous, but I think you’ll be able to get a sense of the organization, a real challenge that they brought to us, and just one way that NCRC helped them achieve an outcome that they couldn’t have accomplished as easily on their own.

One of our members is a homeownership nonprofit in the Upper Midwest that operates a down payment assistance loan program. Like many community organizations, they were doing really important work, but they didn’t have an in-house research team. They wanted to better understand their program’s impact, where it was succeeding, where there were opportunities to improve, and how to communicate those findings to the partners and funders investing in the work. So they came to NCRC’s research team for help. Our researchers conducted a loan-level analysis and delivered a comprehensive impact report, complete with data visualizations, supporting analysis and practical insights they could immediately put to use. The result wasn’t just a polished report; it helped the organization better understand what was happening in their community, so they could strengthen their program and better meet local needs. It also gave them credible evidence to show partners and funders how investing in this work could improve the flow of capital in the community and expand opportunities for homeownership.

That’s what membership looks like across our network. Your organization doesn’t have to solve every challenge alone. Through the coalition, you gain access to research, to policy expertise, training, and relationships that help your organization better understand community needs, strengthen your work, and ultimately help communities shape how opportunity and investment flow where they’re needed most. So, if we can move to the next slide, I’m about to introduce you to a couple of different people who bring that same kind of support in very different ways. Tara from our policy team, and then Jacelyn from our National Training Academy. They’ll show you two more examples of how NCRC’s expert staff partners with members to strengthen our communities. So Tara, I’m going to turn it over to you.

Flynn 5:01
Great, hi everybody. I’m Tara Flynn. I’m NCRC’s policy director. Just for context, I started here about six months ago after a career in federal government as a consumer protection attorney at the FTC and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Our policy team is small but mighty, and I should note that we work really closely with the research team that got such a nice shout-out just now, Caitie. You know they do fantastic work, and they provide essential data analysis for our policy work, and obviously provide that same assistance to members. So officially, the policy team is four people. We’re all up on the screen. Our fearless leader, Eden Forsythe, who heads up policy and research. Kevin Hill, who is a senior policy analyst, and he focuses a lot on Community Reinvestment Act-related issues. Manon Shah, he’s a policy analyst who focuses on CDFI and small business issues, and I focus on the intersection of fintech and banking. And lately, that has meant I’ve been focusing a lot on stablecoin and crypto. We, you know, I’ve said we specialize or focus on certain areas, but we are all available. If you ever need anything, you don’t need to know which one to talk to. We all talk to each other. So, what does this policy team do? Well, we provide strategic direction on policy research and advocacy for NCRC. That means you know we think about how we should deploy our resources, what issues we should prioritize, what we should engage on, and what we should respond to. We also analyze policies and proposals and translate them into hopefully practical guidance for members. That’s figuring out essentially how legislative and regulatory proposals impact our core issues, and I’ll talk a little bit more about that in a bit. And we also create a lot of educational content, webinars, things up on our website, and you know, comment letters, draft model comment letters, things like that that can help educate and provide assistance to our members.

We form strategies for our advocacy, and you know that again, we want to figure out how can we effectively impact the debate and hopefully impact the outcome. So we also try to bring members’ experience into policymaking, and one way we do that is connecting members with Capitol Hill staff. For example, in connection with our opposition to the digital asset market structure bill known as the Clarity Act, we requested meetings from the staffs of senators who had voted for the Genius Act, which is the bill that was passed last year about stablecoin. But the Clarity Act is a broader bill, and so we wanted to talk to senators before they voted on it in at the Senate Banking Committee. So one of our big concerns is whether stablecoin and crypto might cause the deposits to migrate out of banks, and then deposits wouldn’t be available for lending and investment in communities. So we made our request for these meetings. We got a couple meetings, and then we reached out. One was in Georgia, Senator Ossoff of Georgia, and Senator Gallego of Arizona. And then we got members. We asked members, and they graciously agreed to attend these meetings with us as constituents, and that really helped. Their participation and their sharing of their stories of how a lack of capital impacts their communities was really helpful, and I think strengthened our advocacy. So that’s just an example of the way that we try to do that, bring stories to Capitol Hill. And we also mobilize membership around our shared priorities, and you know try to identify opportunities to influence public policy. We’ll talk a bit more about it on a later slide, but there are lots of opportunities for NCRC members to influence public policy and our advocacy. So I have a quick example from this week. There was the House Financial Services Committee was considering a bill called the Main Street Access to Capital Bill, which had some good CDFI provisions in it, but mostly it was terrible. It was a deregulatory bill, so the vote was coming up fast. We had to mobilize quickly. We wrote a letter and we sent out a call to members to see if they would sign on. And even though we only had three hours to do it, we got 30 members to sign on. And then the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee actually referenced the letter, and most importantly, that members from throughout the country had signed on to it. So mobilizing membership and using our collective voice is an important part of what we do.

So what are our priorities? So they’re written out here, and I think they’re probably, hopefully, shared priorities for you all too. We want to hold financial institutions accountable to communities, especially the communities that they serve. We want to strengthen and protect the Community Reinvestment Act and fair lending laws. Advance fair lending and combat discrimination in mortgage lending, appraisals, and insurance and access to housing. We want to expand affordable home ownership, rental housing, responsible credit for underserved communities, and increase investment in CDFIs, affordable housing, and community development.

So, how can we work together? Well, I already talked a little bit about comment letters. I gave the you know previous example, but that is one way that we are able to work together, have a collective voice. We often also provide draft comment letters or help member organizations with their comment letters about legislation, or actually, you know, regulation, which is another big area that we focus on. We hold a monthly call to keep members apprised of what our regulatory or legislative developments in that may actually impact our priority areas. So that’s something that’s a give and take and a conversation. And we also have Hill Day on there. During the Just Economy Conference, we dedicate a whole day to going to the Hill to share our stories and share our priorities with members of Congress and well, more likely their staffs. But it’s a great opportunity for us all to create and enhance our relationships with members of Congress and promote NCRC’s legislative priorities. And we coalition and connection formation-that’s super important. We all don’t all have the same issues that we value different issues differently, and so it’s important that when people have priority issues, that we can work, you know, get the group of people who are really interested in a particular issue together and share ideas. So we set up smaller groups, talk about issues. For example, we have a group that talks about 1071 business lending data collection. We have another one that someone suggested recently on leg-reg call about Small Business Administration loans and lending practices. These coalitions can also include work with state groups, several state groups where we’re trying to advance legislation. We had a very successful effort with advancing legislation in Illinois for a state CRA, working with the Illinois CRA Coalition to strengthen Illinois’s CRA law. And speaking of CRA, sort of going back to the you know how we can stay informed and mobilize our members. I wanted to do a quick shout-out for the fact that we are having a webinar next Wednesday at 330, and that is, you know, the NCRC’s president and CEO Jesse Van Tol and the policy team will be sharing our latest intel about proposed changes to the Community Reinvestment Act and how to work together to prevent it from being significantly weakened. So that’s just an example of I think of several of these things that we’ve talked about. But providing ways to stay informed, mobilizing our membership, and I think it’s a great example. And I hope any of you who are interested do attend. I think I’ve covered everything. I hope that I gave you a little bit of a flavor of the kind of policy work we do, and you know how we can work together to try to advance our priorities. So, if you have any questions, please contact me. I shared that picture because that was right before I testified before Congress. Very exciting day for me.

Rountree 13:59
We all cheered really loud for Tara. Yeah, thank you so much, Tara, for sharing and for your continued advocacy on behalf of and with our members. So research helps our members understand what’s happening in their communities. Our policy team helps shape the systems that affect those communities. But lasting change also depends on the people doing the work every day, that’s where our National Training Academy comes in. Jacelyn and her team equip practitioners with the knowledge, skills, and technical assistance they need to translate ideas into action and create stronger outcomes in the communities that they serve. So, Jacelyn, I’m going to turn it over to you to introduce your team and talk about how y’all work with NCRC members,

Matthews 14:41
Thanks, Caitie, and thank you all for being with us this afternoon to learn more about the benefits of membership. As Caitie mentioned, I’m the director of the National Training Academy here at NCRC. My name is Jacelyn Matthews, and on my team is Doug Mollet, who is our program manager, Sally Sim, who is another program manager, and then Simon Wang, who is our project specialist. I will say that Doug and Simon are leading our work when it comes to economic mobility, and then Sally works really closely on our housing counseling trainings.

So just to kind of give you an idea of who we are and what we do as NTA, the National Training Academy here. We really are the professional development and capacity-building arm for NCRC. So we work on equipping nonprofit organizations, housing counselors, as I mentioned, financial counselors, workforce development professionals, and community practitioners with the tools they need to really strengthen their organizations and better serve their communities. We want to make sure people feel really equipped to do the work they do, so any way that we can hone or enhance those skills, we are here to do so through the trainings that we offer. So it’s whether through our trainings, whether it’s like technical assistance that we offer, peer learning cohorts, and specialized initiatives, our goal really is to help organizations build capacity and create lasting community impact.

Um, so they already switched over to the slide that talks about the work that we do and the type of topics that we cover through our programming. So as you can see, we’re offering live webinars and virtual trainings. We don’t want a webinar just to be a webinar. We don’t want you to spend 90 minutes of your day just to kind of have information kind of force-fed to you. We really want it to be a deeper dive on a topic that is of interest to you. So we do like to get feedback from our community about what are some of the things that they’re seeing in the field that they want to learn a little bit more about. We try to be as responsive as possible in what we offer. We do offer multi-day, in-person trainings, usually just on one topic, where again we’re trying to drill down and give you really like the meat of the topic, so that you feel better prepared to do the work that you are already doing a great job at. But how can we help to hone some of those skills? As I mentioned, place-based learning experiences, professional development for individuals and teams. Again, if you’re wanting to grow your team and build on their tools, we want to make sure we’re able to do that as well. Technical assistance and implementation support, specialized workforce and economic mobility initiatives, and as you can see here, we cover a range of topics. This is not an exhaustive list; it’s just an example of some of the things that we cover. But wanted to give you an idea of what we do.

I did want to highlight some of the work that our economic mobility team has been working on with our SNAP E&T. So SNAP E&T is employment and training. They’re focused on that. So this initiative helps NCRC, NCRC is helping actually workforce development organizations to understand, launch, and strengthen SNAP employment and training programs that connect individuals receiving SNAP benefits with education, skills training, employment opportunities and supportive services. So NTA provides technical assistance and toolkits statewide, learning cohorts and peer learning opportunities that help organizations navigate program requirements and become successful third-party providers. So this work expands organizations’ ability to secure additional resources for their organization, while increasing economic mobility for communities that they serve. And so, we’ve seen some of that take place in Kentucky, for example. We were able to get a number of organizations to be able to get this additional SNAP E&T funding, and that’s something that we have really prided ourselves on what we’ve been able to do, and if you’re wanting more information about that, that information I think is going to be dropped in the chat, so you can kind of get a better sense of the SAP E&T work.

I also want to mention before we move on to the next one. So when it comes to our professional development for individuals and teams, just to give you an idea of what we do there as a member, if you are reaching out because you have some changes on your staff, or there’s some key items and things that you want them to learn and grow in, we have been able to send out an instructor that can actually lead trainings for you in the organization within your within your organization or within your your center or your offices. So it’s not that you have to bring everyone over to where we are to learn said topic. If it is an in-person training, it’s not that you can only bring one or two people and have to bring back the information. This is something that you can actually reach out to us and say, like, hey, we would like someone that can bring this information to our office so that everybody can hear it in real time and be able to respond and ask questions, etc. So that is a benefit as well.

As a member of NCRC, how you can leverage the work with NTA. So again, there’s access to discounted member pricing on trains and events. Right now, there is a cost for all of our trainings, but the great thing is that members receive either free or heavily discounted access to said trainings. You’re able to attend member-exclusive webinars, develop new and existing staff through professional development, as I mentioned before, earn continual education credits when available, staying informed about emerging policies, regulations, and best practices, and I won’t read all of these here to you, but I think that what I want to highlight is that we also work really closely with other departments across the organization. So if they’re wanting to put on webinars to showcase subject matter expertise internally about the work that they’re doing, we work with them to create those topics as well. So we are not just focused on housing counseling and economic mobility, but there’s opportunities for you to have a better understanding of the work that’s happening across the organization through some of the webinars that we do hold as well.

And so, I do want to make sure that I make mention of if you are interested, particularly when it comes to housing counseling topics. Part of the great thing about what we offer is that you’re able to get all of the prep that you need to either become a housing counseling agency, to be certified as a HUD-certified housing counselor, or even to become a HECCOM-certified housing counselor, do offer those trainings as well, so that people are able to get what they need. Whether that is as a virtual training, we had an in-person training in Milwaukee on HECCOM just last month, or if it is something that we’re able to offer, so that if you’re not able to actually join for the virtual training that’s happening when it comes to HECCOM or housing counseling, that there is something that’s self-paced, right? So that you’re able to do it on your time and then be able to come back and ask questions and you know receive support on those things as well. So I do think that what we have to offer, one, we are getting some of the best trainers in the business, right? So that you are again information that’s on the cutting edge of what’s out there. Nothing’s dated. We try to make sure that we are always giving you something that’s new, exciting, and fresh because we know that things are constantly changing, right? In the work that you do, and so how can we make sure that we are consistently relevant in what we have to offer?

And so those are some of the things that we do offer. If you ever have questions about topics that we offer or ideas about topics, also are really open to hearing that as well from our members to make sure again that we are providing things that are relevant to the work that you’re currently doing and things that you’re wanting to learn and grow in. With that being said, I’ll turn it back over to Caitie.

Rountree 22:06
Thanks so much, Jacelyn, and I’ll make a direct plug here. If you have not done a training with NCRC yet, I would really strongly recommend that you start with CRA content that our training academy offers. What you’ll find at NCRC is that while we work on a variety of issues, not all of them directly tied to CRA, understanding how NCRC engages and thinks about the Community Reinvestment Act serves as a really good foundation and entry point for a lot of the ways that we work with our members and with financial institutions, and so that is a great start here really, before engaging in other trainings, policy work, research, it’ll just give you the lens to see a lot of the other work that we do with our members. So, if you’re not sure where to start, that’s where you start. So, I’m gonna turn it over in a minute to talk more about some of the specifics of membership. But wanted to pause for a handful of questions here for Tara or Jacelyn about the way our policy teams and our training staff work to support members. And just as a reminder, this feels like a good point to remind folks that we will be sharing the recording and the slides, and our membership team is also happy to follow up with additional questions and support following this webinar.

The first question that I’d like to turn over to Jacelyn and then Tara, because it actually I think touches on both of their support to members, is a question about advocacy training for nonprofits. So for organizations that are interested in support for to do advocacy at the local, state, and federal level, how do we support members in that work? Jacelyn, I’m going to start with you, and then actually, Tara, there might be additional ways of support that you want to highlight as well. So, Jacelyn.

Matthaws 24:00
Sure. So first, I will say that when it comes to advocacy, if you’re wanting to learn how to actually go about doing that, we have wanted to start trying to offer more training on those topics. So, actually, how do you actually go about doing advocacy work? We’ve done something. We’re starting out with our community investment institute, which is really trying to deep dive into a couple of different things when it comes to membership. But that’s one of the things that we’ve been talking about: is how do we actually provide additional training and resources for those who are wanting to learn about what advocacy is? And then, for example, we’ve done recently the training before Hill Day this year. We did a storytelling workshop so that people can feel more connected to their story and feeling really confident about their story when they’re going to actually speak to their state or federal legislator. And so it’s something that we have seen as something that is important for us to do. Really working on curriculum that really meets the need in the moment as well. Don’t want it to be a flyby night. Hey, we put something together, but want to be really intentional about it. And so, it is something that we are working to build out and really be able to showcase soon. And I’ll leave it to Tara if she has something additional that she would like to share there.

Flynn 25:15
Hi. Yeah. I guess I’d just say that often in terms of how to advocate regarding a particular issue, we do that through our smaller working groups or through, you know, the development of materials that we share with members when we’re working on a campaign. So, for example, I mentioned what was you know there are some developments regarding the Community Reinvestment Act, perhaps some re-examining anticipated by the regulators, and so we are in the throes of thinking through what kind of materials and educational and training materials we can put together so that folks, NCRC members, can help, you know we can help mobilize, and folks will mobilize and use those resources to you know tell the story of how the CRA is important to you know every organization. I don’t know if that addresses the question, but I think that it’s more campaign focused in terms of what sort of resources we developed on the policy team.

Rountree 26:20
That’s perfect, Tara. And just to restate something you said, answering another question, just specifically around template comment letters in a very similar fashion. NCRC produces both comment letters that we are submitting and inviting our members to sign on to, and as a particular campaign warrants, we’ll provide template language for our members to then adapt and use to be able to submit their own original comment letter. Yeah, I just wanted to bump that up because I think that’s also very, very helpful. There will be other opportunities to answer questions. So if you have more questions, put them in the chat. I’m going to turn it over now to our membership engagement specialist to talk a little bit about member eligibility, how to manage your membership, etc. Ralph, I will turn it over to you.

Cryus 27:05
Good afternoon, everyone. I’m Ralph Cyrus, the membership engagement specialist for NCRC, along with my colleague Diana Ashong, who’s the membership engagement manager. We are sort of the first point of contact, one-stop shop for members and prospects who are interested in getting to know about our resources and wanting to know how to how to get involved. We’re more than happy to help direct your membership journey.

So, what we’re going to do first is just go through overview of the membership webpage. You can visit it yourself at ncrc.org/membership and get to get started on at least the first point of contact when it comes to knowing more about what how to who’s eligible for membership and what resources are available. So first, this is our homepage. You would click the top where it says membership. It’ll take you directly to our membership page where you can join immediately. From there, you can from the membership page you can join immediately. You’ll see a list of benefits that are available to new members, whether it’s signing up for different resources or just getting something that’s on the website. If you ever have a question, feel free to fill out that contact us form at the top of the page, and then there you’ll have a benefits list that shows some of the opportunities and resources that are available for members. We also have a map that shows where all of our members are throughout the country. We’re going to review the member map a little bit later, so we’ll get back to that. And if you’re already ready to sign up, you can choose the membership tier that best reflects your organization. If you’re a nonprofit, you would choose the option that reflects your organizational budget, and you could sign up right there. We also have tiers for local and state government agencies, as well as research and educational institutions, as well. And then at the bottom of that page, we have a bunch of frequently asked questions about membership. How do I join? How do I access my account? What are the costs? What are the other benefits? That listing right there is pretty good because you have clickable links that you can use to explore the rest of our of our website, the the rest of our website as well. Some other questions that may be asked is how do I get reminders for renewal? Just as a heads up, renewal starts from your day of signing up. So, say you signed up for membership today, you will get a your renewal date would be this time next year. Just worry. You don’t. All you have to worry about is an annual renewal renewalship. So feel free to look through our frequently asked questions for any resolutions. And one thing we do want members to do is to give us an updated list of contact information, so you can either adjust. Listed on your member hub profile, or you can fill out this demographic form that we will share. That will let you know about who in your organization we should be contacting, a bit about your work, where you’re located, and things that you feel we should know about your organization. And we will be sure to update that and make sure that other staff members are aware of that information as well. Now we’re going to take a look at our member map that I’m really excited to show. I love sharing it with people. Anytime people want to know who our members are of the 700-member network throughout the country, can all you can always check out the member map on the membership page. When you’re reviewing it, you can click on any particular state and see how many members we have and where are they. We have members throughout the country and multiple levels of density. We even have members in Puerto Rico. We were recently on a meeting with them, learning about their great work.

We’ll use Jackson, Mississippi, as an example. Basically, you can zoom in and see all of the members there. And when you click on their name, either directly on the map or through that list on the side, it’ll take you directly to their website. We’re going to use the Housing, Education, and Economic Development team as an example, led by the great Charles Harris. You can also search in that profile for city and have it search through to see what members are available there, and if you ever want to get in contact with any of your fellow members, you feel free to reach out to the membership team. We’re happy to set up that connective tissue, or you can reach out directly from their websites as well.

And lastly, we’re going to show you what the member hub profile provides for you. It’s the member hub is a one-stop shop where you can add members, add team members to your subscription. You can update the pro the newsletter profiles that are available to you. You can see what your current team subscription is. Get a an invoice downloaded to you. You can all also sub make submissions yourself. So we’ll just take a quick look through what the member hub provides. So when you sign into your account, you’ll see up top the member. You should see my account. You can go into your settings, go to subscriptions, choose your subscription. If you copy that link right there and share with other staff, they’ll be able to create accounts under their email addresses for the organization subscription. You can also add – if you are the group manager, you can add or subtract staff as there’s turnover in your organization. You can also download an invoice directly from there for any of your financial records. And now we’re going to see what the member hub looks like.

One of the first things you can do on the member hub is go to update your newsletter subscriptions. If there are, if you’re not getting enough information from NCRC, or if you’re getting too much, you can add or or you could select or unselect the subscriptions that you’re getting. Discuss the topic of interest that are interesting to you, and you’ll you’ll get our our slate of emails.

We have a variety of research projects, blog reports. Some are a series like the Mortgage Market Series that is available for members, and then we have a calendar of up upcoming events, typically a summit conference, training courses, and then what we also have is what we call the field notes. So you can provide a story of your organization, some of your great work, and the field notes submission and our communications team will work with you to make a field notes member profile out of that, and a lot of members have said how amazing it is to have their work platform there. So if you have anything interesting that you’ve been working on, you want to share with us, please feel free to submit field notes, and we would love to platform it. So that’s just a little bit of what’s available on the member hub. I encourage everyone, when you have time, to just go ahead and do a scroll through our website. When you log into the member hub, see what resources are available. If anything is confusing, feel free to reach out to membership. You can email us at membership@ncrc.org to get involved.

Now, if you’re ready to commit today, I would encourage you to visit our website or scan that QR code to go to the membership page. Feel free to also reach out to us to schedule a call. We’ll kind of walk through that list of benefits and see which ones stand out for you, or we’ll discuss tools or aspects of NCRC that you’re interested in as well. And you don’t have to. You can be a current member, you can be a former member, you can be somebody who’s just learning, hearing about NCRC, and you want to know more. We’re more than happy to talk to you about your work and how NCRC can be a part of that. And now I will I will turn back to Caitie to finish us out.

Rountree 35:45
Thanks so much, Ralph. Really, the member map where we’re able to see where y’all are working all across the country, it is so cool, and so glad to be able to use that as a way to help y’all connect to each other more easily. One, just a I’ll do a double click on something that Ralph mentioned in the member hub. You can customize newsletters you receive from us. If there is one email that you read from NCRC every week, I suggest that you make it the member update that goes out on Wednesday mornings. We use this as a digest and highlights, so it’s not very long, but it will summarize the most important things that we think that members should be aware of that week, where you can see upcoming trainings and events, registration and information about those, opportunities to participate in our policy work, comment letters, breaking news that’s important related to our advocacy work. It’s where applications for funding are highlighted. Many times, those get their own dedicated emails with more information. But that Wednesday morning member update email should give you the the Cliff Notes guide to everything that’s happening to NCRC in that particular week. So that’s one to make sure that you look at every week. And if you have multiple staff who you think may benefit from engaging with NCRC, make sure that their accounts are set up so that they’re receiving that as well.

We’ve got just a couple more minutes here for some additional questions. One thing just related to the member hub question, I think Jocelyn answered directly, but I think it’s worth saying out loud. One of my dreams as a backend person is that eventually we will have single sign-in for all the different things that we offer to our members. But at this point in time, you need a different account to be able to log into the member hub, and a different account to log into our training portal. So, if you’re trying to log in one place, information, password, etc. from another, that might be why you’re having trouble. Either the training academy or the membership team would be happy to help sort you out. Just a heads up that those are different accounts, unfortunately.

Checking to see if there are any other questions that I can answer, folks, before we wrap. But I think this has been just a really informative conversation. Thank our my fellow colleagues for their presentations and information, and thank all of you. I just want to leave you with one final thought before we close. NCRC offers research, policy expertise, training, all these different resources to strengthen your organization’s work. But the reality is that being a member of NCRC is actually about something even bigger than that. It’s an invitation to join more than 700 organizations that are working together to improve how capital flows into communities, to expand opportunity and advance wealth equity. That’s not something that NCRC is doing for our members. It’s something that we’re doing with our members, and it takes all of us working together to do that. So we’re incredibly grateful for the work that you’re doing in your communities and for the work that you’re doing with us. We really truly believe that in order to solve the enormous challenges that this country faces, we’re going to need to do it in collaboration with one another. So we hope that you’ll join us. Grateful for your participation. Yeah, and look forward to helping to build a stronger movement for community development and wealth equity with you.

As federal budget cuts challenge affordable housing and community development efforts, this session explores how nonprofits can use data, partnerships and regional banks to move projects forward.

Featuring insights from NCRC’s Jason Richardson, author Oscar Perry Abello and Citizens Savings Bank & Trust’s Corey Hammonds, the discussion examines lending trends, community development finance and strategies for building stronger relationships with local financial institutions. Moderated by Monchiere’ Holmes-Jones of MOJO Marketing and the Jefferson Street Historical Society.

Speakers

Oscar Perry Abello, Journalist, Next City
Corey Hammonds, Chief Operation/Credit Officer, Citizens Savings Bank & Trust
Monchiere’ Holmes-Jones, Founder, MOJO Marketing and Founder & Board Chair, Jefferson Street Historical Society
Jason Richardson, Senior Director of Research, NCRC

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Holmes-Jones 00:00
Hi everyone. My name is Monchiere’ Holmes-Jones. I am the CEO and Chief Impact Officer here at Mojo Impact Collective and a member of NCRC. I’ll be your moderator today for this great webinar titled “The Data Behind the Lending Landscape: Why Engaging Regional Financial Institutions Matters.”

Before we proceed any further, I want to take the time to go through our NCRC’s Code of Conduct. So, we’ll get that on the screen for you all. A little housekeeping. Please note: We welcome people from any and all diverse backgrounds as possible. We respect our events and any interactions within our community to be respectful and harassment-free at all times. Regarding any AI chatbots, NCRC does not permit AI chatbots to record our webinar today or any of our webinars. So, please note: we will be fielding questions at the end of the three presentations. So, if you’re interested in asking questions, please note you have the Q and A box right there at the bottom of your Zoom screen. Click the box, type your question. When you do, please identify which speaker you like to answer your question. That’ll be helpful to guide us through, and then we’ll answer accordingly.

For those unfamiliar with NCRC, we’re a network of 700 plus organizations from across the country. We work with our members to close the racial and socio-economic wealth and opportunity divides. If you’re watching this webinar from Nashville, we will be convening a community development training [there] in late September. We’ll have more details at the end of this event, so stay tuned. The purpose of our webinar today is to help our folks understand that context and the data behind our current lending landscape, and we’ll use Nashville as a great case study.

We’ll hear first from Jason Richardson, director of NCRC’s research team. Richardson will provide an analysis of Nashville’s mortgage lending and community investment data. Following Jason will be Next City journalist Oscar Perry Abello, who will discuss the findings from this year’s reporting at Next City and from his book The Banks We Deserve. Our final speaker will be Corey Hammonds, Chief Operating and Credit Officer at Citizen Savings and Bank and Trust in Nashville, one of the oldest Black banks in America. Hammonds will provide advice for those interested in developing a relationship with a bank and launching a community development project in your local area. Without further ado, here’s Jason Richardson. Jason, the floor is yours.

Richardson 02:40
Thank you, Monchiere’. Thank you very much again. I’m Jason Richardson, Senior Director of Research at NCRC, and I’ve got a lot of slides here. We’re going to actually hustle through some of them, so don’t worry. You’re going to be able to get a copy of these slides later on, but I want to make sure that we have enough time for the other speakers and Q&A. So, these are just slides where we’re kind of tooting my own horn about my team at NCRC and the support that we provide for NCRC members. Take a look at that later on when you have a chance. And, if you have any questions, feel free to email me. If you’re an NCRC member, you can always contact me for assistance with data analysis or just understanding the data you’ve got for your organization better.

Today though we’re going to be talking about Nashville. We’re going to be talking about the Nashville metro area, including 13 counties, and we’re going to talk about redlining. We’re going to talk about the echoes in that have continued to impact communities like Nashville since redlining was officially established in the 1930s. Right now, I want to go to the website that you see on your screen here. This is part of a report that we completed some time ago, but it is a great way to understand how redlining in the past affects lending today. What we’ve done here is pull together 40 years of mortgage lending data from 1981 through 2021. We’re going to compare that with the redlining that occurred in the past, and then you’re going to see patterns emerge over time as Nashville has grown.

So, I’m going to share my screen now. So, when you go to the website that I put on the screen, you’re going to see this map. Today, we’re going to zoom in on Nashville. Come in slowly here, and we’re going to zoom in a little close. What you see here then [are] the red areas that are outlined in red are neighborhoods that were redlined in the 1930s by the Homeowners Loan Corporation. Now, we’ve published extensively on redlining, and this is not really a redlining presentation, so I’m just going to cover this briefly. But, essentially at the time, the government decided that they were not going to purchase loans that were made in certain areas of cities. There were a lot of reasons that areas were redlined, with the presence of African Americans being a key part of that distinction. Here you see those historical redlined areas. And, we’ve overlaid it with 1981 data. So the purple areas are majority-minority census tracts. The darker purple indicate 80% or more minority population and minority means anything other than non-Hispanic white.

So, in Nashville, that’s primarily going to be African American populations. The circles you see here in the blue and gray; those are mortgage lending activity. So, this shows the distribution of mortgage loans across the city in 1981, and you can see some patterns. Parts of the redlined communities do have some lending, but many of them you don’t see a whole lot of lending going on. But, what’s interesting here is as we set this in motion, you’re going to see these patterns change. This is 1981. You can go to the lower right-hand side here, open up the legend so you understand what the the map is showing you, and click play. And, let’s let it run for a little bit. We’re going to get into the 1990s here in just a second. And, the first thing you’ll notice, we’re in 1993. Excuse me, is that you’ve seen the purple areas expand. The number of majority-minority census tracts in the area has increased. You’ll also notice that the mortgage lending has vanished from a large part of the map here. So where did it go? Well, let’s back up a little bit, and you can see that a lot of the lending shifted to outer portions of the metro area and areas just to the south of Nashville. This is not an unusual pattern. The ’90s saw a lot of construction outside of cities, and you’re seeing a lot of that mortgage activity shifting from the city itself, especially from the high minority areas, out into these exurban areas. Let’s go a little bit further, though.

Richardson 06:44
We’re going to stop around 2005, so we’re talking about 2005 being kind of the height of the housing boom period in this country. And, you see again, there’s been a shifting pattern here. Mortgage lending has shifted to the east and the southeast of Nashville, and you can also see some more changes. I’m going to zoom in again here a little bit. Some more changes in the share of loans that are being made in majority-minority census tracts. You’re starting to see areas around the airport near Antioch that have become majority-minority. Generally, we don’t see a whole lot of lending in many of these areas, but to the southeast of the airport, you do see quite a bit of lending during this time. Now, I understand that during this time we saw a significant migration of African Americans from Nashville into this area, and that’s going to show up here in just a minute because right after this, we experienced the housing crash in 2008.

So, let’s go to 2012. There we go. Now [in] 2012, we had officially recovered supposedly from the recession. However, we can still see a lot of patterns in the lending here that are concerning. First of all, let’s zoom out again, and we again see these concentrations of loans to the east and to the southeast, but look what’s happened in Antioch, where the minority population has grown so much. There’s an absence of mortgage lending during this time. Now, if we zoom back into Nashville proper, we can also see a very clear pattern where mortgage lending is concentrated only in the White communities to the south. In fact, if you zoom in even closer, this area of downtown Nashville that was majority-minority when we started this discussion has shifted to majority-White, and the area to the north that was heavily minority is now 80 percent or more minority when we started is now still majority-minority, but not as heavily. And, if we play this through to the last date, 2021, the pattern is not going to change very much. And, that’s where we’re sitting today. So, you can go to the website yourself and play around with this map. I’m going to stop sharing now, and we’re going to shift to the rest of my presentation. And, if anybody has any questions about the HLD map, that’s the HMDA longitudinal database, then just email me after the call, and I can help you out more with it if you want to understand where that’s coming from.

Now, we’re going to talk about data. We’re going to talk about mortgage lending, small business lending, and commercial lending in Nashville. In 2025, there were 25,297 loans across the Nashville metro area. Those are home purchase loans. There were 591 individual lenders, and 20 lenders, the top 20, made half of those loans. Who got those loans? So, it’s interesting to look at not just who got the loans, but also the population in the area. Here you see the blue lines indicate the share of loans going to each individual racial group. The pink lines below it are their share of the population. Those little black vertical lines there are new figures. It’s just to give you something to compare to. The things that hop out at me here are pretty simple. 77% of home purchase loans in 2025 went to White applicants, who are 69% of the adult population. Hispanic borrowers actually got slightly more loans than their population size. That’s part of a national trend that we’re seeing across the country with Hispanic borrowers. However, Black borrowers are receiving less than half of the share of loans that they should be getting based on their population size. Asians are also a little overrepresented, but the American Indian and Native American, as well as the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations, are relatively small, so who’s doing all this lending? Here are the top 20 mortgage lenders in the country, or in the, I’m sorry, in the Nashville area. United Wholesale Mortgage is one of the top lenders in the country, so it’s no surprise that they’re there. And, my guess is most of you probably have never heard of United Wholesale Mortgage, so they are a wholesale lender. Most of their loans would have been made by mortgage brokers or smaller lenders. The same with CMG Mortgage.

Richardson 11:05
Then, you get to First Bank, and, if you’ll notice, there’s only a few banks in this list: First Bank, and then Pinnacle Bank, which is a Tennessee-based bank, Old National, J.P. Morgan, and another Tennessee bank, Wilson Bank and Trust. This rounds out the top 20. So, when you look at those individual lenders though, the share of their loans going to Black borrowers is dramatically different across lenders. Your top three here includes Wilson Bank and Trust, one of those Tennessee banks that we mentioned earlier. But, at the lower end, some of these lenders are making very low amounts of loans to Nashville African Americans despite their sizable portion of the population, commercial lending and small business lending.

So, commercial lending in the last 13 months, across April 2025 through May 2026, we’re talking about 6.9 billion dollars in lending. This is for apartments, office buildings, retail, industrial properties, 311 total transactions across 153 different lenders. Top lenders and commercial lending is a little more complicated. There are often multiple lenders but [one of] the major lenders here [is] Fannie Mae for apartments, which is not a surprise. They’re the largest apartment lender in the country. But, for industrial, office, retail, and hotels, Pinnacle Bank and Wilson Bank and Trust, local banks that are based in Tennessee. In fact, when we look at the number of commercial deals, Pinnacle and Wilson are on top, followed closely by Renaissance and First Bank. Small business lending. So, commercial lending is for large properties. Small business lending are loans under a million dollars to small businesses. In 2024, which is the most recent year of data that we’ve got, 2.1 billion dollars in small business loans were made in the Nashville area. We’re talking about 56, almost 57,000 individual loans across 174 lenders. Half of them are going to businesses that are considered small businesses, where the revenue is under a million dollars a year. And, who is doing these loans? First of all, you’ll notice by loan count, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, American Express, these are credit card lenders. So, it’s not a surprise that they’re leading the pack in terms of the number of loans. But, look on the right-hand side in terms of dollar volume, Pinnacle Bank on top, 117 billion dollars followed by, you know, some other national banks, but the fact that a local bank is on top here by a significant margin, I think, is really interesting.

So, what have we learned? First, [the] Nashville market is unequal. Black applicants are denied much more often. I didn’t really get into that too much, and Black and Hispanic borrowers are concentrated in the same low- to moderate-income tracts that the HLC graded as hazardous in the 1930s. The market is concentrated. You have 591 home purchase lenders, 153 commercial lenders, but the top 20 home purchase lenders capture almost half the market. Nationally, that, you know, differs quite a bit nationally. The top 20 lenders only capture 38.6% of the market. So, Nashville is actually a little more concentrated than the national market. Local, meaning that locally headquartered headquartered banks lead commercial lending, they lead small business lending, and they’re very important for mortgage lending. So, the map from the 1930s is interesting because within the context of the city of Nashville, you can see how it still shapes where the mortgage lending is going, and that is something that we see across the country. Cities that I look at all the time they show the same pattern. The 1930 maps captured segregation that existed in those cities at the time, and they instituted a program where banks spent a generation avoiding those areas because they knew that nobody would buy the loans. Today, we still see the echoes of that. Those properties are generally less worthless, and banks are finding it harder to make loans there.

Well, with that, I’m going to turn things over to Oscar. Oscar’s going to talk a little bit about the importance of local and regional banks, I think and I hope, that I can’t wait to hear it. Thank you very much.

Abello 15:05
All right. Well, thank you, Jason. Appreciate the presentation. It’s pretty fascinating, and it really, really just jived in with what I found in my work as a journalist, writing, and reporting about community development and economic development across the country over the past 10 years. So, you know, a lot of that work culminated in my first book, The Banks We Deserve, which came out last year. I might have seen some of you on [the] book tour last year in 18 different cities. Some of these photos are in Cleveland or Rochester, San Francisco, Baltimore. It was really all over the country talking about pretty much what Jason found in the data so, you know, and this, the book, itself draws on my reporting for Next City. So, at Next City, we’ve been around since 2003 and we are an online newsroom covering solutions to advance social, racial, and environmental justice in cities across the country. I’ve been there since 2015 myself, so about 10, so over 10 years now, and I’m currently [the] economic senior economic justice correspondent.

And so, you know, one simple way to think about my job is I’m looking at community development, especially economic development on the economic side in historically redlined neighborhoods. I’m looking at who’s doing it, where are they getting the funds to do it, who owns the properties, who owns the businesses, how are they getting access to capital. You know, I’m looking at where the money is coming from, and that’s what I’ve been doing since 2015. These are some of the headlines just from 2023, which was the the year I kind of took a break toward the end of this year to start working on the book and, like I said, my job basically is to look at who’s doing economic development in historically redlined neighborhoods and, particularly as a journalist, you know, follow the money. Where’s the money coming from? And, of course, I know it’s… I don’t have to tell you all. The money is mostly coming from banks.

The thing is, if you just look at where the money is coming from and, I’m just looking at the assets of the banks, I might get distracted by the big banks, right? Because the big banks here are in the orange, right? These are banks with more than $100 billion in assets. There’s only 32 banks across the country that have more than $100 billion in assets, and then the blue is the banks with $100 billion or less in assets. There are more than 4,000 of those banks – 42 actually – 4,200 of those banks in the blue. But, of course, the bigger banks are the bigger banks, and they dominate. They seem to dominate the market today. If you just look at the top line assets, but what am I looking for? What am I looking for as a journalist? I’m looking for who’s doing things like building housing anywhere but, in particular, in restricted redlined neighborhoods. Who’s doing things like financing commercial real estates on main streets and commercial corridors in cities across the country?

Then, whether it’s revitalizing old storefronts or taking old industrial buildings and turning them into something new for a neighborhood, or taking housing that’s been neglected by landlords for decades and trying to renovate it and fix it back up and put it back on the market, hopefully at prices most people can actually afford. Turns out, you know, if you’re going to do all that work, you’re going to need a construction loan from somewhere. And, where are the construction loans coming from? It’s not that giant orange slice, because if you just look at that, look at just the construction and development loans of bank books across the country, that orange slice becomes much smaller. You can see the blue slice – banks with $100 billion or less in assets – these are your local and regional banks. That’s where 73% of all construction and development lending from banks comes from. It comes from those 4,200 smaller local and regional banks. The next, if you look at the uncommercial real estate, same story.

Abello 18:57
Commercial real estate, most of the 74% coming from banks, the 40-200 banks with $100 billion or less in assets and, then on, small business lending. Okay, a little, a little bit, the larger banks doing a little bit better, as Jason pointed out, a lot of credit card lending in that orange slice in this picture. But, on that blue slice, you’re talking about, as Jason said, longer relationship-based loans to buy the buildings, you know, for a business owner where they’ve been operating their restaurant or their barber shop or whatever it might be -loans to buy equipment for a grocery store or a bodega. Those longer-term, larger relationship-based loans, again, coming mostly from those smaller banks.

So what’s going on here? You know, I’m a journalist, I’m supposed to figure it out. One of the things I found is that those local and regional banks… They have a real relationship with the people that they’re lending to, especially when it comes to construction and acquisition, rehab. Commercial real estate and small business lending, and just to give you an example of, like, what’s possible here, what’s in that blue slice. The City of Bridges Community Land Trust. You know, this is a newer community land trust. It’s a newer developer, so to speak. You know, they don’t have decades of experience in affordable housing, but they built a relationship with First Commonwealth Bank, a $12 billion bank based in Western Pennsylvania (a regional bank), and they just have a relationship with this first Commonwealth Bank. They have a weekly call every Wednesday, just like every other affordable housing developer or any developer in in the bank’s portfolio. They have a regular call with the bank. If for, in City Bridges case, it’s at 2 o’clock every Wednesday. They have a phone call to talk about what’s in the pipeline. That’s the kind of thing that’s possible. So, again, what’s going on here? So, it turns out that the size of the bank isn’t just about, like, what what deals it’s interested in or able to do. It also has a lot to do with the structure of the bank and how it actually makes loans, sources loans, and underwrites loans.

Community banks – they have these longer-term relationships with customers. They have loan officers, credit committee members, even boards that are meeting every week to talk about specific loans to specific businesses or specific projects in specific locations, and they’re talking about what we all know in small, which we’re dealing with small business or economic development location. They’re talking about, you know, is this the right business? Is this the right project for this location for this neighborhood? Who do we know who lives in the neighborhood? Are they going to shop at this business? Is this a project that this community needs in this location? It’s not just how they source loans; it’s also how they underwrite loans. It’s how the credit committee talks about every loan, every one of these loans that they’re making. This is a quote from Douglas Amaro, who works at the $3 billion Ponce Bank, a community bank, one of only two banks based in the South Bronx. They meet every week. I mean, sometimes, they’ll meet multiple times a week, just on a specific deal that might come across the plate that might have some kind of time urgency, and it’s not, it’s part of the underwriting, right? They don’t just source the loans through relationships.

They also [are] able to tell the regulator we’ve done our homework as a bank. We know the neighborhood, we know the borrower, we know the business, we know the developer. We know that this is a safe and sound loan to make. That’s the reason why these smaller banks do so much more than those larger banks, and it’s really stark, especially when you get to, like, when you compare the smallest banks and the biggest banks. Right, those biggest banks, just the big four – Chase Bank, Wells Fargo, and Citi – they’ve got $9 trillion in assets compared to the $2.7 trillion at the three 900 community banks. So, you think, oh, big four banks again? Are they the partners we need? Are they doing the work that we need banks to do?

Abello 22:52
The answer is pretty much no, they’re not. Those those 4,000 community banks do three times more construction loans than the big four banks combined. They do three times more commercial real estate loans than the big four banks combined. They even do twice as much small business lending than the big four banks combined. This is what’s in their their portfolios right now, as of the latest call report from the federal regulators. Just as another example of, like, what’s possible. Again, here’s a real estate cooperative just north of Minneapolis in a place called Brooklyn Center. We’re about there were a few dozen business women, mostly Black and immigrant business women in the Minneapolis suburbs. If, you know, the Minneapolis suburbs, this is a heavily immigrant neighborhood. Something like 25% of the population was born outside of the U.S. in Brooklyn Center, but the landlords weren’t giving them opportunities to lease out storefronts in strip malls that are vacant. Like, they all got stuck in these office buildings. I’m talking about like a hair salon or a nail salon operating on the third floor of an office building, and what the heck is going on? It’s the only opportunity they could get. So, a few dozen of these women got together, pooled their capital, and they got a loan, a $3.4 million loan out of $5 million in capital they needed to raise to acquire this strip mall last year, or about two years ago now.

So, and you can see here, I’ve got a quote here from the commercial from the loan officer that worked on the steel, and she’s looking at their cooperative model and saying, “Yeah, you know, this is creative. These women have been in the neighborhood. Some of them have businesses that have been around for 15-20, or 20 years.” They can talk to them. They can go out and meet them, and she can bring the credit committee to go out and meet these business owners, and they can all build a relationship and say, yeah, you know what? These landlords, conventional models, conventional landlords can’t figure out what to do with these strip malls. You have, but you guys have thriving businesses despite being stuck in these office centers, office buildings, like, this travel agency you can see on the right. They, this is one of this, is the travel agency that one of these travel agencies. It was, it was stuck on, like, a second floor of an office building around the corner from this strip mall. Now, it’s got this beautiful storefront. She’s expanded into selling luggage, suitcases, travel accessories. Right, her name’s Janie Sabor. She’s the chair of the co-op that bought this strip mall. So, now she’s in there and she owns the strip mall along with the 30 other women in the real estate cooperative that acquired this a couple years ago. Again, relationship building – it’s all about relationships. It’s community. It’s community based, and that’s what’s possible when you have a local bank involved.

So, what’s the problem, right? This is the big problem, right? You know, Jason pointing out the numbers and giving you the national picture. It’s local banks, community banks, regional banks that are doing most of the work that communities actually need. But, here’s the story that I think a lot of you know at NCRC. There’s been [a] tremendous consolidation of the banking sector. We haven’t just lost, you know, it’s the banking sector itself has grown, right? But, we’ve lost the institutions, and when we lose the institutions, we lose the relationships, the networks that those institutions lend through. So, it’s not just the fact that we have larger banks now shifting from a large bank-based from a small bank-based system to a large bank-based system means shifting what the system is able to do, and that’s of course not the only problem, right? Jason talked about redlining, and those community banks, these existing community banks, they’re the banks that redline, right? We’re talking about, you know, when you think about all the community banks we used to have, they were part of this history.

Abello 26:35

They were part of that Fannie Mae history of, like you know, all those billions and billions of dollars of more small dollar mortgages issued by community banks going to 98% [of] White families, and they’re still doing it. When we talk, not everybody has the same access to that community-based underwriting. What you’re looking at here is the chart that shows the different kinds of lenders using HMDA data. So, the the smaller bars in the middle, those are your community banks, the smallest bars, meaning they’re the least likely to serve majority-minority census tracts, less than even the the top 25 largest banks. You can see them just to the right. Credit unions doing a little bit better. CDFIs is doing a little bit better than credit unions. But, who’s doing the best? It’s the minority depository institutions. In this chart, that includes both community banks, includes both banks and credit unions that are NDIs. That’s no surprise. They’re the most likely to serve majority-minority census tracts because it turns out relationship-based lending and relationship and community-based underwriting is both a strength and a weakness, right? If you’re lending [is] based on who your board, your loan officers, your credit committee [is], if you’re lending based on who they know, the neighborhoods they understand, then who they are really matters.

And, so that’s why this number is just so stark and shocking to me. It’s still something I think about. I wake up and think about it almost every day. Out of the 3,900 community banks that are still out there. Out of the 3,900 of those community banks doing all the community-based underwriting, commercial real estate lending, construction lending, talking about specific deals in specific places, talking about it every week at the credit committee and the board level. Only 130 of those banks are owned or controlled by non-White Hispanic communities. So, you just think about like how many CDFIs are there? 1,400 CDFIs. Okay, great. There are 4,000 community banks doing all that construction, commercial real estate, and small business lending to the communities that they know, based on who serves, who’s on their board, who’s on, who are the loan officers, who’s their credit committee. There are 4,000 of those banks doing that work for White communities and only 130 for everybody else. And, if you break it down by geography, it really gets really stark, right? I live in New York City. You can see we got 19 White community banks in New York City serving 2.6 million White folks. Only one community bank for Black folks. Only one Hispanic community bank for Hispanic folks, and it’s everywhere, right? Here’s New Orleans, stark. It’s the same. Here’s Chicago. Chicago’s crazy, right? Chicago’s got the metro area’s got 73 White community banks. You have some beautiful downtowns and main streets in the Chicago metro area, whether it’s on the north side of Chicago or out in the suburbs, in the White suburbs, beautiful neighborhoods out there. One community bank, Black community bank left. Zero Hispanic community banks left for Chicago. Detroit, same story, and Nashville.

We’re talking about Nashville today. Here you are. You’ve got 19 White-owned community banks in Nashville. Only one Black community bank, and I’ve got them listed out here for you. Jason mentioned, you know, Pinnacle Bank here is a regional bank. It should, it’s doing what it should, what it’s always been doing, what they’re structured to do as as a regional bank. They’re doing what they’re doing, but you only have one NDI bank here. Now, I don’t want to leave you with just a picture. So here, so what’s possible with an MDI bank even today? And, if and should we have more of them? I mean, if you just think about it, like maybe we should have more. I don’t. I don’t know how many exactly more we should have. But, what if? What if you just started a new one today? What could it do? So, in Columbus, Ohio, Adelphi Bank became the first newly chartered African American NDI since 2003 since before the crisis, right? The first new one. They’re three years in. They’ve already got 100 million in assets.

Abello 30:28
You can see here almost $27 million in construction and development loans, $38 million in commercial real estate, $20 million in commercial and industrial. So, that’s mostly small business lending. So, just three years in and where’s where is it lending to. Okay, so here’s a map of the Columbus metropolitan area. So, this [is] Columbus and the surrounding area. The star is where Adelphi is – one branch. They only have one branch so far. It’s a new bank, right? One branch, the star. It’s in the historic east side of Columbus, historically Black east side of Columbus, and you can see in this racial dot map. So, every, you know, if the font’s kind of hard to see, but basically you’re looking for the yellow, right? The yellowish areas, the yellow dots, are the Black population in Columbus. And, like many cities, the Black population ended up on one side of the city, and Columbus it ended up being the east side. So the east side of Columbus, you can see the yellowish areas. Now, if we go to the next slide, these yellow dots are where Adolfo Bank is lending. As close as I can approximate the two maps together, right? Unfortunately, I’m not the greatest for graphics. Maybe Jason can do this, but the yellow dots are primarily in the predominantly Black neighborhoods throughout the Columbus area, from the historic east side around the branch to other parts of the Columbus area where there are Black neighborhoods.

I looked at the racial demographics of the zip codes where, um, where Adolph Bank has made these mortgages. You know, the yellow again,  each yellow is one commercial, is one mortgage. They’re primarily commercial real estate mortgages. And, Adelphi Banks’ top five zip codes. If you look at the top five zip codes where they’re lending, three of the top five are majority Black neighborhoods, and a fourth is 40% Black. And, then, the fifth of the top five is the zip code that that includes the Ohio State University. Which, of course, I mean, how can you avoid making a loan to a business near a college like that? So, that’s possible in just three years of work. Like, imagine what it’ll be in 10 years, 15 years, 20 years as a bank having the same access to the kind of banking, the relationship-based, community-based underwriting that the White neighborhoods have now. They have access to that in the Black neighborhoods in Columbus, and yeah, I’m excited to hear from Corey about the work that his bank has been doing, Citizen Savings Bank and Trust in Nashville.

Hammonds 32:42
Thank you, Oscar. My name is Corey Hammonds. I’m representing Citizen Savings Bank and Trust here in Nashville. Our claim to fame: We are the oldest African American-owned bank in the country. We were founded in 1904. We are an MDI, and then we are also a CDFI bank. I am here to talk to you very briefly about banking relationships and how your most important source of capital is the local community banks. I serve proudly as the chief operating and credit officer of the bank. I’m also the founder and owner of the Hammonds Group, which is a appraisal, a real estate development and brokerage firm. My focus is bridging the gap between corporate banking, real estate investment, and community growth. My mission, and also the reason why I’m affiliated with Citizens Bank, is their mission of empowering local entrepreneurs, expanding assets to capital, and building long-term generational wealth.

As Oscar mentioned, and as you have heard over this panel discussion, banking relationships do matter, and when you bank with a local community bank, whether you are an individual, whether you are an organization, nonprofit, or even a small business, the best time to build an institutional banking relationship is long before you need a request for a loan. So, no matter what it is that you need, it starts with a banking relationship, a depository relationship. I tell folks all the time, Citizens having the long history and foundation and longevity that we do have. Just imagine if we led the way into in-deposit generation. If we were as big as, let’s just say, a Wells Fargo from a depository standpoint. A lot of the issues that we’re talking about on this panel discussion right now would not exist for Black and Brown people. So, the main takeaway from that is where you put your money is really what you support. And, so if you really have a interest in making a difference, where you bank, where you have your excess cash, where you have your operating deposits, think about putting those with a local community bank because local community banks are the first line of folks and organizations that put money back directly into the communities that they serve. What helps projects gain traction?

So, I get a lot of very mission-minded projects that different developers want financing for, but what bankers really look for outside of that is clear. Framework, real contingencies, and a structure sponsor contribution model. So, what that really means is we really want to define scope of not only just how your project, from an economic development standpoint, helps the community. We also, we are still a bank, so we still have to make sure to de-risk and to make sure that the cap, the cap stack, as we call it, is diversified. So, when folks come to us, we want realistic timelines, reliable contingency allowances, and material sponsor equity to demonstrate alignment with your project. We also need balanced funding architectures combining sponsored equity, tax credits, state federal grants, and traditional debt. It’s very, very important if you’re doing any type of development that’s affordable housing, workforce housing, or anything that’s [a] economic development model or framework is to make sure that your capital stacking, your equity is in place, and that what helps community banks specifically underwrite the deal and make sure the deal is not only profitable to the bank and also profitable to the developer, but also good to the community. So, one of the reasons why banks might walk away is that there’s gaps.

You know, the the underwriting roadblocks, overly aggressive projections lacking submarket historical validation. You have to know the information of your market, of your development, of your project, equity deficits is another one. Intervention sponsor, financial commitment, or direct operational equity. What that basically means is there’s not enough cash injection or equity being put into the project. One of the things that people fail to think about is what we call underwriting friction. You know, as banks request things, late document submission, unaddressed liabilities, or missing reports. It’s critical to have all the information that you really need on the front end. So, when banks, we can build that rapport with potential borrowers who are doing good in the community. Some of the other things is the “Trust us” narrative.

Hammonds 36:57
Just because you’re doing good, like I said before, and you have a a project that is good for the community. We still need all of the information that we got to have. Compressed time windows, meaning you know a project, no matter what size or what scale it is, we really need to have enough time to underwrite it properly, and then also you know operating on flat budgets without material cost overrun assumptions. When you’re doing development deals, there’s always something that’s going to come up, so making sure that you have all of that cushion, or contingency capital, squared away is very, very important. So, the core principle of this is banks rarely decline deals due to mission alignment. I get a lot of requests throughout the Nashville area where there are mission-aligned projects, especially with the mission of Citizens, normally it’s walked away because the risk cannot be underwritten securely. So, from a capital stack perspective and from a cash flow perspective, that is very, very important in making sure that the bank is with you as it pertains to providing you the financing that you need.

So, to end my presentation, successful community development financing occurs at the intersection of three things: 1) strong relationships, but it starts at the depository level. 2) measurable community impact. We want to see not only that you’re a current customer of the bank or current customer of, you know, the community. We also want to see how do you measure the community impact based on what it is that you’re doing, and then thirdly, because we are a bank, we still have to, you know, stick to sound banking fundamentals, and that’s making sure capital stack is adequate, and that’s also making sure that the information that is requested cash flows properly, so we can stick to sound banking fundamentals. Thank you for the presentation, and I’ll turn it back over to Monchiere’ for any questions that anyone might have.

Holmes-Jones 38:43
Corey, thank you so much. That was really, really good, and succinct. I love that. If you have any questions, I saw a couple questions in the Q and A, and thanks Jason for getting in there and answering a couple of those. We have one that I need to answer, and I will need a little help on this one that I see still out there. How long will the replay be available? Not sure if we know that just yet, but I’ll get that information. But, if there’s any additional questions, someone’s typing that answer now. Thank you. Any additional questions for any of our panelists? I would love to open the floor for that. If you can just go into the Q and A at the bottom of your screen, screen there, we can get those answered. This has been a great presentation. I was taking notes. I need to go back to that map. That map for Nashville. Thank you for doing Nashville. That’s really huge for us here. Again, Jason, Oscar, Corey, great, great, great presentation! So excited! Oh, Ron Thompson, thank you, Ron. What can Nashville do today to turn this trend around? I’ll throw that to Oscar just based on some of your notes of kind of surveying the whole United States with your book. And then everybody else can follow … Corey Jason… and I can answer it again if you don’t see it.

Abello 40:04
Oh, I can see it. Yeah, I mean, one thing that, I guess, [is a] pattern I would say has existed over time. It’s not necessarily what’s happening, what’s been happening recently. If you do look at the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which just passed, there are several provisions in there that are specifically tailored to support community banks, local and regional banks, to be a more significant piece of the sort of affordable housing infrastructure in every across the country. Right, there’s a cap on public welfare investments, raising the cap on public welfare investments, making it easier to hold reciprocal deposits or custodial deposits. So, you know, if you have a large deposit or anchor institution like a hospital or university, you know, there’s only so much, and they can leave deposited at a community bank, a smaller bank. But, that amount is a little bit bigger now. But that bill that just passed, you know, is probably the first time in a very long time when policymakers centered local banks in the delivery infrastructure for community development, you know, writ large.

You know, once upon a time when we created the FDA, the Federal Reserve. Let’s start with the Federal Reserve, the first one, right? When you create the Federal Reserve, that was originally to support local banks. That’s the reason why there’s 12 Federal Reserve banks. There’s not one Federal Reserve in New York, even though you know we can talk. I can talk. I will talk offline about what’s the New York one dominating the others. But, there’s a reason why there’s 12 federal reserve banks. The FDIC originally created to support local banks that needed the backing of the federal government so that they could continue to attract deposits locally. The federal home loan banks originally created again to support small savings and loan associations across the entire country. Once upon a time, policymakers centered community banks and local banks in everything that they expected to happen when it comes to community development and economic development. The idea of having big banks come in and be a partner did not figure into the equation because they didn’t exist until recently, right? In 1986, when we had 15,700 community banks, those community banks were 40% of the banking system, and the top four banks, the same top four banks we have today, those four banks were 6% of the banking system. We had a much more local and regionally-oriented banking system back in the day, and that was a result of policymakers centering local banks, and that can happen at the state and local levels too. It doesn’t just happen at the federal level. State and local governments can also do a lot to support local banks.

Hammonds 42:55
I want to add one thing to that. Yeah, especially in the Nashville area, which I’ve been a part of personally, is public and private partnerships. I think that is very, very important for the public sector and the private sector to come together and make sure that economic development, community reinvestment actually does take places in the areas, specifically of Nashville, that is needed for.

Holmes-Jones 43:19
That’s good. We love public and private partnerships in Nashville for sure. It’s how we move the needle. I’ll also add, you know, community development entails a lot of things. So, when we have these public and private partnerships, these webinars like this and events that we have, are really key to meeting the right people and the people who are ready for those types of conversations. So, beyond going, driving, yourself to the bank, so don’t forget to sign up. We’ll have some stuff for that in the future towards the end. Thank you for that, Oscar and Corey. I have another question here, and let me see if I can sum it up here really quick. Carmelita Turner, thank you. Enjoyed hearing your talk, Corey. It looks like, sounds like, the comments alluded to the Black community not being prepared or bankable, and so Citizens helps with that. She doesn’t have that data in front of her, but she was wondering. She never hears the organizations tell the person how they can. I love this. I’ve never liked hearing organizations tell the person who has been hit by a car to get up and walk over to the ambulance. I’ll go ahead and say, Citizens is definitely not those folks. They will hold your hand from front to back. Great partnerships. I’m a banker at Citizens as well and a Black-owned business on historic Jefferson Street. But, I’ll let Corey go ahead and answer that to your point on that.

Hammonds 44:36
Not only just, you know, Black and Brown communit[ies], but anybody that is, you know, underserved or underbanked. What we specifically do, we have a partnership with a nonprofit out of Atlanta called Operation Hope. It is free to the community, to anybody that wants to come about, and it is for individuals whether they need budgeting, is for small business or entrepreneurs who need counseling to get their businesses off the ground. This is not a one-time type of counseling. You can come as many times as you want, and it is totally free. And, what we do is we try to prepare whether it’s an individual, whether it’s an entrepreneur, or some type of other organization. We want to prepare them for the financing that they need, especially when what they’re doing is community-focused.

Holmes-Jones 45:20
Okay, I love it. We have one more question before we turn to our closing notes. How have the community and regional banks played a role in the housing recovery since 2008? Jason, I felt like when you said that earlier, that was a good primer. Like, did we get back together by 2012 in real life? Let me see. I don’t think so, but this question I’ll kick to you from Athena Gore.

Richardson 45:43
I’m sorry. Let me take a look here.

Holmes-Jones 45:45
No, it’s okay. How have community and regional banks played a role in the housing recovery?

Richardson 45:50
So, what we’re finding, so ever since the housing crash, banks have every year we’ve seen them pull back further and further from mortgage lending, and I’m going to confine my comments right now to mortgage lending because it’s what I work with the most. So, for a variety of reasons, banks have every year ceded the mortgage space to mortgage companies. In fact, in 2025, only 30% of home purchase loans nationally were made by a bank. About 10 or 11% were made by credit unions. The rest of them are made by mortgage companies. Large banks were actually finding now that they are turning from making mortgage loans directly. Instead, they’re opening up massive lines of credit for mortgage companies, and by doing so, banks can sidestep regulations like the Community Reinvestment Act in certain ways, and I think that that is a particular concern.

NCRC has been a strong advocate for modernizing the Community Reinvestment Act to cover mortgage companies as well. And, if you’re not familiar with it, the Community Reinvestment Act is a law that requires banks to reinvest in the communities where they take deposits from – it’s a really simple concept. You cannot take deposits from a community and then refuse to lend money in that community, or simply avoid that community. And, right now, mortgage companies are exempt from that, so there is no obligation for them to service lower-income areas of Nashville, and we feel that is, you know, a gap certainly in oversight that we hope at some point is corrected. One other thing we’ve done is help groups promote state-level Community Reinvestment Act[s]. Illinois just implemented [one]. New York has a state-level CRA and, hopefully, New Jersey soon will as well. So, you know, and I’m kind of sidestepping your question here because I don’t have specific data about Nashville for the entire time period for regional banks, but I can tell you that banks like Wilson Bank and Trust and Pinnacle Bank that I talked about, they have remained in the mortgage business, and I think that’s great. They are regularly examined to make sure that they are lending in lower-income areas and to lower-income home buyers. But, if you have any specific questions and you’re a member of NCRC, keep in mind you can just drop me a line anytime. Shoot me an email. I put my email in the chat, and I’m happy to look at specific banks or banks in your specific area.

Holmes-Jones 48:25
Awesome, thank you, Jason. That’s really, really good, and also I think the link was in the chat as well. But, to his map, that map that was really, really helpful. So, if you have not grabbed it, I want to go ahead and take these last few minutes here to get you ready. This was first of many. We will host a training in Nashville related to community development and investment. So, if you’re in the Metro Nashville area and would like to attend, go ahead and email Greg Wilson, G Wilson at NCRC.org. For those of you on the West Coast, NCRC will be hosting our Reinvest Washington Economic Summer Summit in Tacoma, Washington on September 22. That sounds amazing. And, for those of you across the country, NCRC will be hosting our 2027 Just Economy Conference May six through seven, Washington D.C. Of course, if you have an idea for a need, for a panel, and we need to submit that idea, please do that by July 30th of this year. For more information, you can always become a member to stay tuned and stay connected and get all of this good information by going to ncrc.org/membership. And, for more details on future events and webinars like this, do the same thing. Go to ncrc.org/events. Today was amazing. Content was solid. Thank you all so much. We appreciate you here in Nashville, of course, but we appreciate NCRC just as well. Thank you so much, and have a great day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

During this webinar you will learn how to apply for a conference proposal and content areas that are important priorities for the upcoming year.

What conversations do you want to lead? What new ideas can you bring to the table to help us imagine and create a just economy? Whose voices do you want to include and showcase? Have an idea for a session, panel or discussion? Submit your idea by July 30.

Speakers

Catie Rountree, Director of Membership & Events
Chloe Sabharwal, Conference & Events Manager
Haley Schneider, Conference & Events Specialist

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Sabharwal 0:06
Thank you so much for joining us today while we discuss NCRC’s 2027 Just Economy Conference call for sessions. To introduce myself, I’m Chloe Sabharwal, NCRC’s conference and events manager, and I’m joined by Catie Rountree, our director of membership and Events, and Haley Schneider, our conference and events specialist.

Just real quick, NCRC’s code of conduct applies to all gatherings, including this webinar. You can read the full code of conduct at ncrc.org/conduct. If you have any questions, please put them in the Q&A module, which you can find by clicking that Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. You may need to click three dots to find the Q&A button. We do not permit AI chatbots on our calls, and this call will be recorded and will be distributing it as well as the slides afterwards.

So to start with, we’re going to go over just a little bit about NCRC, what the Just Economy Conference is, and then we’ll move into who attends Just Economy Conference, our content priorities, talk about the different types of sessions that we do. And, then, logistics related to the breakout sessions, how to submit your content ideas, and then we’ll leave time for questions as well. So, just a little bit about us, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition is a nationwide network of over 700 organizations and champions working for a just economy where all Americans can build wealth and provide for their families with stability and integrity. Our members include grassroots advocates, community developers, faith-based institutions, and local nonprofits that represent urban, suburban, and rural communities across the country. The Just Economy Conference is our flagship event for the year. It’s where we all come together. Our biggest gathering for the year. We had 43 states represented at last year’s conference, and the conference often draws over 1,200 attendees.

It is the national event for everyone who’s committed to creating a just economy. And, throughout the conference, we have 35 breakout sessions, which is what we’re going to be focusing on today. These are often listed as one of the most important things that our attendees take away from the conference. It’s where they can learn, what they can take back to their work and their communities. It’s also where they can find really important connections and learn how to build connections that are going to fuel their work.

So, I’m going to hand it off to Catie to talk about who attends.

Rountree 2:34
Yeah, thank you, Chloe. So, there’s a rather long list. This is actually two slides of different type of institutions, organizations, and leaders that attend our conference. I want to just kind of group those a little bit to help you think about who you’re designing for and how they relate to one another. Think about what it takes to build a just economy. We need folks that are changing the way resources move directly in our community. We need folks who have the resources to deploy. We need folks who can provide insights into what’s actually happening in communities – the good, the bad, the weird, what’s changing, what levers produce, what results. So, kind of that knowledge industry researchers, and we need the folks who are setting the rules and figuring out how to apply the rules that oversee how capital moves, how resources move in communities at the local, state, and federal level, and so that when you look at all these different types of organizations and leaders who attend the Just Economy Conference, that’s one way to kind of understand who those folks are, and one of the really, I think, special things about the Just Economy Conference is the way that those folks get to come together in one room.

And so, as you’re designing your content, as you’re thinking about what conversations you uniquely want to have about your work that you’re in day in and day out, what conversation makes sense for this particular event? I actually would encourage you to think about how those different kinds of groups of people and how those different functions in an ecosystem need to work together and to talk to each other in order for the work to happen and to flourish because our most successful content at the Just Economy conference speaks to more than one of those different groups of people and helps equip them to collaborate together for community flourishing. Yeah, that’s it. When you’re thinking about who you want in the room and why they want to be there, I think that’s a really helpful.

To think about, and again, you can see just the the intersections and how folks relate. I do want to specifically call out that our conference is both a place for leaders, those who are making the really hard decisions for their institutions, and it is also a place for young professionals to be learning what that work looks like, and we want to space it both ends of that. And then, I’m going to talk about how we’re bringing what the priorities are for the those conversations for those people. Which, I think, even just talking about who those people are and how they relate to each other gives some guidance.

But, we are looking for models of work that changes how capital moves in communities. That are replicable, scalable, or solves problems that are persistent across multiple communities or multiple fields. We’re looking for observations, for insights into how economy, how the economy is or is not serving communities, that can inform practitioners in how they do their work. We’re looking for thoughtful analysis of the the rules and regulations that impact how capital moves and how others can engage in that and how and what the impacts are on the ground and so you can see that across a variety of spaces that intersect with economic justice. But, that lens is really what we’re looking for across a broad variety of different types of conversations, and then I think I’m turning it over to Haley to get a little bit more granular about the format and how to do your submission proposal. So, Haley, I’ll turn it over to you.

Schneider 7:00
Hello, everybody. Thank you for taking time out of your busy days to hang out with us for a bit and learn a little bit more about our Just Economy conference. We have been doing this for a long time, so in different formats for almost 30 years, we have brought people together annually to talk about these things that Caitie and Chloe have hit on. So, before I get too much into the session types, I have dropped the session guidelines in the chat. So, if you saw that on the previous page that Caitie was presenting on, this is first time this year. So, if you have any feedback as you’re reading through it on things that maybe could be more clear, feel feel free to send us an email at membership@ncrc.org, which I will also send in the chat. But, the purpose of these guidelines are to give you some additional context of what we’re really looking for as you’re putting together your proposal.

We want to do what we can to help you have as strong of a proposal as possible, and I’ll get into a little bit more of what that looks like. But, just as I’m going through this presentation, wanted to link that session’s guidelines in there so you can refer back to it when you actually start writing your session. As Chloe mentioned, we have 35 breakout sessions at the Just Economy conference. There’s typically six happening simultaneously at the same time throughout the day. There are two full days of breakout sessions. So, breakout sessions are the name of the game. It is our preferred way of convening to share ideas and to talk about what’s actually going on in our communities. So, this slide details the two different type of breakout sessions. We have lightning sessions, and then we have a standard session. And, the main difference between those is both length and purpose. So, with our lightning sessions, those are shorter. They’re going to be only 30 minutes long. It’s your one punchy idea that you can get across.

So, we encourage only one speaker to be able to communicate that, and we still ask for 10 to 15 minutes of Q and A. So, if you want to write that type of session, make sure as you’re doing your session description, you are not trying to overdo it with too many ideas. Keep it simple. What is the one point you want your audience to take away? Then, we have our standard sessions, and so those are going to be an hour and 15 minutes in length. We have more of these types of sessions. There’s going to be two to three speakers with one moderator, and we hope that those speakers and moderators can represent a very diverse perspective, show collaboration. We do not want to say, for example, have four fair housing organizations on a session, or four bankers on a session. We want to see that you have a different audience type represented in each of those speakers and moderator.

And, in this centered session, you also should plan time for Q and A. This is always sought after in our conference, just a time for the audience to engage and get to really interact with you guys. So, those are the two breakout session types. Okay, so our 2027 Just Economy Conference is happening May 6 through 7th of 2027. So, I know that seems far away, but is going to be here faster than you understand. And, the reason that we do all of this in advance is because we want to have plenty of time to allow y’all to put together session descriptions. Really do the research on what’s actually going back to your communities. Talk to the people in your communities. This is supposed to be a process that involves what’s really going on the resident level and the location of the event is the Grand Hyatt in Washington D.C. So that’s about 15 minutes from Capitol Hill. It is we’re really excited to be at this new location. If you’ve been with us in previous years, we’ve been at a different hotel, so we are really excited to be at the Grand Hyatt this year. We think that you guys are really going to enjoy it.

So, a little bit more on session development timeline. All of the proposals are due by July 30th, and that gives us time not only as our team reviewing these proposals, but we also have a team of about 20 experts in the field. They’re called our program committee, and we really seek out their just expertise. So this allows us enough time to thoroughly review the applications. You will hear back from us around October about the actual selections. We are going to do a voting period as well. So basically, if you see an email from us in the meantime, we could be asking you for clarification on something in your session. We could potentially be putting your session up for vote so expect to hear from us. Please respond as quickly as possible. A little bit.

We’ve talked about how what’s going on at the conference, what we care about, what are our priorities. So, now from here on is going to be very logistics heavy. So, this is how to actually apply for a session of the conference. So, you can see under Step One there is a link (ncrc.org/conference). So, if you go to that link, you will be able to see button that says “Submit a Session Proposal.” So, you’re gonna click on that link, and it’s gonna take you to this page listed here. So, the first step after clicking that link is going to be logging in, and what’s really important is that if you have submitted proposals in the past year, you are going to need to create a new account. They, our system, wipes the username and passwords every year. So, say you applied last year, make sure this year that you submit a new email address and password. All right, so we’re logged in. You have access to our portal. Yay! Now, what you’re going to do is actually get into the meat of what you’re going to talk about.

So, in that, I’ve linked the session guidelines again. If you need a refresher about what am I going to talk about, what are the audiences, you can find that there in the session guidelines. We ask that your session title be extremely clear about who should attend your session. So, if you are a CDFI and you’ve taught and you’re talking to an audience of other community lenders, I want you to make that really clear in that session title. We have the session titles outside of the breakout session rooms, so when people are walking by, imagine yourself in that position of “What session do I want to attend?” So make it clear about your purpose and audience in a couple of words, 100 characters max. I know it’s hard, but I believe in you. So, now for the session description, it’s really important in your first two sentences to explain what you want your audience to be taking away from this session. Make that purpose really clear, so as we’re reviewing, we can continue going back to that and know, okay, this is the audience that you’re targeting, and this is the purpose of your session.

That is really helpful, and it really increases the strength of your session. As I just mentioned, make sure you list the target audiences for the session as well as what sort of core idea, challenge, opportunity you are exploring, and why it’s relevant to what we’re going through now as a country, state, city, whatever your locality is. What are you? What challenge are you really trying to address? And then, lastly, how can your session or approach be applied in communities or other regions? What’s really special about our conference is that we had last year we had 40-three different states represented. So, there are people from all over the United States that are coming to this conference. And so, if you are from Colorado submitting a session, how can your session be applied, say, in Utah or in North Dakota? What are what are the scalability features of your session?

So that way, if someone from a different part of the the states is attending, how can they apply whatever you’re talking about in their locality? And that’s really important as a core part of our mission is to make a just economy a national priority and a local reality. So, those go tandem, hand in hand. So, that’s the session details phase. The last thing I want to mention about your session details is we want to see how you’re integrating collaboration in your project in your case study. We want to see that you’re prioritizing relationship building and partnerships throughout whatever project you’re working on. So, that’s just another tip of how to strengthen your session. So, next are the speaker details. As I mentioned, depending on the session that you’re applying for, has different number of speakers. If you do have speakers recommended, you have a much higher chance of being considered for a session. That shows us that this is a pretty thorough idea. That you’re pretty serious and have already talked to these people. So, just know that yes, we would like to see you submit some speaker recommendations. You can see here we’re asking for their name, their title, organization. You can see it’s optional. Submit email address, race, ethnicity, and gender identity.

But, I would like to communicate that as the program committee and we’re evaluating your session, one of the things we’re evaluating is: Are you prioritizing a diverse, diverse speaker lineup that includes race and and gender? So please keep that in mind as we want our speakers to be able to connect with all sorts of different types of audiences in the room, and so this is the best way to do that. And, the last step is submit it. So, make sure you hit that massive pink button because if you do not hit that massive pink button, then I will not get your session and I cannot read it. So please submit it. Don’t just think you’re done after that previous page [as] you need to review and submit your session. That is the last step. And, this slide is just a couple of frequently asked questions that we get every year. So, are you allowed to submit more than one session proposal? Yes. If you have four brilliant ideas, please let us hear them. And, we have that happen every year, where someone submits several sessions, and we enjoy learning all the different things that you’re doing in your community. Second question is: Can we have a virtual presenter? No, unfortunately, this is not a hybrid event. This is all in person. And lastly, what AV, audio, video, or presentations will be available? So, we will provide you with a projector screen, a microphone, as well as a table for all the presenters to sit at, so that is what is provided on us. We do not permit videos as a part of our sessions. If anyone’s been to a conference before, Wi-Fi can be spotty. To stay consistent, we do not have videos as part of our presentations. So, those are my frequently asked questions. And then the last thing that I’m going to talk about is on the last slide. That was a lot of information.

Thanks for sticking with me. As Chloe mentioned before, we are a member organization. We have over 700 members. This coalition is really empowered by y’all, empowered by the people that are on the ground doing the work. A huge part of our conference is providing a space for our members to facilitate conversations, talk about how they’re doing, just really a time of authenticity. We love our members. We are excited to see them when they come to the conference. As you’re filling out the application, there is a spot to say how you heard about us or how you [heard about] applying to the session. If you’re a staff member, a member, a nonprofit, whatever we do, prioritize lifting up the voice of our members. If you are not a member and you are applying, it doesn’t mean that you’re not going to be selected. But, we definitely love to hear from our members and what they have to say. So, just wanted to put that out there.

That if you are just interested in learning more about what it means to be an NCRC member, what are the benefits for you at the end of the day? I’ve linked in our website so you can contact our membership team (www.ncrc.org/membership), and I also dropped in our membership email earlier in the chat. Would love to hear from you guys and what you think. That is all I have today, and now it is question time.

Audience question 19:11
Will this slideshow and recording will be sent out?

Schneider 19:14
The answer is yes. So in Caitie’s words: “Never fear. We got you.”

Audience question 19:24
Is the person who submits the proposal required to be one of the speakers on the panel?

Schneider 19:29
No, you do not have to speak on the panel. There’s some people who are the mind and the brains behind the thing, or in the communications department, and have the idea or know how to communicate the words, but don’t necessarily end up as speakers, so that happens all the time. You are not required to actually be a speaker on the panel. One aspect of session management that I forgot to mention is that we have a session lead for each session. So, if you are the submitter of the proposal, then I’m going to assume that you are going to be the session lead, and that’s an administrative role where I’m going to communicate to you everything. You know, as far as like dates, things are due, important updates. Hey, schedule this meeting, your prep call. Hey, here’s your speaker graphics. So, I do request a session lead for every session, which starts out as the person who submits the proposal.

Audience question 20:27
I haven’t attended the conference before. Do you have a list of workshops, titles, and/or abstracts from the previous conferences that newcomers can use as a reference?

Schenider 20:40
So, on our website (ncrc.org/conference), you can see past speakers that have spoken from the main stage, past highlights, which kind of go[es] over topic areas.

Audience question 20:53
Is there a theme for the 2027’s conference?

Schneider 20:57
So, every year, our mission is to make a just economy a national priority and a local reality, and so that is the overall rooted theme of what we’re going to be talking about: the changemakers who care about moving our communities forward. Under that, there typically is a sub theme related to just what’s going on in our industry, so that is yet to be fully announced, but there will be a little more detail coming soon.

Audience question 21:29
If your session is selected, will registration be covered?

Schneider 21:33
Yes, all speakers a part of a panel have complimentary registration.

Audience question 21:44
What kind of some partnerships or collaborations [do you] have?

Schneider 21:49
Our membership team is the best [people] to answer that. I am on the events team, so I think that they can give you a more thorough answer. So, I would also reach out to membership@ncrc.org.

Audience question 21:56
Do the speakers have to be NCRC members?

Schneider 22:00
No, you are not required to be a member. That’s just something that we always look for, just when you’re submitting your application, just to know how you found us and what realm of the industry you’re in.

Audience question 22:12
How are travel and accommodation expenses handled for speakers?

Schneider 22:16
So, as I mentioned, all speakers receive a complimentary registration ticket, valued at about $1,200, so free a free ticket for you for all the speakers. We do not provide travel accommodations and expenses specifically. But, if you’re having some difficulties getting here when the time comes, shoot us an email, and we will see if we can work with you on anything.

Audience question 22:43
Should our proposal be specific to our involved community, or more general that can be applied to, let’s say, all urban, rural, or siloed community that we are associated with?

Schneider 22:54
Probably depends a little bit on what you’re, what exactly you’re talking about, and what you’re trying to get across. But, a general rule of thumb is if you are in a specific community and have an example of something or a partnership that’s really worked that can be applied to, say, that urban/rural community level, then I would just make that clear. Like, hey, “This is how we do it in our community, and these are some lessons or these are some aspects that can be applied at an urban and rural community questions” [in] on that email [to] membership@ncrc.org.

Audience question 23:24
Apart from Q and A, what are other audience engagement activities that are recommended or have worked well in previous sessions?

Schneider 23:33
That’s really important. I’ve seen people do like the [interactive app activities] where they have like a QR code on the projector screen and then people can answer questions from their phone or from the app. We also do have a conference app, and so I ask people to submit their presentations or any PDFs or something that they can submit ahead of time, so I can upload it to the conference app. And so, underneath your session, you can have different pamphlets of things that you potentially want readers to look at, so I’ve gotten a lot of feedback. Our planning team is still in the midst of figuring out exactly how all of that is going to look, so I can’t provide an answer at this time. But, as as times get closer to May, if you want to reach out about that same question. I’ve gotten a lot of feedback that audience members really appreciate having those presentations or just something to look at on the app while you’re going through your presentation so that’s one idea of how to engage the audience.

Audience question 24:17
Do you provide parking and transportation resources?

Schneider 24:22
Our planning team is still in the midst of figuring out exactly how all of that is going to look, so I can’t provide an answer at this time. But, as as times get closer to May, if you want to reach out about that.

Audience question 24:34
Do our slides have to be PowerPoint presentations or it doesn’t matter what programs are used?

Schneider 24:41
You are correct. It does not have to be a PowerPoint. How it works is you will upload whatever method you choose, whether it’s PowerPoint or Google Slides or Canva, onto a thumb drive, and then we will provide a laptop day of so that way you can plug in your presentation.

Audience question 24:59
How do I confirm my membership status?

Schneider 25:01
Please reach out to our membership team as they are the ones who manage our membership and understands everybody who’s a current member and everything that’s going on with all of your projects that you guys might be working on together. So, please contact membership@ncrc.org and if you have any questions about your current status.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Want to better understand SNAP E&T eligibility and how referral partnerships work between agencies and service providers?

During this session, we covered basic programmatic requirements that third-party partners have and discussed approaches to overcoming common challenges that emerging TPPs face with their programs.

Strengthen your understanding of SNAP E&T eligibility and referral systems while gaining practical insights to support your program development.

Speakers

Andrew Schramm, Senior Consultant, the Seattle Jobs Initiative
Simon Wang, Economic Mobility Project Specialist, NCRC

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Wang 0:08
Amazing. Okay, I am going to go ahead and get started, and going to try to monitor the waiting room as we, as we move into things, but again, thank you everyone for joining us this afternoon for NCRC’s fourth of five webinars in our, in our 2025 series. Understanding your clients, estimating SNAP E&T eligibility and referrals is the topic for today, and just to kind of review some quick expectations and do some brief introductions every session that we’ve done before this can be found on our website at ncrc.org/snap. I’ll throw that in the chat. And next we’re going to be covering employer engagement strategies and some other things related to kind of once your program’s off the ground, how to, how to make sure that those career pathways are accessible and you have good relationships with employers and other folks in the business community. So, that’ll be covered next time in July, and we’re also super excited to be joined by one of our partners at the Seattle Jobs Initiative, Andrew Schramm. So, I’ll go ahead and hand it off to you, Andrew, to let you introduce yourself.

Schramm 1:26
Hi, everyone. Andrew Schramm, so good to be here with you today. Happy to see so many people on, so thanks for joining as well. So, I am a senior consultant with Seattle Jobs Initiative. I’ve been here for about two years, but I’ve worked in the SNAP E&T space for over 10 years now. And so Seattle Jobs Initiative is an organization that provides direct services, direct workforce services in the Seattle region, but also national consulting services on kind of data, and also snap employment and training. So we really enjoy working with states across the country and with providers like you across the country as well. So very happy to be here, and I’ll pass it back to Simon.

Wang 2:16
Amazing, thanks, Andrew. And because I didn’t introduce myself, my name is Simon Wang. I am the economic mobility specialist at NCRC. So I am on a team here of two – we’re too strong on the economic mobility team that have headed up NCRC work creating resources and opportunities for third-party providers to learn more about SNAP E&T and just get involved with the program and learn more about what steps are required and how to get involved with your state, so I’m super excited for today’s session. I’ll go ahead and also invite everybody to introduce themselves in the chat as we go. Feel free to use that space for conversation and questions throughout the session today. Just name, position, organization, and maybe what brought you here today to give us a sense of what you’re excited to learn about would be amazing. Going to the next slide here, just going to review a couple of housekeeping items. So we are recording today’s session, so that is currently being recorded, and we will also send out that recording with the slide deck for everybody afterwards. So, don’t feel the need to take any frantic notes throughout. We’ll make sure to send all of this to you afterwards in an email, and again, feel free to use either the chat, or I’m not sure if the Q and A feature is activated right now, but if it is, feel free to use any of the above ways to ask questions to do so. We highly encourage engagement throughout the session, and I’ll be monitoring the chat to make sure to pop in when there’s an opportunity to dive deeper into a question, but we’ll also have some time at the end to just discuss and hear any program-specific questions or other things that we didn’t cover throughout the session today. Cool. Okay, Andrew, I’m going to go ahead and pass it off to you, but before I do so, I’m going to launch a poll here just to get a sense of where people are at in their knowledge of SNAP E&T, so I launch that now, and you should see it pop up on your screen. I’ll give everybody a minute to just read all the responses, and then submit their answer choice, and then we’ll go from there. Awesome, thanks everyone for those responses. I’m going to go ahead and end the poll now. We have most of the people have answered, so sharing the results here, it looks like we have almost a perfect normal distribution of responses here, so Andrew looks like we’re working with some folks that have some knowledge here today, so we’re not starting from ground zero, and then a couple of experts in the room as well.

Schramm 5:12
All right, that is good to hear, and if you are any of the folks who are hearing about this for the first time, that is absolutely, absolutely okay. Feel free to ask questions, and if you know a lot about this program already, again, feel free to ask questions. Like Simon said, feel free to put those in the chat as well. Simon will be monitoring the chat, and I’ll try and keep my eyes over there as well, or just feel free to raise your hand and come off mute and can talk a bit, we’re also hoping to have some time at the end for Q and A discussion. Anything else that we can do to support, please feel free to save that for that time as well. So, what we’re hoping to get out of today’s session is first understanding some of the differences between SNAP eligibility and SNAP E&T eligibility, and kind of how to identify both, and how do they apply to your current participant population. Secondly, understanding those referral pathways and intake processes with your state SNAP administering agency, and again, both for SNAP and SNAP E&T, different processes, but absolutely connected. And then, lastly, thinking about your population, and thinking about how you’re identifying folks who are receiving SNAP and other public benefits, and how you may be able to estimate the potential enrollment number if you were to be involved with a SNAP E&T program. Ultimately, there are two things that I think would be great to come away with as well. First, every state looks different, so this is an overview generally on what is happening in the country, right, but each one of your states is going to have a bit of difference to it. We’ll talk about that again in a bit. And then, secondly, really knowing that difference between SNAP and SNAP E&T, and how they’re connected, but also how they really do work separately, and SNAP E&T really supports SNAP more so than the other way around. Next slide, please. Okay, Simon, I think I see a gray box. There we go. Great, thank you. So, just to start with SNAP eligibility, Simon, I think we have two questions that we wanted to just ask real quickly here. Does everyone know how to use the hand raise function in Zoom? I guess raise your hand if you know how to use the hand raise function. That might be a good way to do it. There we go. We see them. Great, great, great, great. Okay, so so the first question, if you can raise your hand if your organization serves individuals who are receiving SNAP benefits. It may be different names in your state, but those food benefits associated in your state. Okay, getting some responses here. Great, great to see. Okay, second question: Does your organization support individuals to apply for SNAP benefits, or encourage them to apply for SNAP benefits? Alright, great. Seeing more hands, more thumbs up, and for those of you who don’t, that’s okay too. But just want to make sure that we have kind of a baseline understanding of what this eligibility looks like, and you’re able to identify who at your organization may be able to benefit from SNAP. The way that I look at this program, and I’ve always looked at this SNAP E&T program, in addition to SNAP, is if individuals are able to receive SNAP, great, it’ll support them, especially if they make it into your SNAP E&T program, where they can get those workforce benefits, and you can be reimbursed for that, you know, investment that you have. If individuals you work with are able to receive SNAP benefits, and for whatever reason don’t make it into SNAP E&T, they’re still better off with those SNAP benefits, even however temporary that might be so kind of keep that in mind. This is a really great support for individuals.

So it seems like everybody has a good idea of what SNAP is, which is great, but looking at this just definitionally, right, for SNAP, the SNAP Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, it’s a federal program that provides nutrition assistance to low-income individuals and families, they can use it at a lot of places, including grocery stores, food farmers markets, and other places that sell food, so great benefit to individuals across the country, so for SNAP eligibility, as mentioned, every state does have nuances and a little bit different things that that they look at as far as SNAP eligibility, but generally it’s 130% of the federal poverty level. There can be some deductions that can free up additional eligibility, but also some states also look at resources or assets that individuals may have, and that may include, you know, savings accounts, or if they have multiple vehicles, or things like that too. So keep that in mind as well. I’ll say most states also have some sort of benefits calculator that you can go out and find for some of those other aspects beyond the income aspects, household size and applicant age matter, and dependent age matters, so those things will come into play, and then some people are also subject to work requirements, which we’ll talk a little bit more about in a bit. So at the bottom this is just the general chart of on the federal level of household size, gross monthly income, and net monthly income for individuals who qualify, so any single house, single-member household who has a gross monthly income of $1,696 or below is very likely to qualify for SNAP. Again, those other factors play in, and what I’ll say, having a lot of conversations with individuals who are, you know, SNAP eligible, potentially SNAP eligible, not receiving SNAP. Some of them are kind of surprised when they see this chart. It really is helpful. And if you go to the website at the bottom, that’s the federal website for SNAP eligibility. Each state has a state website for it as well. They might have slightly different charts than this, but that chart can be really helpful when you’re discussing SNAP eligibility with your participants in your programs. So, again, generally 130% but those other factors can play in. Next slide, please. So let’s transition to SNAP, SNAP E&T eligibility from SNAP eligibility. So to be eligible for SNAP employment and training, individuals need to be receiving SNAP in the month or months that they participate in a component, so that is very specific. They, if they apply in June, receive, start receiving benefits in June, they’re eligible for E&T in June. Individuals are sometimes on and off of SNAP, depending on their recertification periods or other things like that, so that verification is monthly to ensure that they’re, they’re receiving. So they need to be receiving SNAP in the month they participate, they need to not be participating in TANF, or kind of your, your cash assistance program. Again, states have different names for SNAP, different names for TANF, but if you have questions on what those are, we can look them up as well. But TANF has a very similar type of services to SNAP E&T in a lot of ways, so the federal government has drawn the line on receiving SNAP, not receiving TANF. And then, thirdly, it’s for individuals who are able to work upon completion of the E&T program. This is a work-focused program, and E&T has a lot of different ways individuals can participate, from kind of just a simple job search with the focus of being employed after that job search up to a two year college degree with the intent to work after. So that’s really what we’re looking at here, is individuals receiving SNAP, not receiving TANF, and kind of that ready, willing, able to work when they’re, when they complete. Next slide, please. Okay, so the next piece is work requirements, which is dense. I would say raise, use the hand raise function if you enjoy reading federal policy, but I don’t think we’ll see any pop up, and that’s okay.

So SNAP work requirements have changed since the passage of HR 1 last year. So we’re really focusing here for SNAP E&T purposes on a population that is categorized as able-bodied adults without dependents or ABAWD, a b a w d. As you would expect, these are individuals who are able to work, do not have a disability, and do not have dependents under which they’re receiving those SNAP, or with whom they’re receiving those SNAP benefits, right, who are approved in their household, there have been some changes. So, this is what it looks like today. So, again, these individuals are able to work. The age has expanded a bit, so it’s currently 18 to 65, and these are individuals who do not have a dependent under the age of 14. So, that 18 to 65 is expanded, dependents were 18, but now it’s under 14, so keeping that that in mind, individuals who are again able to work 18 to 65 do not have a dependent under 14 are eligible to receive three months of SNAP in a 36-month-span, unless they’re meeting an exemption, and so effectively anyone who meets that is considered an ABAWD, or an able-bodied adult without dependents, unless they are, you know, have an exemption for a physical or mental disability, and that doesn’t necessarily exclude them from participating in SNAP E&T, but that’s something we can talk about more as well, but that would exempt them from the ABAWD requirement, meaning that they could receive SNAP continuously, not for only the three months and the 36 if they are caring for a dependent under 14, and then there is another criteria for being a member of certain native nations, that information can be found on that eligibility website that Simon just posted, as well. There were a few other categories of individuals who were exempt prior to HR 1, including people with housing insecurity, veterans, and former foster youth, but those exemptions have been removed. Other exemptions included kind of geography-based, so if they’re, if they’re especially in more populated areas, if there are not enough jobs for the number of people who would be considered a bot, and so it’d be difficult for them to find work. Those were exempt, those are no longer exempt under HR one. So, what we’re seeing is really a greater need for these individuals to be served, and so participating in SNAP E&T, or another type of activity, work volunteering, going to some sort of training or class for a minimum of 20 hours a week is another way to meet that requirement. So again, work paid or volunteer participating in some sort of work program that can be WIOA, it could be TANF, it could be SNAP E&T, or some other work programs, and then any combination of that work and participation adding up to 20 hours a week can qualify someone to receive SNAP in months that are non-countable, right. And then there’s another piece called Workfare, which is a way to volunteer, and the amount, the amount of SNAP benefit they would get in a month, divided by the local minimum wage, would be the number of hours they would need to participate in workfare to maintain eligibility for SNAP moving forward. If an individual were to happen to lose eligibility because they use their three months, three countable months, they could regain their eligibility by participating at least 20 hours per week for a full month, and then they would potentially regain their eligibility. So it’s not completely done if they’ve used their three months, three countable months, but it is a little bit more difficult to regain them, right? So, so it really is beneficial for individuals to kind of get ahead of it and make sure that they’re participating or working or volunteering for that 20 hours before they use up their three countable months. This can get pretty dense, so I just want to stop real quickly to see if anyone has any immediate questions on kind of the work requirements and ABAWD status.

Audience question 20:11
You said these changes were effective as of 2025 last year.

Schramm 20:15
Yes, correct.

Audience question 20:16
Where can we be in the loop? What’s the best place to stay in the loop?

Schramm 20:24
Sure, that’s a great question. So, I would say you can sign up for updates from the USDA on the USDA website. They have newsletters and news updates, and you can choose whether you want nutrition-related ones or farming-related ones or things like that, so you can really get specific pieces there. That’s where I see most of those updates, so that’s where I would suggest starting. After we’re done here, I can try and find the link and see if Simon may be able to send it out with the email. Kathy, I see your hand up.

Audience question 21:02
Yeah, on the number of hours for work fair, it seems to me like the benefit divided by the minimum wage would be less than 20 hours a week. Am I, am I correct about that?

Schramm 21:17
Yes, that’s generally how that works in statute, they’re not able, and a bod who’s participating in the work fair is not allowed to go above that number of hours of volunteerism to qualify for workfare. So, yes, it’s likely it’ll be under that amount. Work fair can be a really good option for people, especially if they don’t have to do as many hours as they would otherwise, but where some individuals would rather participate in an E&T or a training program, they may get additional skills to be able to get a, you know, better work or more job skills than kind of the volunteer activity as well.

Audience question 22:01
Yeah, that’s very helpful. It’s just so hard to meet the 20 hours a week if they can’t find employment even after participating in the SNAP E&T program.

Schramm 22:14
Correct, correct. That’s a big challenge, and I, so I think some areas, some states are really looking into workfare quite a bit to try and support people in that way, which again is a really great option for a lot of people, but it may be it’s not necessarily building skills as much as those other types of activities, so it’s really kind of a one or the other situation, but again, if they can get some sort of kind of resume builder with that volunteering, or be able to get some work skills that they can transfer to employment, that can be really helpful as well. One other note, I apologize, one other note: able-bodied adults without dependence, or ABAWD. I’ve heard rumblings that that term is going to be updated federally, so it’s going to be time-limited participant rather than ABAWD. I haven’t seen an official change yet, but that’s just a flag to look out for, so that would be time-limited participant or TLP. So that’s what a lot of states may be going with as well.

Okay, next slide, please. So, what is this connection from SNAP to SNAP employment and training for participants, and what can your organization kind of look for and start planning for if you’re not already a provider? So first, you’re going to want to identify who you’re serving, especially in workforce-related programs that may align with the E&T. Identify who is receiving SNAP or potentially eligible for SNAP. So, if you have an application, if you have an intake process, an initial case management process, you can ask the question if they’re, if they’re receiving any public benefit or specific to SNAP, or if you’re getting any other kind of existing data on income, so and that data could be, I mean, just asking what their income is, asking what their work history is, asking where they currently work, if they’re participating in TANF, or recently were participating in TANF and no longer, if they’re being referred from a food pantry or another organization that you’re a partner with that you know is serving low-income people, these are all types of data you can look to identify and start to get an idea of what proportion of people you serve are receiving SNAP or potentially eligible, and that’s really a key number when it comes to applying as a provider. Again, if you’re not currently a provider, when it comes to applying as a provider, talking to your state agency about becoming a provider, they’ll have questions about what proportion of individuals do you serve on SNAP, how many people do you serve on SNAP, and that’s going to be a really key number for them to understand the scope of what you’re hoping to do as a provider as well. So, secondly, as I mentioned earlier, encouraging clients to apply for SNAP can be really beneficial for them, and if you are a SNAP E&T provider, increase the proportion of individuals that you serve receiving SNAP, and potentially increase the number, the amount of reimbursement that you could potentially be eligible for and receiving back to reinvest in your programs. So you know, it’s a good thing to know about, good thing to have in your pocket, and a good thing to support people with, so to get those individuals at your organization who are receiving SNAP to be, you know, participating in the SNAP E&T program, if you’re a provider, there are two ways. One is a direct referral from your state or county SNAP agency. And so here it says state or county. Again, I mentioned earlier that there are some differences state to state. Some states have their SNAP administration by county, some have it by state, so it may come from your state eligibility workers or a county eligibility worker. And that direct referral is an individual who has applied for SNAP and had an interview or had a recertification, generally that’s every six months to verify SNAP eligibility, and in the interview they are screened as to whether they are required to participate, if they’re considered an ABAWD, if they meet another work requirement, and are referred directly to SNAP E&T to help meet that work requirement. So these are individuals who generally must meet some requirement, and E&T being a very good way for them to do that, and that’s why they’re being referred directly to a provider.

The second way is for you, again, if you’re identifying the individuals coming into your organization who are receiving SNAP, maybe you have a workforce program, someone wants to take part in that workforce program, and you identify that they’re receiving SNAP. You can do what’s called a reverse referral, where you provide information to your state, saying this person claims to be receiving SNAP. They can bring in their notice of decision, or if they have their EBT card, or something like that, for you to verify, and your SNAP agency would check their eligibility to verify that they’re receiving SNAP, and then do that kind of official referral, check the box in their system to do the official referral to SNAP E&T, and then you can continue serving them and enroll them into your E&T program. A lot of third-party partners, as many of you may be, or may look to be, will depend primarily on those reverse referrals, where you are already doing outreach for your programs, you’re getting referrals from other community partners into your current programs, and then you’re identifying their SNAP eligible and referring them to the state for SNAP E&T. The direct referrals also may be picking up, as we talked about with ABAWD and time-limited participant requirements increasing for a lot of individuals are being identified for a lot more individuals. Those direct referrals we expect to pick up across the country as those get implemented and take effect across the country. So that’s generally how those work. Again, broken record, but every state, every county can look different, and so really understanding how that process works, what a timeline is, what those expectations are, is really important as you move forward.

Next slide, please. So, how do you learn some of this information? There is a report put out every year. We haven’t seen the 2026 one yet, but it’s called the State Options Report from the USDA Food and Nutrition Service. So, states have a lot of flexibility in how they put SNAP together, put SANP E&T together, including, like I mentioned, state versus county administration of the program, SNAP income and asset limits, the general work requirement, and the ABAWD or time limited participant requirements, whether they have broad based categorical eligibility, meaning if they’re able to apply for some programs, it applies to others as well, to kind of reduce that application documentation burden, and then other priorities, population, if there are certain populations the state wants to focus on, if there are certain areas of a state that are underserved or need additional attention from the SNAP E&T program. The types of partners they, they are looking for. Some states have a lot of colleges and are looking for community action agencies. Some have only employment social enterprise and want to move beyond that to training programs. So those are all different options that they have, and then the types of activities or components that they do. Some focus on work-based learning, some focus on kind of college or adult basic ed, but those can be updated, and they can change their program year to year based on those needs that they see in the state. So for more info on these types of things, check out that state options report. It has a lot of great information about your state. There are pages based on the type of option, but then there are also pages based on your state, so to see all the options at one spot, so really helpful to take a look at. Secondly, reviewing your SNAP E&T state plan, which is, if you’ve not seen one, a very big document that has a lot of things in it, but it will have all of the providers, or generally all of the providers in the state listed. It’ll have the types of activities that are allowed, or components that are allowed, the types of supportive services that are allowed for reimbursement, and a lot of times will have the state’s priorities, or a little bit of discussion on how they hope to expand over the coming years. Again, not universal. We’ll see pieces of those information in different state plans, but again, that’s a big document. So, if you have questions on what that state plan entails, or if you’re looking for a specific piece of information, feel free to reach out. We can help, I guess, translate what that looks like.

And then, lastly, for supporting SNAP, if you’re able to find your local SNAP outreach provider, or maybe some of you in the room may be a SNAP outreach provider, you may be able to get more information to support SNAP application info cards, or postcards, or you know, one pagers to kind of talk about SNAP, or promote SNAP posters to hang up to support SNAP, so that can be really helpful to have some of those conversations, or to, you know, introduce the idea of applying for SNAP to a participant, and saying, well, think about it, take this with you with a QR code to apply, but take this with you, think about it a little bit more, right? So that can be really, really helpful, potentially, even a SNAP outreach provider could have staff come and talk to your participants about SNAP application and what it means, so lot of options and a lot of resources here. Again, these are the first two can be pretty dense, so again, feel free to reach out. There’s a lot of information there, but it really can help frame up how you look at these programs.

All right, next slide, please. So now we come to the question of how many potential E&T participants does your organization have, and we have a lot of steps here, so we’ll go through them, but some considerations. Think about what kind of workforce and training-related programs that you have, job readiness programs, on the job training, work-based learning programs, and then think about your non-federal funding resources. So, with SNAP E&T, it is a reimbursement-based program in which third-party partners serve people 100% paid for by non-federal funding resources that they have, and on the back end they’re reimbursed at 50% and that 50% reimbursement could be reinvested, so again spending a. Percent upfront and being reimbursed at up to 50% and then think about who your clients are, who they are, from where they come to you, again referral sources, and what their goals are, if they want to be right into employment afterwards, or if they’re looking for something a little bit longer term for training or things like that too, so so to think about who may be, you know, just an estimate for for a and t participation in your programs. Start by looking at all of your clients, narrow that down to those individuals who are receiving SNAP, and you can project out a few more if you’re planning to encourage people to apply, right, but think about who’s receiving SNAP. Of those individuals receiving SNAP, how many are in your workforce programs or training programs or work readiness programs? I apologize, I see that that one’s twice. Maybe we’re just absolutely being sure that that’s correct. And then think about those SNAP clients who are in your workforce programs that are also funded with non-federal funds, and that may include staff, may include the actual services there, the activities that participate again, and it may also include the supportive services they’re receiving, and that is your SNAP E&T clientele, those who are receiving SNAP in a workforce program, and that workforce program being funded with non-federal funds, we’re really funneling down to what we have there. There are some ways to think about, you know, if you do this calculation, it’s a very small percentage again, increasing the SNAP proportion that you’re serving, maybe adding a workforce program, or adding referrals to workforce programs, or either applying for additional non-federal funds, or shifting around funds, so that you have non-federal funds to serve this population with workforce services, always to kind of think about maximizing your opportunity for SNAP E&T and SNAP E&T enrollment. And that’s our information for today, but I’m sure that there are some questions on, on, you know, how to look at this program, or SNAP, or SNAP E&T. So happy to hear any questions, or have any discussion, or if you have thoughts. If we can go over anything again, happy to do that as well.

Wang 37:45
I can hear everyone just digesting all of that information right now. I can maybe kick things off with a, with a starter question, while people start to digest and think through what they, what they’ve learned, but I guess one of the things that is important to drill in, and you’ve mentioned it a couple of times, but this difference between a SNAP-eligible population and a SNAP E&T eligible population. What does that look like in practice, like if you already are serving or think you’re serving folks who might be eligible and receiving SNAP benefits? What does it mean to, I guess, feel out how much promise an E&T program could have in your organization?

Schramm 38:29
Sure, that’s a great question. So, again, to begin with, a lot of programs serve low-income individuals, really, you know, unemployed, underemployed or individuals who are kind of looking for work, right? This doesn’t mean that they’re receiving SNAP, and it might not mean that they’re eligible for SNAP, but again, asking those questions, finding out as much as you can, and encouraging people to apply. Great, so really pushing to increase that proportion of SNAP individuals you serve, but now looking at, you know, those individuals who may move forward to SNAP E&T, I think some folks are a little wary because this program is based on them participating and you getting reimbursement, it can be kind of a tough conversation to have, but there’s a few ways to talk about it. First, if you offer additional resources for individuals who are participating in your SNAP E&T program, knowing that you’re going to get reimbursed for those services that can kind of increase participation rates, right. Secondly, and this is a conversation that I think could be tough for some, but has been really effective with a lot of people, is understanding that reimbursement is coming back and helping to serve more people, and that someone else may have participated in SNAP E&T previously, and the reimbursement for their services is now funding this person to receive more services. So that’s a really good way to talk about the program, and then just generally the connection that I can’t really say at like a average number of people based on how many SNAP participants you have, but really it’s looking at that alignment with the state or county program that you would be under. If you’re looking at the state plan, you can go to components overview and you can see what components are allowable in your state and think about how many individuals you serve who may fit under programs that may align with with those components, that’s really the best way to take a look at this and understand what what your availability, what your, what your potential for SNAP E&T enrollment could be.

Wang 41:08
Awesome. Thanks, Andrew. It sounds like people are still maybe thinking through things, so I will go ahead and maybe ask one more question that comes to mind for me, that might be applicable, just given what we saw with the poll results at the beginning, where people seem to have some knowledge of E&T already, and maybe are trying to figure out what next steps look like in terms of that interaction with the state, and so you mentioned, you know, SNAP outreach partners, and you know, the initial maybe stages of getting involved, could you maybe, I guess, give some insight into where eligibility falls into the conversation with the state office, and I guess some of those next steps for people that might not yet be engaged with their state office but are interested in kind of moving further along.

Schramm 41:57
Sure, that’s a great question. So, to start off with, if you want to talk to your state or county agency about potential partnership through SNAP E&T, if you look at the state plan right up at the top, there’s a contact, usually that’s the right person to contact, if not, you’ll likely be directed to another individual within the agency to support that kind of kicking off. A lot of states have websites with some information to kind of start exploring, exploring ENT partnership as well, and a lot of background information, some even have potential contract language, or like a handbook for third-party providers that you may be able to consider and review. Otherwise, if you look at that state plan and you’re able to see the contractor details, that’s kind of towards the bottom of the state plan, and find any other providers that are currently contracted as SNAP E&T providers that you know have partnerships with, and you can give one of them a call or shoot one of them an email and say, What does this look like? What does the opportunity look like for you, and be able to kind of understand it on a third party partner level that can also be really really helpful, because as you all know, I’m sure that you have participated in programs that are, you know, federal, state, county, and on paper, there’s all of this information, there’s directions, there’s, you know, reporting, there’s things like that, but then you know, actually, in person things don’t quite look exactly like they do on paper, so it’s a really good best practice to reach out to another provider locally or somewhere in your state to be able to just have a conversation about what this, what this program looks like, and ask questions like what did starting up look like, how many people are you, are you able to serve every year? How do you connect that, and what does that growth look like? Look like year one can be a challenge, but growth is really, really a focus of this program, because there are, I mean, with any new program, there are new administrative requirements, and and once those are are kind of captured, once those are incorporated into into the normal work that you’re already doing, then you’ll have more time to do outreach and more time to bring in those additional SNAP E&T clients and things like that too, right? So, so just kind of keeping in mind the more you know the better, right? And from the more angles that you can find that information, the better as well. And attending these webinars, right, Simon, always a good idea to learn a little bit more about the program this way.

Wang 44:54
Absolutely, yeah. No, thanks so much for that overview. I hope it’s.. I hope that helps people that are at that kind of. A decision point of thinking about whether or not it’s something that’s worth applying to or looking more into. We have lots of resources on our site, and our partners, like SJI and other folks, have lots of resources available online, and we’re happy to help you with that. I’ll use that as my transition into the kind of additional resources and ways to stay involved with the conversation, so I’m going to throw a link in the chat to NCRC’s toolkit, which we released not too long ago, just a couple months back, that does a pretty good job, I think, like consolidating most of the resources that are, have are out there and have been released over the years, and really walks you through, I think each step of the process. It is a long booklet, not meant to be a sit down and read in one sitting type of thing, but it has a lot of, I think, also like workbooks and exercises that you can, that you can use to kind of map out your potential involvement with E&T, its potential value to your clients as well as to your organization’s bottom line, and so we’re happy to help you walk through that toolkit, but it also, I think, as a standalone resources, is something that could really be complementary to the learning that you’re doing in these types of webinars. I’m also going to go ahead and throw my email in the chat as well, you can feel free to reach out to me anytime, and I’m happy to kind of connect you with resources or things that were discussed here. I can set up some follow-up time with anybody to discuss questions and maybe organization-specific things that weren’t ready for the entire group to be involved with, but my emails in the chat, and I’m always happy to chat, but it sounds.. it looks like we have a couple minutes here to hang out, so we are.. we are done the contents of this webinar, but Andrew, if it’s okay with you, I think we’ll stick around here for a couple of minutes, just in case anybody has any questions or wants to stick around to talk more about today’s session, but thank you everybody for being here. We really appreciate it, and I’ll give you 10 minutes of your afternoon back.

In the third webinar of our 5-part SNAP E&T series, NCRC’s Economic Mobility team explored how organizations can effectively fund and sustain their SNAP E&T programs through the 50/50 federal reimbursement model.

During this session, we broke down allowable costs, match requirements and financial reporting obligations, and walked through practical examples of budget development and revenue projections. Gain insight into how to maximize reimbursement while maintaining program quality and compliance.

Speakers

Jonathan Osei, Principal, Adage Ventures LLC, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Simon Wang, Economic Mobility Specialist, NCRC
Kathi Medcalf, Managing Senior Consultant, Seattle Jobs Initiative

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Osei 0:01
Today is the Funding For SNAP E&T program, 50/50 Reimbursement and Budget Strategy webinar, and we’re doing this in like a sort of meeting style, so hopefully it’s a little more engaging. So there’s going to be a little bit of content delivery, and then space for intentional discussion, conversation and questions, as well. I know folks are coming at this with a variety of different levels, as well. So, I see Gwen, oversees SNAP E&T programs at a regional level in Wisconsin, but if folks are coming in earlier on in their SNAP E& T journey from an organizational perspective, or even from a state perspective, we’re excited to have you here, regardless. So, our agenda for today is just a quick welcome and introduction, then a overview of the funding and alignment for SNAP E&T, and then assessing potential reimbursement, and then a budget strategy and case making example, and then we’ll share a bit of best practices and tips at the end, and leave some space for questions and answer, and obviously, as you know, this is a meeting, so feel free to chime in in the chat, feel free to put your hand up, come off mute, love to hear from you, what may be the most relevant in terms of discussing SNAP E&T, so excited to have you on. So I’m Jonathan Osei – he, him, his pronouns. I’m a workforce element consultant working alongside Simon Wang, and have been engaged with some of the SNAP E&T work that NCRC has been leading, and excited to be here. Simon, who is the Economist Mobility Specialist at NCRC and I’ll pass the mic.

Wang 1:49
Yep, thanks, Jonathan. Thanks, everyone, for being here. This is the third webinar in our five-part series. You can find the other recordings to Webinar One, which kind of reviews some of the main basics, and a broad overview of E&T. If you’re just getting started, and then the second one as well, which kind of digs a little bit further into one of the other components. And today we’re just going to talk about budget. Stay tuned, and like Jonathan said, stay engaged in the chat and come off mute. We want this to be as engaging as possible, and as relevant to the questions and the experiences that you’re currently having with E&T. So, yeah, thanks everyone for being here.

Osei 2:30
And today we also have a special guest, managing senior consultant at Seattle Jobs Initiative, Kathy Medcalf. Kathy is a veteran consultant with over three decades of experience in the education sector, with a recent emphasis on SNAP employment and training programs and operations. For the past three years at SJI, Seattle Jobs Initiative, she has delivered expert technical assistance to states and colleges by managing and implementing national partnership grants. Her prior role as a program manager for basic food employment and training (BFET) program at Washington State Board for Community and Technical College involved overseeing operations for Washington’s 34 community and technical colleges. She’s a passionate advocate for developing multiple career pathways to help clients acquire the skills and resources needed for sustainable employment. We’re excited to have Kathy here today. Feel free to chime in, Kathy, but Kathy will be chiming in throughout this. So excited to have her

Medcalf 3:35
I’m a down-and-dirty practice-oriented person, so please ask any questions as we go through this. Budget and finances are kind of my specialty on our team, so any practical questions you have I’m the person to help answer those.

Wang 3:56
I’ll hop in here before we get started. I think most of you are probably familiar with NCRC, but in case there’s anybody that needs an introduction to our organization and some of the broader portfolio of work that we, that we work towards, we’re an organization really focused on economic justice and supporting a broad membership base for around 700 organizations around the country that are all focused on, you know, building a more just economy, SNAP E&T and workforce development are one of many things that we do, both to train our members, but also we do a variety of other supports, including research and advocacy around public policy. We do a lot of work around ensuring that private capital and investment from financial institutions flows equitably into underserved areas of the country, so if you’re interested in our broader body of work, definitely encourage you to visit our website, and let me know if you have additional questions, but excited to learn more about the budget process here for E&T today. I’ll pass it back over to you, Jonathan, for the objectives.

Osei 5:07
Awesome, awesome, awesome. So the objectives today, we have four objectives for today. First and foremost, understand the SNAP E&T 50/50 reimbursement model and identify allowable cost categories and match requirements. Number two is to develop a preliminary SNAP E&T program budget that aligns with program activities and service delivery. We may not be able to do it all an hour, but, like, hopefully, you’ve got some ideas about how it might look, or for folks who are popping in, like, can really, like, relate to some of the process that we’re talking through. And then three, project potential program revenue using the 50/50 reimbursement structure to estimate funding opportunities, and number four is communicate the financial case to leadership, demonstrating how SNAP E&T can expand service capacity while generating sustainable funding. So, before we get deeper into this, just have a quick poll question for you all. What SNAP E&T funding or budget topic is of the most interest to you and your organization right now? And this, this actually will help us help to guide the conversation to like what we like sort of lean in on and what we may spend less time in one, so please chime in. So I see, obviously, there’s only eight of us total on this right now, but this is helpful, at least, to get us going, though. So I see 50/50 reimbursement model being a key port for folks, and then non-federal funding sources. Okay, so we’ll talk, we’ll talk some about this, we’ll talk some about this, and please chime in with the questions as well. So, here’s a quick overview of the funding and alignment from SNAP E&T program. So, SNAP employment and training, E&T for short, is a federal program helping SNAP participants gain skills, training, and work experience, connects folks to training, education, and training job readiness and support services that reduce the barriers to work, and so also promotes longer-term economic stability, and then helps community-based organizations expand their reach and strengthen their existing workforce programs, and then the key keyword as an existing, we’ll talk a little bit more. So what makes a SNAP E&T third-party provider? So a third party provider, first and foremost, is an organization that delivers SNAP E&T, SNAP employment and training services on behalf of the state. So this is using the existing workforce or training programs to serve participants. So the there’s five key components that really make a strong provider, but for four, and then the fifth one is like this, the larger, broader context. So it’s mission alignment, so having an aligned mission with the SNAP E&T program, the capacity to actually track the services and costs, and then the ability to offer the trainings and support service. So, like, are you built for this essentially? And then stable non-federal funds for that 50/50 and we’re going to correct this – match is probably not the correct word we’ll use, but the 50/50 reimbursement, and then understanding of the state context, so really understanding where you are. So, I, I know somebody here was New York, somebody here in Wisconsin, so really understanding what that looks like from your state perspective. So, there’s a couple key considerations for the SNAP E&T alignment. Number one, does your organization have non-federal funding? Two, does your non-federal funding pay for training and work readiness programs for SNAP participants? Honestly, I would love to hear from folks if they, if they’re willing to chime in in the chat or even come off mute, like, do your organizations have, like, non-federal funding? Do your organizations pay for your training or workforce readiness for SNAP participants with that non-federal funding? There’s plenty of time to get engaged. Also, we’ll keep moving, we’ll keep moving. So I see, I see a response below. Our local matches include city funding, United Way, private foundation fundraising, etc. Awesome, awesome, that’s a good capital stack. Variety of different funding sources that are non-federal. Thank you so much, Gwen, for chiming in. So, here are a couple of key concepts for the SNAP E&T 50/50 model, so that 50/50 reimbursement structure, so the federal government reimburses states for 50% of the allowable SNAP employment and training program costs incurred by approved providers, so those third-party providers.

Number two, this 100% upfront funding, so organizations must provide eligible non-federal funding, so is that so that they can be reimbursed, so the funding has to exist prior, like there’s no way to get the 50/50 match, per se, and Kathy will speak a lot more about this, because I think the match language, even to me, was a little bit confusing until we had a brief conversation earlier. And then number three, allowable cost categories, so understanding which participant services case management training activities and administrative supports are tied directly to SNAP employment and training programming. And then the fourth, and like this is like the more ambitious one, is like the opportunity to potentially expand your programming that you currently offer through the 50/50 model, which really allows folks to leverage the federal reimbursement to sustain programming, and like Kathy and I spoke about this, is like this idea that be able to reinvest your reimbursed funds. She’ll talk a little bit more, probably about that in the later slides. And then here’s a quick visual to really help you all to see visually what it might look like, and I know that this may not be the most inclusive way to like showcase what this means, so definitely make sure that this goes out in the slide deck afterwards. So when folks are wondering, so your organization has the non-frontable funds to provide ENT services that initial investment of $1,000 so then you invoice to that SNAP E&T agency, you receive the 50% reimbursement, which is that 500 then reinvest that reimbursement, so you see the 500 being reinvested, it’s 250 so like this continuous idea of like reinvesting, so the SNAP E&T reimbursement funds can be reinvested to leverage additional reimbursement, so not necessarily having to put in additional funds, and like there’s knowledge that this reimbursed funds are like not something that you hold in your hand or hold in your, like they’re not physically existing until you actually leverage the $1,000 of the first place. So, having that upfront funding,

Wedcalf 12:32
Can I jump in here, Jonathan?

Osei 12:33
Absolutely.

Wedcalf 12:34
Because this is something I think, since this is a high priority, I want to make sure. So, the key here is that if you just take the funds you get back and replace them into the funds that you spent them out of, you are not taking advantage of the 50/50 program. You need to set your system up so that you can re-utilize that reimbursement, they came back to get reimbursed a second, third, fourth time. Okay, and so if you’re thinking about it as a match, and when the money comes back and you just replace it into the funds that you spent it out of, you are not going to have a sustainable model, because all you’re doing is replacing the money you originally spent. The idea is to reutilize the funds that come back, spend them again in the E&T program, get them reimbursed a second time, and eventually you’re building up essentially a stash of money that can be used for reimbursement and support the program independently of other expenses, but you still have to keep investing in the program every year. You can’t reduce the amount you’re investing at the beginning, because you need to build up that pot of funds in your reimbursement fund to be able to use it to expand your program, okay? And there’s a couple of tricks here, because people say, well, I’m getting reimbursed with federal funds, so how can I use that as a leveraged fund next time around, so because it’s a reimbursement program and you’ve spent 100% of your money up front, and you’ve spent it as non federal dollars, you’re getting reimbursed, and it becomes non federal, it loses its federal designation because they’re replacing the non federal dollars that you originally spent, okay? So you’re not even though it is technically coming from the feds, because it’s a reimbursement based on your actual expenditures, and you covered the expenses 100% upfront, the money comes back to you as replacement money. And it’s money that replaces the money you spent, and you spent non-federal dollars, so therefore they’re non-federal dollars when they’re returned to you. So it’s not money laundering, which is somewhat some people say, okay? So it’s really critical that you set up your system to be able to reinvest your reimbursement back into the E&T program. What that does is eventually, when you build up your reimbursement fund, you do have, you will have money outside of E&T to spend on other parts of your program, that money that you were using for E&T takes time, but it really can be a huge return on your investment.

Osei 15:49
Thanks, thanks for that breakdown, Kathy. Like that, like really shows the value of like this reimbursement model, honestly. And then this, this is just to reiterate a point that Kathy has made, even so, SNAP E&T funding is not a traditional grant. So, to receive the reimbursement or draw down reimbursement, you must be funding your employment program with services with non-federal funds first, and like we’re reiterating this intentionally, because there is no upfront funding for or from the E&T program, so your organization is reimbursed on eligible costs incurred. So this is like to keep thinking about that. And Kathy, feel free to chime in.

Wedcalf 16:32
I was just going to say, just know that you don’t have to 100% fund everything non-federally. You can braid your funding, okay? You’ll only get reimbursed for your non-federal funds, so if 50% of your program is funded non-federally or non-federally, and 50% is funded federally, you will get reimbursed for 50% of the cost of the program, because 50% is being funded, you’ll get 50% of 50% you know, basically, you don’t have to fund everything completely non-federally in order to be a part of the program.

Osei 17:09
So, thanks for that context, Kathy. So, now to assessing potential reimbursement, and some of the things that Kathy mentioned, we’ll reiterate again, because, like, they’re really key and important concepts too, so please chime in with any questions or even comments. Pop in the chat, raise a hand, come off mute. Yeah, so this visual is really a helpful way of seeing like that overall that up top organizational budget, which includes all those revenue, all the revenue and expenses that you’ll have, then your specific training program budget, so all of the associated revenue and expenses that go along with serving all your participants, then this like potential SNAP E&T budget, which includes the allowable SNAP E&T cost, and then at the bottom of this, like inverted pyramid, is all the expenses based on the projected share of SNAP E&T participants. Feel free to chime in as well, Kathy, to just get more in-depth on this piece as well.

Medcalf 18:19
No, you did great.

Osei 18:20
So the assessing your prudential reimbursement, so just another, another visual, honestly, to like, like we’re trying to just make sure it’s like it makes sense from like a visual from just the words we’re saying, but essentially that non-federal and the not federally matched funds are in and just recognizing that word matched as well, come through as revenue, it’s tied to the SNAP E&T the expenses and services that are tied to SNAP E&T activities, and then the participants who are SNAP E&T eligible, so really thinking along these four parameters, and then just the revenue, expenses, services, and participants as a key way of understanding what your potential universal might look like.

Medcalf 19:10
So their match is the proper word, because if you have other federal grants that you have to show that you’re matching your local funds to, you can’t use the funds, you can’t double dip the funds, so if you’re using your non-federal, some non-federal local funds to match a federal grant, you can’t also use those for reimbursement on E&T, because you’d be double dipping, because you’re using the non-federal money twice, so that’s what that means.

Osei 19:43
Thanks, Kathy.

Medcalf 19:45
Yep.

Osei 19:54
So we’re jumping back into this concept of the upfront funding, so it’s. I appreciate Gwen for chiming in earlier about the matches, city funding, United Way, private foundations, fundraising, etc. So it’s really important for folks to know the upfront funding sources that are available to fuel the program, so the program administration and operation costs the support staff salaries in the fringe as well, and then the supportive services for participants slash students, whether it be the books, fees, tuition, child care costs, and it’s really important to keep assessing this on a regular basis to ensure that your program is sustainable and has the ability to grow and expand. Okay, so just, just a bit of mention about some of the common non-federal funding sources, as well, state, county, city, and other local funds. Private donations were mentioned, foundation grants, and then the community development block grant. So the CDBG is like the only federal funding source that is eligible for reimbursement, so CDBG funds obviously coming down through outside, outside of, like, the USDA or Department of Labor funds as well, so potential to leverage those CDBG funds.

Medcalf 21:33
And it’s actually written in the statute for CDBG that it is eligible for ENT reimbursement. The other thing you want to be careful of is sometimes city, county, city, state, county, and city funds are federal pass-through dollars, so you need to make sure that the money that you’re getting from state counties and cities are not pass-through dollars, because pass-through dollars are not reimbursable.

Osei 22:05
Thanks for that context, Kathy. Okay, so okay, so here’s here’s one of like the practical examples of what Kathy had spoke of earlier. Would love Kathy if you could run through this and like help folks understand like how it functionally works in this like programmatic budget.

Medcalf 22:22
So this is a sample of how you might look at what your SNP E&T reimbursement potential is. So, if you have a program that’s receiving some federal donations and or some federal money that’s helping to fund your program, and then a bunch of other funds that come in, you would want to look at all the funding sources at your organization that are funding your workforce program, and so in this example we owe a dollars are funding it. Then you have private donations, foundation grants, and some CDBG funding. The total is $397,000 for your workforce programs budget, but in reality that top $200,000 is federal funds, so you have to take that out of your potential for reimbursement, and we always say potential, because everything’s based on actual expenses and getting reimbursed. You can’t look at that 197,000 and say, oh, I’m going to get half of that back, so about 200,000 about $100,000 back, you only get back what you actually spend of those non-federal dollars. So this is how you kind of narrow down what the potential is at your organization for reimbursement.

Osei 23:35
And then we have a couple examples of some of the upfront funding sources too. So these examples come from, like, Kathy’s experience leading this work, so let Kathy chime in to share a little more context on these as well.

Medcalf 23:48
Yeah, these are a lot of colleges, and I think most of you are community-based organizations, but you want to think about any non-federal funding you get to cover supportive services for your clients, any non-federal funding you get to, and it could be from anyone, it could be from the city to support returning citizens or recovering addicts, you know, there might be certain funds for homeless people that are coming into your programs to help support low-income people that need a leg up in their workforce development training, so any of those kind of funds are the funds you want to be looking for to support you in this ENT programming, and oftentimes for community-based organizations it is the foundation grants or local funds that you’re getting from the United Way from Goodwill. All other community organizations, some of the smaller organizations. When I worked in the state of Maine and ran an E&T program, we got donations from the smaller organizations in our community, like the Rotary Club and the Kiwanis Club and other service organizations that would cover the cost of transportation for our clients coming to and from our adult education program, or the cost of books, or something that they could specifically tie to knowing they were helping the community directly, the low-income people in the community, so you know, and then you can take a story back that’s so critical when you can go back and say, you know, you gave us $1,000 last year, that $1,000 provided, you know, 20 people transportation to get to their training, and of those 20 people, 10 of them now have jobs. You know, and then it’ll probably be a recurring donation every year. You know, those, those are the things you want to look at. So, in the colleges, a lot of it is scholarship funds that are used for lower income students, so like Washington has a specific state grant for low income students and dislocated workers that can be used for reimbursement, Iowa and Nebraska have funds for non Pell eligible training for the colleges, when we were working with Delgado Community College in Pennsylvania, or excuse me, in Louisiana, the person I was working with went to their business office and said, Can you tell me what non-federal funding sources we have to see what I can tap into for this, and the person was like, well, we get this $80,000 fund from PepsiCo, which is in Louisiana, and they never did anything with it, because they didn’t know what to do with it, so they gave the $80,000 to the E&T program for reimbursement for supportive services. Many Minnesota and Illinois specifically have training funds that can be used by CBOs for supportive services for low-income people. So there’s oftentimes sources out there that you don’t think about when you’re thinking about what you can use for SNAP E&T. Questions, thoughts? And the thing to think about is it doesn’t have to be a huge amount of money, since you can use the money over and over again, if a program like a smaller program, like a Rotary or a Kiwanis, gives you $500 That $500 if they do it every year, the first year it’s $500 The second year, that $500 plus the 250 reimbursement you got the first year, now you have $750 to spend on SNAP E&T supportive services, and the next year that 750 becomes 500 plus half of 750 so 375 plus 500 Do you see how that’s the whole point of the program? Because you can leverage if that $500 keeps coming in, you’re not asking for any more, but that $500 keeps building every year for your amount of reimbursement that you get to put back into your program.

Osei 28:53
Thanks for the breakdown, Kathy. Awesome. And then the next piece will be, we’ll talk about this, is I think this is most fun for Kathy. This, we could think about, we did a little example with the table, and I think this is like a more practical understanding of like what braiding funding could do for your SNAP E&T-funded programming.

Medcalf 29:16
Right. So part of making this program work is looking at your funding sources and see what things you might be able to reorganize to maximize your reimbursement, so if you have federal funding and right now you have maybe a case manager that is 100% funded with a federal grant and you have a way to maybe cover 20% of their staff of their salaries and fringe benefits with non federal funding, then you could at least get reimbursement for 20% of their salary and benefits if they’re spending 20% of their time with ENT clients. So they can still have 80% of their salary and benefits paid for with federal funds, but you’ve just upped amount of reimbursement you can get for the time they’re spending with ENT clients, so you can use the example, the best example, I was an adult education director, I mentioned that before, and we got Title Two funds, which are funds to fund the adult education program from WIOA, and my organization was a nonprofit, said, you know, you have to spend all your grant money first, we have to make sure we use all of our grant money? Right, well, we always ran out of our grant money before the end of the year, so I could only get reimbursed in the last quarter for the percent of my ENT percent of my students in adult education that were ENT, and they said to my budget director, I said, “Look, if we can spread the grant funding out over the whole year and have a 20% non-federal funding through the whole year, we can maximize the reimbursement we get, rather than one quarter of 20% reimbursement, we can have 20% reimbursement all year and generate more funds for the program. I had the data to show, I mean, for years we always run out. There was never any question that the last quarter was always locally funded, so you know, why not? If we can get reimbursement all year, generate more funding for my program. Why not allow us to spread that out? Because we have the data to prove it, right? So that’s one way, because you don’t have to fund any position 100% non-federal or 100% federal. The other thing is that if you are using positions that are federally funded, that’s fine. You just don’t get reimbursed for them. It’s okay to use them in the ENT programs. It’s no big deal. It’s just you don’t get reimbursed. So, looking at ways that you can rearrange some of your funding to maybe increase your reimbursement is what you’re looking for in your breeding funding kind of thoughts. It’s a process. Terry, do you have a question? I get done. It’s okay, unmute if you want to ask it.

Jackson (attendee) 32:31
Yeah, Kathy, that’s that’s huge. And I’m sorry I joined late, but that’s a huge thing for us to consider when we’re doing this, so we’re, we’re just now getting ready to apply for our first EBT, but that is with you explaining that, that was just for me, and I don’t understand, I think I understand how to do it, but I’m definitely going to be in touch with you to make sure as we’re doing this that that I fully understand that, because I think that’s really important in terms of those reimbursements, and we’re doing 100% yeah.

Medcalf 33:17
It is, it absolutely is, and it really is critical to maximizing your reimbursement and running the program in a way that will really help you bring those reimbursement dollars back in. The other thing is to look at your overall programs, that kind of maximizing students or clients. Sorry, I’m an educator at heart, maximizing your participants that might be, they can be dual enrolled, you can have them enrolled in your federal programs and enrolled in SNAP E&T, and so, like, if you have a WIOA program, the WIOA always runs out of supportive service money, they have plenty of training money, they don’t have supportive service money, so they can cover the cost of the training, you can do your supportive services through your program, and then WIOA doesn’t have to support the supportive services, you can get reimbursed for all the supportive services you provide, and then they can use, they can, then WIOA can use their supportive service money for people who aren’t on SNAP.

Jackson (attendee) 34:19
Okay.

Medcalf 34:20
So if you have clients in your program that aren’t on that don’t qualify for SNAP, they can get their supportive services through WIOA, but you can provide the supportive services for your SNAP E&T student clients, people, and get reimbursed for those, so you bring more money in, because we owe is not getting reimbursed for anything, let them use the money on the students that you can’t, or clients that you can’t get reimbursed for, and you get reimbursed for the ones that you can support through SNAP E&T with non-federal funding. Is this helping Terry? That’s a positive nod?

Jackson (attendee) 35:02
Let me ask you this, Kathy, is there how many people do, as we’re getting ready to get into this, like in a staffing perspective, to be able to administer and to, to understand that, how many people, how many people should we be thinking about in terms of administering this program?

Medcalf 35:31
Okay, well, that’s a loaded question, without knowing how big. Excuse my cat, he wanders through these things all the time, How big is your program?

Jackson 35:46
Talking maybe a couple of 100, a couple of 100 participants a year.

Medcalf 35:54
What percentage of those are E&T? Will you think with be a SNAP employment and training?

Jackson 35:59
We’re gonna say I’ll say, let’s call it 50%.

Medcalf 36:06
Okay, so you’re gonna have 100. Let’s just say you’re gonna plan to serve 100 people.

Jackson 36:12
Yep.

Medcalf 36:12
Okay, so you have case managers, career navigators, something like that. What’s their normal case load?

Jackson 36:22
Yes, they’re taking care of the whole 100, so we only have one each, like case manager and navigator.

Medcalf 36:30
Okay, so they would – would one person be doing with their full-time job be serving the E&T students? Or, I mean, this is what you have to do. So, what I’m saying, like

Jackson 36:42
This is…

Medcalf 36:42
If you have 200 clients and you have two one navigator and one case manager, then 50% of their time would be spent with E&T students.

Jackson 36:50
Yep.

Medcalf 36:50
and 50% would be spent with non-ENT, so 50% of their salary essentially would be reimbursable salary and fringe for the time they’re spending with ENT students for both the career navigator and the case manager,

Jackson 37:04
Gotcha.

Medcalf 37:04
So those two would definitely be on. You need to know, you need to make decisions like who’s going to be doing all the data intake, the intake orientation, who’s going to be doing all the data entry, what state are you in?

Jackson 37:18
We have that, we have the program administrators, who’s doing all of the data in

Medcalf 37:23
What state?

Jackson 37:25
Oh, I’m sorry, Colorado. We’re in Colorado. Okay.

Medcalf 37:30
All right. Lucky you. Colorado is a complicated state. The reason I said that they, they have some idiosyncrasies with the way you invoice, so just one, but you want to look at who’s going to touch the ENT clients, alright, so you’ve got business office people who will be doing invoicing and stuff.

Jackson 38:04
Yep.

Medcalf 38:04
They’re going to be touching the clients, so they can directly track their staff time, how much time they’re spending on ENT over the course of the year.

Jackson 38:14
Yep.

Medcalf 38:15
Okay, so go through, kind of take a client from the minute they walk in your door to when they exit, and think about how many people touch them.

Jackson 38:29
Okay.

Medcalf 38:30
If the amount of time over the course of a week is more than you know, 10% then it’s probably worth figuring out if it’s worth the time and effort to put them in the budget.

Jackson 38:46
Got it.

Medcalf 38:47
Or the other option is this first year you focus on the main positions, your program manager, your case manager, your navigator, maybe some supportive services in your business office, and then you track data the first year to see who else touched the ent clients, because then you can add those people in the next year.

Jackson 39:09
Okay, okay, I like that.

Medcalf 39:13
Okay and I will share my email in the…

Jackson 39:20
In the chat?

Medcalf 39:20
…and I’d be happy to talk to you.

Osei 39:26
So, appreciate, appreciate the live workshop. In this, this is what we’re out for, y’all. So, thanks so much, Terry, for asking the great questions too. And also, excited, excited for you as you start to develop and get ready to apply to have a SNAP E&T program. This is exciting. Okay, so one piece, so one last piece before we get into, I guess, more of that workshopping led by Kathy is just this allowable cost piece. So, and then we’re going to talk about budget and invoice, and we’re gonna get into it, but so this is an example. Of Kentucky’s allowable costs, so every state defines what allowable costs will look like for their program, so please understand that you must look at the context for your state, so in Kentucky, so the administrative cost side, salaries, fringe benefits, administrative services, building space, such lease and utilities, the non-capital equipment, you know, travel, indirect costs to the NYCRA, and then the contract training, and the participant costs, training fees, books, supplies, childcare, uniforms, transportation. So this is going to be heavily contextual based on whichever state that you work in, and then when it comes to the relationship of budget and invoicing, so this invoicing is tied directly to your SNAP E&T budget, so your organization’s SNAP E&T budget is projection of the reimbursement you intend to request based on the estimated number, and Kathy kind of, Kathy kind of just broke this down, like the estimated number of 72 participants, the service intended to be provided with the non-federal funds, and then so directly related administrative expenses. So, what that person touches, that business person who is doing the invoicing, you know, so it, so you can invoice for service services, staff administration expenses, and can write those into your budget, so you can only invoice up to your budget reimbursement total. So, you will effectively have two budgets, one for reducing services and one for administrative citizens.

Medcalf 41:33
And the reason it’s said that way is because, based on federal regulations, you can’t move in a lot of budgets, you can move money around, you cannot move money from participant reimbursements to administrative costs or administrative costs to participant reimbursements in this grant. So, the best thing to do is, and let me tell you, that E&T budget forms from the states are ridiculously complicated, and you really need to set up a plain budget, which I, I can give a sample that we can send out to the participants today, but that sets up a very kind of normal budget and then you can go from there to put it into state budgets that usually require you to separate it out by component costs, so but if you don’t do the original budget first, because that’s actually what you invoice to, it’s very confusing.

Jackson 42:39
Okay, yeah.

Medcalf 42:44
The other thing to know is you do not put an E&T budget in your actual general ledger, because this is a projected budget, you’re only getting a reimbursement at 50% and you’re leveraging the other funds that you’re spending, you are not having a budget, you have a budget outside of your GL, because you have to tie, you have to leverage all of your non-federal sources you’re already spending, so you have to either track time for your staff of what time they’re spending on E&T, or you use a cost ratio method, so for a position for position like your for positions like that are direct service staff, you can use a ratio, so say they’re teaching in class or a career case manager, like we were just talking about, if their case load is 100 people, and each month you check the eligibility, and 40 of those, and this month 40 of those people are E&T. Then 40% of their salary that month can be reimbursed. The next month it might be 60, and so that month 60% of their salary can be reimbursed, because 60% of their case load was that way you use that same ratio for administrative costs. If you have rent for a building for your program, and 60% of your clients are E&T, 60% of your rent that month can be reimbursed. That’s an administrative cost. Your insurance costs, your utility costs, all of those things can be billed at the ratio of your E&T clients to your overall clients in your program. If you need to buy sets of training materials for your program, choose a month that you have a high ratio. if like September is your highest month, because that’s your busiest month, then that’s the month you want to buy training materials, because if you buy it that month and you’re at 60% you get 60% reimbursement of your training materials that month, same thing goes for. Computers or other equipment that you’re investing in for your program, or if you need to buy a computer for your case manager, a new computer, buy it at a month that you have a high ratio.

Jackson 45:13
Okay.

Medcalf 45:17
And I know I’m, you’re asking all the questions, but I’m hoping this is helping other people when they’re listening as well, but so those are the two, you know, so like your budget person would probably be a direct billing where she, he or she would keep track of their time that they’re spending doing invoicing for SNAP E&T, because that would be a separate job than the regular invoicing they’re doing for the rest of your program, so they would track their ent time on like a time and effort sheet, and then you would bill based on how many hours they spent that month, what percentage of their fte that was, so you kind of, so when you’re talking about people, you have to think, am I going to cost ratio this person, am I going to direct bill this person, and how many of them I know it’s complicated once you get it set up the first time, the first year is the hardest, and so for instance, your program manager, whoever that’s going to be, you probably will put more time in for them the first year, because they’re going to be spending a lot of time making sure all the processes get set up, that everybody knows what they’re doing. After the first year, they probably don’t need as much time. Yeah, you’ll get reimbursed, but put more in for the program manager that first year, because they probably are going to spend more time getting the program set up, and you might as well take advantage and get reimbursed for all the time they’re doing.

Jackson 46:52
Gotcha.

Osei 46:55
Awesome, awesome. Thanks so much, Kathy, for the insider breakdown. And then Terry, thanks so much for all the great questions. So, okay, so I want to do like a time check, but also a temp check. So, our next section is a budget strategy in case making. So, if you all have additional questions that you want to ask, we may like leave time for that. If not, we get, we get right into like the example that where we use like either direct billing or this like client participant ratio method that Kathy just mentioned, so I just want to check with y’all, like, what’s the feel, what’s the vibe? I know nine minutes left, either way will be an informative experience. Terry, you’re off mute. You could chime in, like folks could chime in the chat, like, yeah,

Jackson 47:50
yeah, yeah. I’m open to go through the budget strategy. I’m getting ready to switch to my phone. I’m on my way to another meeting, but I’m going to switch to my phone, but I’m here,

Attendee 48:05
And I don’t have a preference either. I think I’m open, I’m very new to this, so whatever knowledge you have to share, I’m, I’m willing to hear.

Osei 48:17
Let’s do it, Kathy.

Medcalf 48:19
All right, um, do okay, so especially, especially when you’re starting out, staff salaries and benefits will probably be your largest reimbursement line, because it takes time to get all this stuff set up, and it’s your, your training costs, so staff time has to be tracked in order to get reimbursed. Okay, I mean, you have, so you either do it by actual time, which is called direct billing, or by allocated time, which is the client ratio method, and so for direct billing it’s usually time sheets with the participant ratio, you just have to calculate the ratio each month, or that of your ENT clients versus your overall clients in the particular program that those staff members are serving, so like the business person, it would be complete all of the clients in your program that you’re serving in the workforce development program versus ENT clients in a training program, if it’s a specific, if a case manager assigned to this particular CDL training course, then it would be the clients in that CDL training course, if that’s only their job, the percentage of time they’re spending on that particular training.

Next slide, so with direct billing, it’s simply, you know, the number of hours spent on the allowable activities each month. Times their wage and fringe hourly rate, which is unique to each staff, right, and then that’s how much you can charge each month to get the reimbursement, so you figure out their hourly rate, which your business office probably does all the time anyway, because they have to do it for everything else, and then, so you have to estimate on your budget what percentage of the FTE you want to put in for reimbursement, and I would strongly suggest that when you’re doing this for the first or second time that you give yourself some wiggle room of 10 to 15% because you don’t know until it actually happens, and this is a projected budget. It’s your best guess. You’ll get better each year when you do your budget, because you have data from the previous year to set up your next year’s budget. One of the great things about ENT is that each year you can add staff, take away staff, add things, take away things, you know, you can really adjust your budget, and the first year you’re going to be way off. There’s no question, which is why we strongly suggest that you don’t put any of your reimbursement money into your actual program revenue for the first year, don’t set yourself up. Okay, the revenue should not, don’t assume that you’re going to get all of the revenue you put in your budget and put that into your revenue for the very first year you’re doing ENT, okay? Because you can’t guarantee that, and if you put that in there and something happens, and you don’t get, because you’re not guaranteed that money, it can really put your organization at a disadvantage. So that’s why you don’t put a full budget for ENT into your GL. You really just need a revenue account and expense account. Don’t put a budget in. Budget is secondary in your GL, okay? Does this make sense? All right, so I will send this out. Why? No, we don’t have time to go over all of this, the client ratio method I kind of went over, but you take the time spent on ENT allowable activities each of their jobs, so if you have a job defined for a case manager, you would go through their job responsibilities and figure out which of their responsibilities are ENT activities. For instance, if they do any mental health or counseling that has that deals with health and mental health, that is an ill and not eligible expense for ENT. So, if 20% of their time is spent working on mental health, then 20% of their time isn’t eligible for ENT, so only 80% of their time is spent on ENT eligible activities, so you can only start their salary or start their percent time at 80% and then you look at the ratio of clients each month, so if 10 out of 20 of your clients are ENT, then 50% of that 80% is reimbursable, and then you multiply by their total wages for the month, and you can figure out what you’re charging, what you can get reimbursed for, so okay.

Next slide. And this is kind of what I just said. Here’s a career coach. If this is what it says in their job description, they’re doing employment coaching, job search, job development, and health and wellness. The health and wellness doesn’t count, so only 75% of their actual job is eligible for ENT, and the ratio is, you know, if to look at all of your, all of your clients, the It’s in this case, you have a total of 60 clients that are served, 35 are ENT participants, 14 are receiving TANF, and 11 are not receiving SNAP at all. So, you’ve got 35 students out of a total of 60, so that’s 58% is what you can bill that month for SNAP E&T client ratio, and that’ll change every month, because people come on and off SNAP, as you know, and we’re at time, just about, okay, let’s. The next slide, so this takes you through the calculations for that job. The person is 75% so 45% of their salary is eligible. 58% of the clients is eligible for, so 58% of that $45,000 is eligible for reimbursement, so 20-6250 is what that person’s salary on average would be eligible over the course of the year for reimbursement, which would bring a little over $13,000 back to your program.

Osei 55:43
Thanks, thanks so much, Kathy, for the in-depth breakdown. And, as Kathy said, we’ll be sharing out these slides afterwards as well. We just want to thank, like, Kathy once again for popping in and really giving, like, the deep dive into budgeting, invoicing. Like, Kathy is really an expert when it comes to SNAP E&T budgeting. So grateful to have her here, and like Kathy put her email in the chat. We’ll also make sure that we send a slide deck and everything afterwards, just let you know that we are a resource, NCRC is a resource when it comes to SNAP E&T and supports in that way. And we do have a best practices and tips slide, so we’ll save that for a little like preview after the fact, so y’all can look through, but just want to, as we get near our time, just want to thank you all. Thank you all for popping through today for a great conversation and a great webinar. Really thankful for both Simon and Kathy for leading this work. And stay tuned for our next one on May 20, 2026. So, understanding your clients, estimating SNAP E&T eligibility and referrals. So, this might be relevant to some of y’all who are newer in your process as well. I don’t know, we may have another guest, a special guest back for this one as well, but thank you all so much, and hope you have a great rest of your, what day is it?, Wednesday, and stay tuned for all of the follow-up materials.

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For more information, visit: https://ncrc.org/opportunity-zones-2-0-what-you-need-to-know-and-how-to-act-now/

Speakers

Bruce C. Mitchell, PhD Principal Researcher, NCRC
Manan Shah, Policy Advisor, NCRC

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Shah 0:01
All right, welcome everybody. It’s good to see many people on the call. Feel free to put in the chat, you know, which organization you’re with, where you’re tuning in from. Really glad to have you guys on the call today. My name is Manan Shah. I’m the policy advisor here with NCRC, and I’m joined by my colleague today, Dr. Bruce Mitchell, our principal researcher, to talk about the newest iteration of the Opportunity Zone program. As many of you have known or heard, state governors are currently nominating new census tracts to designate as opportunity zones for the next 10 years. We want to share with community advocates like yourself what the process looks like to nominate your census track and really ensure that capital is flowing to communities that need it the most. So today, we are going to share some of our own research on OZs, including a new mapping tool our research team has developed to help you identify and nominate your census tract for each state. The deadline to nominate census tracts is coming up pretty soon this summer, and so it’s really vital that community organizations act early, and so let’s go ahead and dive right in. There’s some housekeeping. NCRC’s code of conduct applies to all of our gatherings. We don’t allow any AI chatbots to join the call, but we will have a recording available after this presentation. If you have any questions throughout the presentation, please use the Q and A button at the bottom of your Zoom screen. If you have any, if you’re having any trouble with that, you can also use the chat button, but for now, just use the Q and A button, and we will get to as many of those as we can at the end of the presentation. But feel free to follow up with us. And for those of you who are new to NCRC, we are the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. We are a member organization, membership network of 700 grassroots organizations advancing to build a just economy for all. We work with banking institutions specifically to hold them accountable to the Community Reinvestment Act to get capital flowing in low- to moderate-income communities, really to expand housing, small businesses, and workforce opportunities. And so I’m going to pass it over to my colleague Bruce, who can start us off on some of his research findings.

Dr. Mitchell 2:41
Well, thank you very much, Manon. Appreciate that. As you might know, we’ve been interested in the opportunity zones for quite some time now. We’ve done a number of reports on the OC 1.0 which I’ll.. when I say that, I’m referring to the former program established under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. And that program, OZ 1.0, that’s due to sunset at the end of this year to be replaced by a new program, which we’ll call OZ 2.0. But if we look at the performance of the first version of the Opportunity Zone program, there’s some interesting factors about it, you know. First off, it’s the largest federal community development program, you know, in history. Basically, $100 billion has flowed into this program since 2017, about $20 billion a year, mid 2019 and 2022. This has flowed into 6,000 of what are called qualified opportunity funds, and these funds are the primary mechanism by which financing flows into opportunity zones. Across the United States, in the old program, about 8,700 census tracts across the country were designated as opportunity zones, most of these in urban areas, some in rural areas also. But what we found is, and others have found who have researched this, is that the capital in this program has been deeply concentrated. That the top 1% of the opportunity zones, they receive 42% of all investments, and the top 5% received three quarters of all investments. So it’s been highly concentrated in that old program, and there have been some revisions to new program, which we’ll go over and cover those, but we’re interested in hearing what you have to say about the opportunity zones in your community, so we have a short poll, if you would mind just checking that off on seeing whether you agree or disagree that the opportunity zones have had an impact on community contributing to community development in your community. We’ll leave that up for a couple of a seconds there, so that you can have a chance to answer that and see what the results are. So that’s really interesting. There seems to be a split between people who agree that opportunity zones have had some benefit in their communities, and others who disagree and say they haven’t had much of a benefit. So, that’s a really interesting finding, and we’re interested in hearing more from our members on this particular issue, the types of mechanisms and the types of investments that are flowing into their communities as a result of the qualified opportunity funds. That would be very interesting to us, because we’d like to really, you know, help our members work with them, so that they can, you know, better identify ways of attracting capital within their communities through this program.

Next slide, please, because what we’ve seen from the opportunity zone 1.0 is what do the residents actually get, well, in terms of gains, you know, research has found that there were modest positive impacts on employment earnings and in rates of poverty for zone residents. They also found that most of the investment, 75% of the investment in the qualified opportunity funds went into real estate, and that in fact most of that real estate investment went into market rate real estate, so you know rather than building affordable houses necessarily, it’s been building market rate housing of some sort in those areas, and any sort of building of housing these days is probably a positive impact, considering the whole state of the housing industry in this country, and the need for more housing to be built, but it’s been highly concentrated in real estate, and we’ll talk about why that is, as we go on. Also the investments that went in, they tended to favor already improving areas. That census tracts that already had higher incomes had rising home values and strong pre-existing growth. Most of the funding tended to fund those rather than to highly distressed communities. Probably the most, one of the most troubling aspects of this, though, was that it’s been very difficult to assess and see how the opportunity zones have performed, because there was minimal accountability and reporting included in that Tax Cuts and Jobs Act legislation. There was no agency that was designated to collect data, so really all the data that we have came out of the IRS reporting or from states like Ohio, which set up a separate opportunity zone program, which had more rigorous reporting requirements in that. So Urban Institute based a lot of their studies off of that Ohio-based data to see what sort of benefits were derived there.

Next slide, so as a result of this, we can see here that OZ 1.0, OZ 2.0, what have been the changes? Well, first off is the program duration, right. OZ 1.0 is due to sunset at the end of this year, so will no longer be in effect, and those census tracts will no longer be designated opportunity zones at the end of this year, which means that we’re going to have an entirely new reset of new census tracts, potentially new census tracts in this next nomination time period. The program’s also been made permanent now. It’s a permanent program in which the opportunity zones are designated every 10 years. So this nomination period, after it’s over at the end of this year, those will be set for the next 10 years as qualified opportunity zones, so it’s very important that if you have a project that you’re interested in attracting funding from a qualified opportunity fund to, that you get your tract nominated and designated as an opportunity zone, because of the long timeframe this will be in effect. Additionally, OC 1.0, the eligibility under that was 80% of median family income for the area, or for rural areas for the state. That’s become stricter in OC 2.0. It’s now at 70% of median family income, there’s also a 20% poverty inclusion, so if a tract has a 20% or greater poverty rate, it can be considered as a low-income community that could be nominated as a qualified opportunity zone. They’ve also eliminated the contiguous tract rule. What this was was that a higher income tract that was next to a low income tract or a qualified opportunity zone under OZ 1.0, that higher income tract could also become an opportunity zone. That’s been eliminated in this go-around, so you’re no longer going to have higher-income tracts being potential nominees. The capital gains deferral, and that’s one of the main benefits of this, is the ability of investors to defer their capital gains on investment. In the past, that was fixed at a December 31, 2026, deadline. In the new version, it’s going to be a rolling five year from investment date, so if you made an investment, say in 2030, then the deferral would then be fully realized as of 2035. So it’s a rolling date at this point of five years. Also, the basis step-up has changed. The basis step-up formally, it was 10% would be deferred after five years, 15% after seven years of holding that investment. It’s been simplified, so now it’s a uniform 10% after five years in the new version. There are additional rural incentives, and these are for qualified rural opportunity funds. This is a new mechanism for OZ 2.0 and in these, there’s an even higher step up. There’s a 30% deferral step up on the qualified row opportunity funds. Also, there’s a 50% improvement threshold in rural areas. What’s 100% in urban areas? And I’ll go over that in a little bit more detail in the next slide, too. And then finally, there’s enhanced reporting. They’ve improved the reporting on this, so that now the number of units purchased or constructed, the number of employees hired if a business is being invested in the assets, and the track locations they are now required and reporting, so we’ll be able to get better metrics on how OZ 2.0 is performing. So, these are all improvements in the program.

Next slide, please. So, let’s just go into a little bit more detail on how does the investment mechanism work for a qualified opportunity fund? Because the qualified opportunity fund, or QAF, that’s the main mechanism by which capital flows into urban opportunity zones. So, let’s say an investor, they sell an asset and they realize capital gains on the sale of that asset. Well, instead of paying the taxes on those capital gains, what they do is they take that capital gains amount and they invest it in a qualified opportunity fund, right? The qualified opportunity fund then takes those funds and puts them into a qualified opportunity zone, invests in there. Then after that investment is held for five years, 10% of the original deferred capital gains are excluded from taxation, so they get an exclusion from paying taxes on that 10% after five years, but here’s where the real enhancement is, that if they hold that investment for 10 full years, all of the gains that they made on that investment then become tax free to the investor. So they’re deferring their taxes, exempt a portion of their taxes, and then the investor, in addition, is able to realize any gains off of that investment at the end as being tax free after 10 years, so this is a substantial gain, potentially from an investor on this. It also tends to favor the highest rate of return, right, because you want to maximize that investment and the amount of money made off that investment. Talked a little bit about the property improvement requirement in urban areas where qualified opportunity funds function in those urban areas. If you buy pre-existing property, say for $100,000 then this property improvement requirement is 100% so you’d have to invest a further $100,000 in improving that property in order for it to qualify in urban areas, that changes for the qualified rural opportunity funds, which we’ll see in the next slide. So for qualified rural opportunity funds, the same, you know, first thing here, realize that capital gains on a sale, instead of going into a QAF, it goes into qualified rural opportunity fund, and these are unique in that 90% of the funds that are invested in those, need to then flow into a rural census tract outside of the CBSA, a metro area, right. The enhancement on the qualified rural opportunity fund is after five years, they realize actual a 30% deferment of capital gains on that original amount that was invested, so 30% exclude from taxation, and then again after 10 years, all of the gains earned in that are tax free for the investor. The property improvement requirement for the rural areas, it’s relaxed, so you no longer have to make 100% of the invested amount, you may need to only invest 50% in improvement of that property, so there’s some substantial, you know, things here that would, you know, make a rural investment be more attractive. One of our worries about this, talk to some people about this. Is that we’re kind of concerned that the type of investment that might be flowing into their into these could benefit things like AI data centers and construction of AI data centers in rural areas, but we’ll go into a little bit more about what sort of investments are favored.

Next slide, please. Because what this does, it drives investment. Because first off, all gains on investment held for 10 years are tax-free. So this tends to favor long hold strategies. That’s the whole point of it, is you wanted the investment to be a long-lasting investment within that community, but it also makes risky investments something to be avoided, right. So, you might be less likely to invest in a small business in these areas, because the investment risk there is higher than, say, investing in market-rate real estate and a persisting structure. So, investment in durable structures has been favored, particularly market-rate housing, and that’s what we’ve seen, where 75% of the investment has flown to market-rate housing. So those are some of our concerns about it, and probably some of the mechanisms that will continue to drive OZ 2.0 as they drove OZ 1.0 into the future. Next slide, please.

But before those investments can be made, we have this whole issue of the nomination process, and I’m going to share with you here a mapping application which NCRC has developed, and what this is, this is showing a map of low-income communities that can be potentially designated as opportunity zones in the next round of nominations. So, this is something that you can use. You can look at tracks and distracts where you’re interested in investing and having a project occur, and get some information about that tract, and I’m going to first off start with Salt Lake City here, and take a look at Salt Lake City, and let me just explain a little bit of what we’re seeing here, right. You see these areas with the red boundaries? Those are the old opportunity zones back from the OZ 1.0 and there’s a little widget up here you can switch back and forth, so you can show areas that were gentrified or areas that were OZ 1.0. So, I’m going to leave it on areas that were gentrified for right now. And what we see here in downtown Salt Lake City, we see these gentrified areas in the downtown area all outlined in the red. We also see these different color designations for the census tracts. We see this resident designation. This is taken from Urban Institute. The data here is taken from Urban Institute, and what they’ve done is an analysis to look at where has capital been most recently flowing in terms of small business investment, in terms of mortgage investment, in terms of overall capital investments. They’ve done analysis, and in their determination, these red areas, these are likely to attract capital even without an opportunity zone designation. The areas here in the gold color, these are more likely to attract OZ investment with a larger impact in their estimation. And then the blue areas are less likely to attract OZ investment, so the blue areas are areas that are low-income communities that haven’t seen much investment going to them currently. So if we zoom in, if you know Salt Lake City, this tract is probably pretty familiar to because the state capital is right here, it’s the area directly below the state capital, and we see this area was not gentrified. But if we look at OZ 1.0 in the former, these tracts that were below it were qualified opportunity zones. Now this tract is a low-income community and could potentially be invested in if it’s nominated as a profit opportunity. So, if you click on it, some data comes up, and this data is from the 2024 census American Community Survey data, latest census data. And this is designed to help you get some immediate type of information about the tract, so that you can, you know, potentially construct a case for your census tract to be nominated, so we have median household income in that tract, and what these bubbles are. This shows the spectrum of that whole metro area, where that tract lies within the spectrum of that metro, so it’s reasonably high in terms of median household income, in terms of median home value. 26% of the population are minority within that census tract, has high rates of college education. Begin to wonder, why is it a low-income tract cost burden 18% vacancy is fairly high, 12% unemployment 5.9% and here poverty you see is 20.1% So this is probably why this is qualifying as a low-income tract. It has very high rates of poverty within that, within that census tract, and would probably be the qualifying mechanism for it. Number of home owners, owner occupied 24% and then finally the median rent for that tract. So you can take all this data, use it to make the case for your tract. I’ll just go over to one more city here, and let’s take a look at Denver. And if we zoom in on Denver, I’m going to go to the gentrified widget there and show it. This is a city that seems substantial gentrification. It’s downtown core. Denver has been one of the most gentrified cities over the past 10 years in the country, so you see many of these low-income tracks, they’re likely to attract capital even without an opportunity zone designation, but here we’ve got one of those golden tracks that Urban Institute thought was more likely to attract OZ investment with larger impact, also indicating gentrification, but that might be one to look at, and then you have these other tracks here that were gentrified and are not eligible as low-income communities. And if you click on any of these, of course, the same data comes up here. It also shows here that this overlaps with an area that was an OZ 1.0 in the past. That one was not so. There’s some interesting data that you can get from this, the same sort of data down here to make the case for your track.

And I’ll go ahead and stop sharing on that. And if we could just bring up the slide deck again, please, because I’m going to talk a little bit about the nomination process. We’ve seen some of the things that you can, that you can utilize to make the case for your track, but this is the nomination timeline that we’re talking about, and why this becomes so critical, because as of July 1, 2026 the federal window for nominating tracks as qualified opportunity zones, it opens up, and it only lasts for 90 days until september 28 when state governors have to have all of their tracks nominated and have that filed with the federal government. Now, there’s a potential to get a 30-day extension after that, but for right now, September 28, that is the deadline. So it’s really important to get involved this nomination process if you’re interested in having a project and having your track nominated as a qualified opportunity fund. Some of the states, as we can see below the timeline here, Kansas has a had a June 1 deadline, Ohio, April 26 – they opened up a 30-day portal. Texas is accepting submissions now, and what we’re hearing is that qualified opportunity funds of people who are in development, that they are actively lobbying with their states, their state housing agencies, and their state governor’s offices to try and get their tracks nominated, so if you’re interested in having a track nominated, you want to rapidly act on this. Call your state, confirm when they’re accepting nominations, and start your advocacy work. And Manan is going to talk a little bit more about that process and the nomination process of how that works, Manan.

Shah 25:04
Yes, thanks, Bruce. As we see here, this is a process in which governors are selecting the low-income eligible census tracts. Governors may nominate up to 25% of their state’s low-income community census tracts, or a minimum of 25 state tracks for smaller states. There is no rural mandate. It was actually removed in the final version of the One Big Beautiful Bill, but as Bruce mentioned earlier, there is some rural incentives that can really push investors to invest in these rural opportunity zones, but that’s usually at the governor’s discretion. And Treasury reviews for these opportunity zones, but full discretion, the full decision making process rests with the governors on which tracks to select, and I just want to emphasize it’s important to build that bipartisan coalition, regardless of party. When it comes to nominating these census tracts, it’s important that we emphasize the benefits to low-income census checks, but also using language and evidence that shows this will benefit local economic activity, result in increases in affordability, job creation, and overall economic development. And so, like Bruce mentioned earlier, there’s no automatic renewal of the OZ 1.0 census tracts. This this new OZ 2.0 selection of census tracts will be existent for the next 10 years up until 2036. And here are some of the steps, sort of like an action plan for community advocates to nominate your track. First, we encourage you to confirm the eligibility of your census tracts. You can use our NCRC mapping tool that Bruce just presented, or Urban Institute’s eligibility map, to see if your census tracks meet its income and poverty thresholds. It’s using the American Census data from 2020 to 2024 so it’s very recent, updated. Next, please contact your economic development or housing agency, and really figure out what the state internal deadline might be. You want to make sure you’re submitting these nominations against the state deadline and not wait too long and submit before the September federal deadline. Thirdly, you want to make sure in building investment case to why investors should invest in these low-income eligible census tracts, making sure you document developer interests, what available land is there, transit access, any public investments to make sure this census track would be attractive to OZ capital to flow towards and then fourthly, you want to make sure you’re demonstrating community need. Why should investors invest? Because documenting poverty rates, unemployment, housing cost burdens, and showing that these investments can really reduce income and wealth disparities in these census tracks, while also addressing any risks for gentrification, and I think the overlay that Bruce presented with our map could provide some good evidence regarding that. And then lastly, we encourage you to build coalitions within your state, make sure aligning with local government, other CDFIs, other community development organizations and developers, NCRC can actually help you in that process and connect you with other organizations in your state that are working towards the same goal. We definitely believe that stronger coalition could have more chances and getting those census tracts submitted rather than solo efforts, so feel free to reach out to us if you need help coordinating that coalition process. And just to provide these action steps, again, you know, check your census tract availability, contact your development or housing agency, try to build that bipartisan coalition with local elected officials and prepare a one-page nomination summary. An NCRC policy and research team can really help you provide the data, you know, that the census tracks that you need to build your investment case and show that it’s going to benefit your communities, and please feel to reach out with these emails that you’ve listed below. We can really help you prepare that one-pager. And then again submit before your state’s internal deadline, not the September 28 federal cutoff, like Bruce mentioned. There’s a lot of competition from the industry in regard of these, and so we want to make sure community voices are elevated and fully represented. So, with that, that’s the end of our presentation, and we can take questions.

Dr. Mitchell 30:15
Just one thing I want to clarify, and that is that the federal deadline is September 28 there was one slide on there that I failed to correct since September 29. It should be September 28 is the federal deadline for filing.

Shah 30:33
All right, we’ve got some questions here, Bruce. The first one is, What government unit authorizes or approves qualified opportunity funds. Is it the Department of Treasury?

Dr. Mitchell 30:47
So, qualified opportunity funds. My understanding is that yes, the filing for the funds will have to be made through Treasury, like they were in OZ 1.0 Qualified Opportunity Fund, I mean, it can be a bank could form one, primarily they’re limited liability corporations, but a man could form even a CDFI could form a qualified opportunity fund, and some of these I’d say probably a majority of them that we’ve heard of have been, you know, equity investors, where they’re trying to, you know, maximize the rate of return, but in some cases they’re impact investors that are involved in these also, and would be more interested in projects that would say enhance affordable housing within an area. One mechanism we’ve heard is to try and structure these so that the low-income housing tax credit, new market tax credit and other types of aid can be structured in a package that might benefit a project within a qualified opportunity zone. We’re very interested in that. I’m not a finance person, but we’re very interested in that, and hearing your ideas about how those things might be structured. My guess is, though, that a lot of these are going to be depending on local considerations and how they can be configured locally, and what local need is.

Shah 32:13
Bruce, we had another question in the chat around the QoS. Are you able to monetize the future value of the QOF with a private equity firm?

Dr. Mitchell 32:24
I’m sorry, I don’t know the answer to that. The financing portion of this, I’m not, as I guess, read up on that aspect of, and how QOFs operate. I’m not a QOF person, so I’ll have to defer that question some other time.

Shah 32:47
Yeah, that’s go ahead, Bruce.

Dr. Mitchell 32:49
I do see one question is, how do I find what area in my community is an opportunity zone, and that’s what this whole process is. These low-income census tracts across the United States, they’re about, they’re more than 20,000 of them, right, but only 25% of those are going to be nominated as qualified opportunity zones, so probably only around 6,000 to 7,000 out of that 20 or 1,000 more tracks will actually make the cut of being a qualified opportunity zone in the nomination process, that’s why your action is important on this issue.

Shah 33:33
Next question is, can we get a link to this map? Yes, we should have sent that in the chat. You can also visit our website. We have a landing page dedicated to this OZ 2.0 with a video, basically outlining this presentation. So, feel free to check that out. And we have another question: Are there examples of opportunity zones being used to fund affordable housing or other projects that increase community investment without driving gentrification?

Dr. Mitchell 34:09
This is information I’ve heard. I mean, part of the problem here is that the reporting on the OZ 1.0 has been so poor, so it’s been very hard to assess many of these things as a result of those OZ 1.0. I have heard that there have been some cases of that, particularly in Chicago, that there are cases in which actual impact investors have funded affordable housing in some places in Chicago on a limited basis, and that has resulted in some construction affordable housing, despite the tendency for market rate housing to be built within the overall program.

Shah 34:50
Next question is around the nomination process. Do current OZ tracks need to be resubmitted for consideration, or will they be likely redesignated?

Dr. Mitchell 35:00
Yes, yes, they have to be resubmitted for designation. The map is going to be wiped clean after December of this year, so it’s a whole new process. And just because an opportunity zone is designated in the last round, it won’t necessarily be in the next round. So, yes, it’s important. If you already have investment opportunity zone from the pre-existing map, that you nominate that tract again if you have a project plan there.

Shah 35:34
Next question, if a census tract is not eligible for designation due to a low poverty rate, but really should be eligible, because the area is underdeveloped, but has few residents, mostly commercial. How could we appeal or revisit that a track should be eligible?

Dr. Mitchell 35:54
Oh boy, I don’t know of any mechanism for doing that. The legislation is really quite clear about what the requirements are, and the requirements are that it be at 70% or below of the area median income. If it’s in a metro area, that would be for that metro. If it’s in a state rural area, that would be for the state overall, or it has to meet that 20% poverty threshold, and that’s using the 2024 census ACS data. So that mapping tool, if it’s not a low-income community designated on there, it’s unlikely that it could be nominated as an opportunity zone. You may, however, you know, want to pull together and see if you can make the case with your state governor’s office that they could potentially include it, but yeah, it’s pretty clear cut in the legislation.

Shah 36:51
Next question on the 25% track maximum, is it a 25% maximum track nominated, and 25 track minimum, is that correct for governors?

Dr. Mitchell 37:07
Right, so, if let’s say only 25% of the tracks are low-income communities, and you could potentially nominate all, so it’s all the tracks in your state, so it’s 25% of tracks within the state that are low-income tracts that can be nominated.

Shah 37:30
Are there different application guidelines for tribes? Also, if a tribe has more than one census tract, would we need to submit more than one application?

Dr. Mitchell 37:42
Answer the second part of that is yes, I would submit applications for each of those tracks. All right, make different cases for each of the tracks for nomination. As far as I know, there’s nothing specific to tribal considerations within the legislation. As far as I know.

Shah 37:59
Next question, it seems to me that if we do have a project, we need to develop relationships with a qualified fund. Is there a source or directory we can go to to get a list of those funds?

Dr. Mitchell 38:16
That is an absolutely great question, and I don’t know of a unified source to look for qualified opportunity funds. At this point, I don’t know if such a thing exists. I have searched for that, and I’ve not been able to find it. If someone does find it, I’d be very interested in seeing that and hearing about such a list, but yes, and that’s I think part of the difficulty of this is the next step of this, get your track nominated, then how do you attract funding into that area, and that’s something that I’d be really interested in hearing from people who’ve had more experience in this, who have managed to attract a qualified opportunity fund, to see what sort of strategies they’ve utilized, so that we could make those available to our members, and they could perhaps pursue those types of sorts of strategies. I see a comment here: Novogradac has a lot of information about qualified opportunity zone funds. Yes, they, they do. Novogradac is one source where you can get quite a bit of information about this, and that would be one potential resource for you.

Shah 39:32
We have a double question here. The small business investment aspect of OZ 1.0 has not panned out as anticipated. Do you see this improving in 2.0?

Dr. Mitchell 39:46
We’ve certainly made some improvements in 2.0 right, but the same, I think, baked mechanisms are, you know, in place, and those mechanisms would tend to favor persistent structures, holding investments over long term and favor less risky investments, so instead of investing in a small business, potentially you might choose to invest in real estate simply because the risk is less for you and your return might be greater long term, so I think the same mechanisms are still in place in OZ 2.0 as they were in OZ 1.0 just with better reporting and some stricter guidelines on which areas qualify.

Shah 40:33
And regarding the reporting, will there be transaction-level reporting requirements like the dollar amount of the OZ investment in a given project?

Dr. Mitchell 40:42
My understanding is yes, that that level of granularity should be available in the reporting now. When that reporting is going to first start coming out, I’m not sure how long it’s going to take before we start being able to see, you know, some of the reporting from these qualified opportunity funds.

Shah 41:02
Some more questions about the QOF. With the QOF, what all will they be able to help with? For example, acquiring land or construction?

Dr. Mitchell 41:15
My understanding is yes, they would be able to write the full development process. QOF would be able to invest in in a project in a qualified opportunity zone. Sure,

Shah 41:28
And do we see investors investing in one project or in multiple projects within one QOf?

Dr. Mitchell 41:36
It depends on the QOf, and I think that many of these QOfs, they have multiple projects, which they will invest in across a range of different projects. QOfs, they vary in size, and some of these larger QOfs, yes, they’ll have a number of projects that they’ll be investing in.

Shah 41:59
And one question around sort of building relationships for philanthropic for philanthropic organizations focused on economic development and capital absorption. What would be some good ways to support city agencies through this process?

Dr. Mitchell 42:18
to city agencies?

Shah 42:21
Yeah, like local governments, sort of building coalitions.

Dr. Mitchell 42:27
I’m not quite sure on that question. I mean, certainly, you know, cities oftentimes work with developers in areas in planning development and redevelopment projects, so there would certainly be city input in that, and city involvement in that, and you know, if you have a qualified, if you have a low-income community that you’re interested in attracting investment to, I would get with that with that city development department and work with them to get that track nominated.

Shah 43:02
Since it’s is good…. Does or hold on, can you provide more context on how CDFIs can create their own OZ fund and engage with investors in OZ geographies?

Dr. Mitchell 43:21
Wow, um CDFIs can create qualified opportunity funds. The mechanism, and how they would go about that, I don’t have specifics on, and, like I said, that’s kind of a next step that I think that we need to go to in our next presentation on this, with more details about how the funding mechanisms would work for this, because I think I’m detecting a lot of interest from our audience in that aspect of it, and we’ve been really focused on this nomination process, so I don’t have much information about how to form a fund or the financial end of this.

Shah 43:57
And can you explain the reasons a track might be less likely to attract OZ investment?

Dr. Mitchell 44:05
Well, from what we’ve seen, and what the data has shown is that the investments have tended to favor tracks that already are in an upward trajectory in terms of increasing home values, increasing metrics on rents, median rent increase also tracts that are adjacent to a gentrifying area or within a gentrifying area, so if there’s already a positive economic development trajectory going on within that tract, then it’s they have tended to be the ones that benefit most from this program, right? The deeply distressed tracks did not see that much investment, at least that’s what the research has told us about OZ 1.0 and that capital was highly concentrated in these areas that we’re already on kind of a positive trajectory to begin with. That being said, under OZ 1.0, what we found when we did our research on this was that most of the tracks that were at the bottom in terms of income, at the bottom in terms of poverty levels, that they did qualify as opportunity zones, so in the track selection process itself it seemed to be fairly equitable in selecting tracks that were in dire need of economic development. There was that provision for contiguous tracks, though, where a higher income track could qualify, and a lot of investment went to those higher income tracks that were adjacent to a low income area.

Shah 45:48
And Bruce, you mentioned LITC earlier. Can you speak to how OZ 1.0 was paired with LITC, and how that might look different than 2.0>

Dr. Mitchell 45:59
Yeah, on that question again, I’m gonna have to defer that I don’t have much information on LITC, and how those two things would have worked together. I know that we’ve talked with some of our members, and the idea of structuring LITC with opportunity zones in the OZ 2.0 and stacking these investments could be a possible mechanism for making them more attractive to investors.

Shah 46:27
And have you heard of communities advocating to ensure their census tracts are not nominated for OZ 2.0, for example, out of a desire to protect their area from development with potential negative effects?

Dr. Mitchell 46:40
Yeah, that’s a really interesting question. So, we have talked to some of our members, and they’ve had very different kind of perspectives on this, and in some areas they felt that the opportunity zone designation has actually made that tract much more difficult to compete in for affordable housing than for the construction market rate housing, and has placed that track outside of their ability to invest in affordable housing, and has basically created a situation of gentrification on steroids in those tracks. So that’s been one concern about this program, is that an opportunity zone may put it out of the range of having affordable housing built. By the same token, we’ve heard from other members who have said that what we need to work with the system as best we can and take advantage of it the best we can in order to maximize affordable housing and development within our area. So they’re two very different perspectives, and your perspective may depend on your local situation, and what the local conditions of economic development are within your city, and within the area that you’re operating. Also, you know, initially we talked about, mentioned a little bit earlier, or the rural opportunity zones and concerns about development in those areas, and we’re a bit concerned about the AI data center angle of this, and that something like an AI data center would be probably a very favorable investment for a qualified opportunity fund. So, there’s a bit of concern about that, and how it might fuel investment in those areas. With AI data centers, I just like to say that with that, as with gentrification, we want to work with members to make sure these are things that happen with the community and not to the community. That this sort of investment be with community involvement, so communities are able to maximize the type of advantages and development that they get rather than have it be an opaque process in which they basically have no role or saying what’s happening with their areas.

Shah 48:53
And then what is the significance of the MFI ratio of the eligibility criteria, is a higher or lower MFI ratio, a better signal of community benefit?

Dr. Mitchell 49:05
So, the MFI, that’s the level of median family income compared to that metro area. So, before in OZ 1.0 it was 80% so it was higher, so that tracks with a bit higher income level would qualify. By lowering that down to the 70% of MFI level, they’ve restricted these low-income communities somewhat, so that is an enhancement and improvement, and it directs more capital or more of the tracks that hopefully will be nominated as being lower income communities than an OZ 1.0 so that restriction was an important one to put in place, and we’re happy to see that restriction in place.

Shah 49:51
Alright, Bruce, that looks like the last of all the questions. Let’s give a virtual round of applause for Bruce, for his expertise and just quickly, if you’re interested in becoming NCRC member, if you liked what you heard and saw today, you want to partner with us for more research or policy advocacy opportunities, you can check out our website. We also have consistent training and events from NCRC. You can visit our events website, including our national conference in the spring and regional summit in the fall. And so again, thank you all for joining. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to Bruce and I. We’re happy to help build some coalitions in your state or help put together those one-pagers with data and other elements of OZ research, so thanks again, and we’ll see you soon.

Dr. Mitchell 50:46
Thank you, everyone.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Speakers:

Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward 
Gregory Dyson, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, NCRC

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Dyson 0:07
All right, good morning.

Perryman 0:09
Hi. Can you hear me? Okay, good, we’re good, we’re good,

Dyson 0:12
We’re good. Well, Skye and I are just gonna have a little conversation here, just you know this morning, about topics that we are both very passionate about as are you know, as are you. You know, to sort of frame the discussion this morning, Skye, you know, we’re celebrating America 250, but at the same time, this moment when our systems rely on accountability, are being tested. And so this conversation means, what do we have to do to put that in practice? And as we begin, I know when many of you came down the stairs this morning, you saw that Registration Board, and there was the quote from Jesse Jackson at the bottom, which we’ve known. We heard him say many times, time and time again, keep hope alive. But he also said one of many times, he often talked about how when America catches a cold, Black people, Brown people, poor people, catch pneumonia. And so that’s the context in which we’re going to talk about this work this morning. And when people you hear the word democracy, which is where you lead in your work, we think about elections and institutions and conventions, but at the same time, right now that democratic pieces that accountability is being weakened. So what actual changes do you think communities are facing in this critical moment when it comes to accessing capital, opportunity and fair treatment under the law?

Perryman 1:42
Well, thank you for having me. It’s so good that we’ve always been saying we’re going to meet up for coffee, and like we’re doing it now. Everybody’s here, we’re going to have a live coffee. And thank you to NCRC for having me here and for your partnership and so much of our work, which I know we’ll talk about. I think we, when we think about democracy, people think too small. And you said it right. They think about voting. They think about elections, they think about institutions. But what democracy is is the promise that we are going to build a society where all people can thrive, and so anything that threatens that promise, that seeks to keep that promise from being a reality, in our view, at Democracy Forward, and I think probably I share this with all of you, is a threat to the democratic way of life, to democracy, to the idea that we as a people get to be in charge of what happens next. And so it’s no mistake that, as we see these historic for modern history, attacks on our democracy, whether you think about voter suppression, whether you think about the president ignoring other branches of government, whether we think about the targeting of particular people groups across the country, all of those are threats to democracy, and It’s no mistake that, as we see that we also see increasingly, it being so much harder for communities and for people to thrive, because it’s all interconnected. And so right now we talk about a crisis in our democracy. That’s not hyperbole. It’s not a talking point. It is, in fact, a crisis moment. But we also have a crisis in our communities, and how that is showing up right now is with the federal administration that has sought to cut off the very lifeblood of communities, whether that is seeking to target civil servants that are providing services to people in our communities, whether that is cutting off community funding. I mean, at Democracy Forward, we have sued and sued and sued and won and won and won to keep community funding mechanisms open that are the lifeblood of so many communities and the ability of people to access capital, whether that’s credit or whether that’s capital, we’re seeing all of that threatened at the same time that we’re seeing these fundamental democratic institutions threaten. So I think that it’s no mistake and you all in this room, and one of the reasons I was so excited to be here this morning, you all get it that democracy is not just about voting in an election. It’s not just about a separation of powers issue. It’s actually about the ability of people and communities to thrive, and what set of conditions we need to do that.

Dyson 4:23
I think you make some very important points there, Skye. Because when we talk about economic justice here at NCRC, we talk about it as a policy issue. But what you do at Democracy Forward, you approach these fights, you know, in the courts. So, when do you think the legal avenue is the most effective way to pursue these fights for advancing economic justice? And you know, where does it fall short? But I also think, where is that intersection? Because I know we’ve done some important work with you. We know what the CFPB, we’ve been successful there, and we have a case that’s ongoing. But where do you see the mix there?

Perryman 5:02
So I think we have to reorient ourselves, that in our country, and certainly in this moment, it is all about the people, how we are going to get out of this moment, how we’re going to build a better future, not rebuild something that wasn’t working, but a reimagined future is going to be up to the people. And so then the question becomes, what tools do people have? And so at Democracy Forward, we look at our work in the courts. We look at the ability of people in this country to file and initiate litigation against wrongs and against injustices and against their government as a fundamental power that people have. And when you are, at the moment, up against a lot of forces that want to get people to think they have no power, that there’s nothing that they can do, that they just have to sort of participate in this fear mongering and lit right, that there’s nothing that they can do the ability to initiate litigation or to use the courts or to use the legal system. It is a powerful, powerful tool for people. It’s a powerful tool for movement building, which I know that we’ll talk about. So how we look at our work in the courts is, what levers of power do people have to demand a better future, to show a better way, and to hold people to account that want to step in the way of that future. We look at policy work the same way. And I heard you’re going to be on the Hill, which will be, you know, very exciting. But that’s another tool that people in this country have, is the ability to show up, to engage with your policy makers, to make demands, to make your phone calls, to write your letters. Lots of people get that. I mean, not everybody. We wish more people got it. But lots of Americans get that. They understand, I can vote, I can call. They ask, does the calls do any good? Yes, they do. You know, be loud. You know, you can. People get that. And what we’re focused on at Democracy Forward is a lot of people, I think, view the courts as kind of this other thing, as this institution that’s very expensive to access, that they don’t really know how to go in and make their voices heard through the courts. And so our work has been to try to level that playing field. And we represent all of our clients pro bono and free of charge. We want to make sure that the American people are able to access their court system, not just to win, and we do win a lot more than you know, many would have you think we win a lot, but not just to win, but to also show and exercise a lever of power, to say, I’m a member of this community in this country, it has made promises to me. It has made promises to my community, absolutely, and we’re going to step in to enforce those promises. So that’s how we view it holistically.

Dyson 7:53
How do you how do you elevate the courts in the community, in the community?

Perryman 7:57
Well, right now, it’s become a little easier than maybe it used to be just even a few years ago, because right now, as our communities are facing a manufactured crisis from this administration, the courts are one of the levers that you have to use. So I’ll give you some examples. Last year, and you all were so supportive of this, and I appreciate it. Last year, for the first time in US history, a United States President sought to weaponize the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the SNAP program, 42 million Americans. And as you know, 42 million Americans, the vast majority working Americans, rely on SNAP to help make ends meet for their families. And in that government shutdown, for the first time ever, the White House took a position that it could deprive people of SNAP which Congress does not in, by the way Congress doesn’t allow them to do, but that it could deprive people of this benefit in order to try to win a political game. And so we had a few days, I mean, we had a few days to get into court to try to preserve what we could of the ability of people to be able to get those entitlements and benefits during the shutdown. And we were able to do that, but with community organizations, with the Rhode Island Council of Churches, with food pantries, with small businesses that that were being harmed, we were able to get into court, which did two things. One, we won a court order that did help millions of people access food. It did not help everybody, because the administration slow-rolled their compliance with the court order. And so the resilience of communities in stepping in to assist in mutual aid was hugely important. It wasn’t just the courts, it was the courts and communities. So we were able to do that, but the litigation also showed people in a community. Look, we can do this together, and we can use our voice to force a better way, and we can expose what’s happening here, which is that we have a United States president that fought all the way up to the Supreme Court to try to deprive people of a few $100 of food that would make the difference for their families that week. That litigation exposed that, in addition to winning for people, and we saw that straight in our communities, you all at NCRC, we’re representing you, along with small businesses and a range of other organizations, to continue to force the CFPB to do the data collection that we need in order to make sure that credit can be provided and accessed equitably. Okay, this is what their playbook everytime, is to come in and to try to cut off the data collection so that, so that you don’t have a reality from which to work, so that they can deny a reality, so that they can obstruct the good work that you’re trying to do. So we won that in the first Trump administration. We’re going to win it again. We filed, we filed with you all, but that’s directly related to the ability of people in our communities to run their businesses, to access capital, to get lending, and so we see it as very interrelated. And the work that we’ve had the privilege of doing, and the work that you all have helped us do, is to tell those stories, to elevate the voices, and to make sure that this doesn’t just look like a lawsuit that’s being filed on a federal docket somewhere, but that it looks like the stories of people in this in people in communities in this country demanding better and going and using their power to achieve something better.

Dyson 11:26
Absolutely. I know the example you give with SNAP and the work with in Rhode Island there, it says how your organization, Democracy Forward, is in the middle of fast-moving. You know, you know, litigation in and, and, but from that, you know, what can you What have you learned, and what can you share with us that it’s going to help us, you know, further enhance our movement, building our piece when we, when we bring that intersection together?

Perryman 11:54
Well, I mean, you all are, this is part. I mean, we have to have a we don’t need a miracle. We need a movement. Because we’re far beyond needing a miracle. We need a movement in this moment, and there is a movement forming. And what I think is so critical about it, and you all have done such a good job, I think, in representing this to your constituents and to the communities you serve, but what’s been so important is that this is a moment to really reimagine what’s possible. We don’t have to be left with old institutions that had not been delivering for people. Their institutions are important, but if they’re not delivering for people, they’re not doing what they were meant to do. We don’t have to defend status quos. We certainly don’t have to defend this status quo, but we don’t even have to defend what, what, what this status quo has disrupt disrupted, we can say that in this crisis, there is a time to catalyze major change and to be able to operationalize a reimagined democracy that is a democracy that’s more than just about voting, but it’s a democracy that can hold all of us, and that can help people in communities thrive. And so I think the litigation that we’re able to work on hell is a building block to that. In some instances, it’s the first time that people realize, you know, they go to sleep thinking, Gosh, this is about to happen to my community. They wake up there’s a court order in place. You know, it’s the first time people realize that we do as people, have power to push back, but it’s also a way, I think, to continue to then catalyze people who come together in a crisis to then, how can we work together? How can we make new alliances? A lot of our cases at Democracy Forward, they’re on behalf of very unusual bedfellows and friendships are being formed. I mean, you know, we represent a range of organizations right now, religious organizations, faith based organizations, organizations that don’t really get along with each other all the time, all together to come in and say, You’re not going to have ice conduct enforcement operations in our churches, in our schools, in our hospitals, I think we’re going to win those cases. We’ve already won some preliminary orders. I think we’ll win them. But let’s assume a world where we don’t. Let’s assume a world where we win some we lose some. Assume a world where we don’t. What you’ve won in that is you’ve brought all of these different communities together that realize that there is a commonality in not just what they can fight against, but in how and what they want for their future, and how we can catalyze that future. So that’s how I see it, sort of relating. And of course, you all have been such a critical part of that

Dyson
We are a coalition and 4042 43 states, nearly 800 member organizations. What is the greatest opportunity for us as we take these national issues and make them a local win, a local reality.

Perryman
I think you have so much opportunity. And one is because, like I said, you guys, you get it. I mean, you know that this is about more. Than a talking point about the rule of law, or about voting or I mean, these are really important things. By the way, I spend a lot of time in court. We think the rule of law is very important, but you understand that this is about how people and communities can thrive, and you’ve always seen the interrelationship between what you do when you’re advocating nationally what you do when you’re advocating in your communities. And so I think that at this moment where so many more people are now paying attention, there were folks that weren’t really paying attention. Now people are paying attention. I mean, that’s one thing this administration did, is they got people’s attention. There is this real moment to then start telling a story that is a different story, that’s a story about what you all are advocating for and can achieve. And that’s a hyper local story, and it’s also deeply, deeply global. And you see that, and just if you reflect on the Hungarian elections over the weekend, we should get in a round of applause for the people of Hungary but what you saw there was an autocratic actor that sought to divide people among identity that was so laced in corruption, people’s lives were getting harder. I mean, you see all of these challenges happening, and if you read about what happened there, it was the local communities and leaders working together in local communities to say we can do something better, and going from village to village and town to town and city to city. That is how we get out of this. It is a it is a local, local solution to a global problem. And what is special about you all and your members, and what you’re going to do today is you, you occupy those two worlds and see that. So I think there’s a great opportunity. And I’ll just say, and you know, there’s also a great opportunity in this moment to use the courts, and so don’t count that out. And don’t think if your community is experiencing something, don’t just say, Well, I guess we’re going to write our representative, and I guess we’re going to go to a meeting, and then we’re going to, you know, tweet about it. Do all those things are really important. But also think about reach out. You know how to get in touch with us at Democracy Forward. You know how to get in touch with NCRC. Reach out and say. You know, is there, is there a court? Is there a legal element to this? Because sometimes the way we have made the most change over the last year has been to go to court, and sometimes we win without even having to win. Sometimes we go to court, and the administration doesn’t even show up with an argument. They don’t even show up with a defense. They were just betting on the fact that no one would care about this hyper local issue, about this economic issue that no one would really care. And so once you show up and say, we’re suing you, they back off. And that is happening more than the mainstream media is reporting it, and so we want you to make sure that you’re not counting the courts out, even as you’re using all your other critical tools that you’re going to be using over the next few days.

Dyson 17:50
So litigation and legal work should be part of the community activist toolkit.

Perryman 17:55
I think that’s right. And in some communities, it doesn’t work. In some communities, either the laws are in a certain place, or the courts in a certain place, or just the community doesn’t want to do it, that’s fine. You don’t have to use every tool, but we certainly don’t want you to consider a tool off the table, so you should always consider it and and then we’ve seen we say that it’s courts plus people, it’s how people are mobilizing, and then it’s what levers of power you can use right now that’s the courts. Maybe after the midterms, there’ll be some other levers of power that we can use through legislation, in a more urgent way. But right now, it’s the courts plus people.

Dyson 18:32
When you look around this room right now, we have a lot of stakeholders in the room here. We have community development leaders, we have fair lending advocates, the bankers, financial end of financial innovators. I think we all need to work. How do we come to work together to make enforcement and accountability real in this space and in this time?

Perryman 18:57
Well, accountability takes a lot of forms, and that’s one thing I’ve appreciated about some of the tools that you all have used. There is a public accountability that everybody in this room can help enforce what we know about people in this country on issues. People say the country is divided. If you actually look on the issues, the vast majority of people in this country are united on the vast majority of issues. There is a political polarization in this country that is, frankly, a symptom of and a result of people that want to polarize the country to keep us distracted from the issues that we all care about, affordability, the ability to thrive, education, health care, all of these things. And it’s the reason why, by the way, on the campaign trail, the President would not admit that he was going to implement project 2025 because if you go back and look at what data and polling showed, not just one poll, every poll, including the poll. Polls that the President’s own allies ran, what you found was just a few weeks before the election, the vast majority of people in this country, including those that trend conservative, rejected so much of the policies in Project 2025 so much so that nobody would act like they were going to implement it. President act like it. He hadn’t heard about it because it was so deeply unpopular. And so when we think about accountability, there is a range of accountability we have to pursue. One is to not give up the power we have at the end of the day, when you talk about these issues, access to credit, the ability to start and run a small business, the ability to invest in things that you want to invest in that makes sense for you, and that your family, that makes sense for the world, and that are sustainable. I mean, by the way, we won a court order two weeks ago in Texas where they were blacklisting companies that had sustainable investment portfolios. Mean you’re having, we’re having to fight this on all fronts, but the vast majority of people are aligned on those issues. And so I think one thing we have to do in terms of accountability is to require a public accounting to talk about what it is we are here fighting for, to dare people that would step in the way, to deny that as a value or as a reality, because they’re not really going to be able to and to force that issue. We can do that sometimes by filing lawsuits, but we can also do that by a range of the social mobilizing campaigns, the social media campaigns, the communication campaigns. And so I would encourage all of us, while we are going to fight for accountability, there will have to be accountability in a future administration. There will have to be accountability, hopefully after the midterms, when the house could potentially get people that are actually interested in conducting oversight, there will be accountability. The state AGs will engage with accountability. But what I would challenge all of us to do is to not just focus on those formal areas of accountability, but also on the power that we all have as a community that’s dedicated to things that the vast majority of people in this country want to force those conversations and to force those issues and and we see that that is able to cut through, even with these power structures that right now seem so stacked against many of these issues, those things are able to cut through. And you’re seeing that in a lot of different ways, a lot of inspiring activism.

Dyson 21:22
You’ve been busy. Your team has been busy for the last 16 months. Share with us, if you could this morning, some of the more interesting stories, of antidotes that you’ve run across and your travels. I know you’re leaving here this morning and going out to California, but you know, what have you seen in all of the activity that brings us, you know, that really moves this work forward in the last 16 months.

Perryman 22:47
I think, I mean, it’s it first of all, the people, people have been amazing, powerful institutions have disappointed many of us. For those of us that practice law, some of the best and most storied law firms in the country bending a knee right out of the gate instead of showing up and challenging what every single federal judge, every single federal judge, Republican appointed and democratic appointed, have looked at with those executive orders the President issued against lawyers and said, This is blatantly unconstitutional, and having powerful institutions that looked at that situation and didn’t say we’re going to go to court and fight for ourselves and fight for what the legal profession and what the Constitution means in this country, but instead bend the knee. That’s been very disappointing, powerful financial institutions not getting on the train here that you don’t actually get to have all the wealth and the riches and everything that these financial institutions want in the world if you don’t have a free society and a democracy, and if you lose what is at stake now, you lose it all. Right? That don’t understand that. That’s been deeply disappointing, but what has been so inspiring, and we get a front row seat of it every single day at Democracy Forward, and I guarantee some of you get a front row seat too, is how, as powerful institutions have stepped back, people have stepped forward, and they have stepped forward in amazing ways. So first of all, I’m just going to talk about the obvious, okay, the mobilizations of people that we have seen in the streets across this country and in communities, by the way, including in red communities, like the one I grew up in in Texas, okay, red communities, the mobilizations that we have seen have been the largest single days of mobilization in United States history, millions of people. You’re looking at historic threats. You were seeing historic responses. And sometimes we don’t have the ability to just look up and see that we are living in this historic time. The amount of people that have been trained in nonviolent direct action is far greater now than it ever was in the civil rights movement. And everyone that was in the civil rights movement, some of you were. There, some of you march will say that the amount of people that have been trained in non violent direct action in this country right now is far greater than anything we were ever able to do in earlier movement moments because of the advent of social media, of communication, of national organizing, because of those building blocks. Okay, so that’s the obvious. That’s what we see in the streets, but what we’ve seen from day one, including when many people were calling into the news and saying, I don’t think there’s a resistance. Where’s the resistance? What we saw from day one is that millions of people were mobilizing through our court actions, and I’ll tell you some stories that hopefully will inspire you on Valentine’s Day last year, you will remember that the administration gave the American people a Valentine in the form of a Dear Colleague letter, which threatened to defund K through 12 public education and virtually all of higher education, public higher education, but any higher education institution that receives any type of federal funding, which is the vast majority of institutions in the country, because of all the financial assistance, AIDS and grants, okay, so they threatened to defund all of them if your institution didn’t agree with whatever the White House was purporting to say on the issue of civil rights. This was called the Dear Colleague letter. Not a single university sued to challenge that letter, but people did, and we represented a range of educators, academics, staff members, people that had the least amount of power in this situation. We went to court and represented we drew a Trump appointed judge, and we won a national court order block the Dear Colleague letter. But then you might say, Well, what that’s great. Okay, good, okay, good. Then our friends at LDF followed up with another lawsuit, and our friends at the ACLU followed up the dollar. And so you now have something going here, okay, but you may say, but what about appeal? What happened on appeal? Well, you want to know what happened the administration backed off before the matter ever went to appeal, walked it back, backed off, final court judgment from our trump appointed judge in place. So the lessons from that is, when you fight, you win. And I can tell many of those stories, of court orders, how we’ve mobilized, how we’ve used the leverage to push back. But the other lesson is, and what has inspired me so much in the communities, is that this was something that every powerful institution in education and higher education had some type of self interest, it would seem to challenge. None of them had the guts to do it, and when the people stepped forward and use their power. They won something for the whole country. And they showed what I have been saying a lot these days, that courage is the new currency. It is courage. It is stepping forward. The law firms showed that too. The law firms that stepped forward and suit said, we’re not going to bend a knee. We’re going to go to court and be lawyers. They’ve all won, across the board, before diverse judges and in courts that might not have been as hospitable to every progressive view. This isn’t a progressive issue. It is a constitutional issue. So we’re seeing that, and that’s something that we want everyone to take with us. The other thing that we’re seeing is that people in this country are asking right now what they can do. When we got to day 100 last year of the administration, we were getting lots of calls at democracy for it. People had seen the early successes in court. They were afraid. But what every what the vast majority of people were calling about was saying, What can I do? I don’t know that we’ve had that level of civic concern and engagement in American society in some time, and it’s time to mobilize and harness that in new ways. So that’s another thing that we’re seeing, and we’re seeing people of all different backgrounds show up, step up, and think about how to build a new way. So I think this is a really frightening moment, and there’s nothing wrong with being afraid and scared. I think it is going to get worse. I think as the President continues to lose support, I think as people continue to mobilize, you’re going to see a range of many more erratic activities. That’s like part of the playbook. But I think that it’s also this incredible moment where people are finding their power in new ways. They’re building new relationships in new ways, and they’re going to work. We’re going to work to achieve a reality that we’ve needed for a long time, and a future that we’ve needed for a long time that’s truly reimagined. Where we are here. The society is here to truly hold everyone.

Dyson 29:45
Well, I know the message you’re giving us here this morning is one to organize, organize, organize, litigate, litigate, litigate, but most importantly, courage that we have, the you know, we the people, have the courage to step. Forwarding. Go forward. No, I know that earlier this year, you were honored as time 100 so congratulations on that. One the most influential people.

Perryman 30:10
Thank you. I think we all wish we had a little more influence. So we appreciate that. But it’s like, you know, if we had a lot of influence, maybe this wouldn’t be happening.

Dyson 30:25
I know you have a book coming out this summer, ordinary people, extraordinary times, looking forward to that, where you’re going to probably tell many more of these stories in that, you know, in that book. But you know, as I close this morning in our conversation, and you and I go back a ways on some of these, these issues. And remember when Senator Kennedy, who we both know, would talk about, you know, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope shall live, and the dream shall never die. Said that 1980.

Perryman 30:53
Yes.

Dyson 30:55
And he said it again in 2008. You know, that was an inspiration for 2008, but I think for what you’re doing, for what we’re doing, it’s a motivation for the work to continue. So thank you this morning for being with us, and to kick off our Just Economy Conference 2026.

Perryman 31:11
And thank you, guys, for being here and for choosing in this moment you could be anywhere to choosing in this moment to not give up and to be doing this work. And I’ll just say we are so honored to get to work with NCRC at Democracy Forward, our lawsuit is going to win. We know it is, and we’re mobilizing people while we’re doing it.

Speakers:

Reed Colfax, Co-Managing Partner, Relman Colfax
Lisa Rice, President and CEO, National Fair Housing Alliance
Mikael Rojas, Partner, Outten & Golden
Carol Johnson, Chairperson, NCRC Board of Directors

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Johnson 0:09 
Well, okay, I’m geared up for a riveted conversation.

So let me just get started because I want to definitely leave enough time for our panelists to get into the heart of why we’re here this afternoon. You know, we all know that civil rights is not theoretical. The fact that we still need civil rights protections is evident that or the fact that we still have unequal treatment, let’s go back. The fact that we have unequal treatment across this country makes the work that much more important and that much more essential. Whatever our policy differences are, we can’t ignore that fact that we still need civil rights within the country, that we still need the protections, and that we still need organizations such as those represented here and and also here at NCRC to help to do this work, so I’m going to I’m going to turn it over to our panelists here.

We look forward to a very grounded conversation about enforcement, about fairness, and what is definitely at stake for our families and our communities. And so we’re joined today by very, three very deeply respected and admired colleagues in the civil rights struggle. We have Lisa Rice, who has been a leading national voice for fair housing and equitable access for opportunity for many years. We have Reed Colfax, who is one of the country’s foremost fair housing litigators, who has a long track record of advancing civil rights through the courts. And, then we have Mikael Rojas, who brings experience from both civil rights litigation and senior leadership at the Department of Justice, where he was at since 2024.

So, I’m going to get started with the first question, which is going to go to Lisa. Lisa heads a national civil rights organization working at the intersection of lending and housing and civil rights enforcement. And many people are asking, what priorities are most vulnerable right now. So, from your vantage point, what civil rights protections are at greatest risk of being sidelined, and what would be the real-world consequences for families and communities if fair housing and fair lending enforcement were weakened at this time?

Rice 3:04
Carol, thank you so much for the question. And, let me first start by thanking Jesse and NCRC for inviting me to be with you all here today. Hello everyone, and I want to thank you all for the important work that you do every single day in your communities on the ground. We know that fair housing and fair lending work is not easy. It is very difficult. Whether you are inside a bank or a real estate company or at a fair housing organization or a CDFI, we’re all working towards one goal and that is advancing fair housing and fair lending in our nation. So thank you for what you do every day.

Carol, to answer your question, everything is at risk. Everything is at risk, and what we are seeing is a rolling back of core civil rights protections, core civil rights functions at the very upper echelons of our government. That portends some very dangerous, harmful things for people throughout the country. From what I can see in terms of civil rights enforcement, there are no priorities. What is happening is civil rights is being deprioritized. And, even if we listen to the whistleblowers within HUD who told us about what is happening inside the organization, they said themselves, I’m swearing an oath. They said that they were told by this administration that fair housing would be deprioritized and that civil rights would be deprioritized.

Now, I’m the kind of person. I’m not from Missouri. I am from the great state of Ohio, but I believe that if you tell me something, that’s fine, but I’m going to believe what you show me. And, if we look at what this HUD is showing us, we see several things. We see that this HUD took down the complaint, the very intricate complaints process that had been the entire complaint infrastructure for filing fair housing and fair lending complaints that had been put in place throughout the country. This administration dismantled all of that and relegated the complaint process to an online portal that does not contain all of the characteristics that it needs to contain for people filing complaints to be ensured that they have officially filed a complaint at HUD and that it will be legally recognized under a court of law.

We know that this HUD has dismantled the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. Civil rights employees with fair lending and fair housing expertise have been fired. They have been removed. They have been riffed. And, people who don’t have any fair housing or fair lending expertise, and as you all know, this area is highly specialized. It takes years and years to become an expert in fair housing and fair lending. That expertise is almost all gone. We know and have seen that fair housing organizations who are doing the work on the ground were defunded, defunded illegally. Our members received notification, as I’m sure many of you did in this room, that their fair housing contracts had been canceled midstream. No advance warning, no advance notification. Fair housing contracts canceled, and they were notified after 7pm Eastern Standard Time on a Friday evening.

Now that does not sound like prioritizing civil rights. And let me just, let me just explain real world implications here. One of our members on the ground was in the throes of assisting a family whose daughter had been sexually molested by an employee of the apartment management company assisting that family to remain safely and stably housed, working with local law enforcement officials when they received the notification that their FHIP funding was ended and they were going to have to lay off all their staff. And who’s going to help this victim of discrimination?

Another organization was assisting a woman whose husband tried to kill her. Who tried to stab her. Who did stab her over 30 times. She was in the hospital recovering. Her landlord wanted to evict her while she’s recovering. The fair housing organization was providing assistance to her, making sure that she could stay safely housed and that her things wouldn’t be thrown out on the street when they received the notification that they were being defunded. And I could go on and on and on with example after example after example of people in communities throughout our nation experiencing discrimination when the fair housing organizations that were helping them receive notification you’re not getting your funding, and by the way, we didn’t even have the decency to give you a forewarning so that you could try and make sure that you could get some funding streams to keep your staff funded.

So I’m going to stop there, Carol, but I could, I could be here all night with examples of actions that this administration has taken to hurt and harm fair housing organizations. In fact, don’t look any further than the latest budget that just came out. You just heard the Assistant Deputy Secretary say that he was here to support all of you. Look at this fiscal year, ’27 budget. You’ve all been defunded. How is that helping? In my opinion, it is not. Put your money where your mouth is. Your budget is a reflection of your priority. And, if you prioritize fair housing, you wouldn’t be defunding fair housing organizations. You wouldn’t be defunding the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. And, you wouldn’t be limiting the funding of state fair housing organizations.

Johnson 10:12 
As someone who, I’ve been a state civil rights director, director in three different states, and, you know, working with HUD and other federal organizations for funding. It’s a very complicated process, but it keeps the doors open for most of these organizations, especially, you know, the FHIP agencies and the FHAP agencies that rely very heavily on that. So, your comments are well taken about the budget and what that’s really going to mean for families in our communities. So, I’m going to ask, I’m going to move the next question on. And, this question is for Reid, you know, given you know where we are, and we’ve heard the Assistant Secretary just speak. Where do you see the greatest risk for, you know, fair lending issues, underwriting, appraisal bias, special purpose credit programs? Where are you seeing the greatest risk in fair housing and fair landing right now?

Colfax 11:21 
Well, I think the answer to that question is all of the above, and the reason for it just walked off the stage.

You know, that speech could have been given in the 1860s. In the 1860s, right after, following, the Civil War, Congress got together. Senators were debating: How do we deal with the fact that we have enslaved a population for centuries at that point? How do we deal with it? And, there was a whole group of senators, also supported by President Johnson, who said, “We need to just have a color blindness in this country. All we need an amendment to the Constitution that requires color blindness.” You know what happened? That got rejected, and what was actually passed was the 14th Amendment that said, we actually have to give equal protection of the laws to everybody.

And, with that came an affirmative duty to government, federal governments and state governments, to ensure that equal protection of the laws. And what did that mean? That means there were times where you actually had to give benefit to people you have discriminated against, to people you have oppressed, to people who you have acted in violence against for centuries. And that’s what Congress did in the 1860s, right? You had the Freedmen Bureau’s Act. You had all of these programs and policies that said, “Hey, we have to do something to redress what we have done to Black people in this country.” It wasn’t just formerly enslaved people, it was freed Blacks in the North as well.

And, so Mr. Trainor comes in here to give us a history lesson, but it’s actually completely inaccurate, right? And, these ideas that are being propounded today were rejected 160 years ago. To think that this country is in a spot where we were 160 years ago is just horrifying and depressing. So, that’s the biggest threat to fair housing enforcement, fair lending enforcement today and Lisa touched on some of the very, very important things, right, the defunding. Right, all, many of the organizations, including NCRC itself, which rely on federal funds to get fair housing and fair lending services and resources out to people and communities. Zeroed out. All [of] these extraordinary important, extraordinarily important programs like CDBG funds, which is like one point something billion dollars. Zero in President Trump’s budget. So, anything that Mr. Trainor talks about as being, “Hey, we’re here to enforce” anything is just flat wrong. They’re not interested in intentional discrimination. If they were, they would be funding these organizations that have been in place for decades now finding all forms of discrimination, including intentional discrimination. So, that’s just not accurate at all.

Then, you look at the actual enforcement, or lack of enforcement, from DOJ, CFPB and HUD, and it shows, again, just one quick anecdote, right, the recent settlement of the Colony Ridge case out in Houston. So, this was a massive operation with 10’s of 1000’s of lots where there was this predatory lending scheme where they would target mostly recent Latinx immigrants with these unfair loans that they had no chance of being able to pay back. They got them into these loans then actually exploited them further by having them improve the properties. Then, the inevitable foreclosure comes. They flip the property and do it again. 15,000 lots, right? So 10’s of 1000’s of people are affected. Biden’s DOJ comes in, files a case, investigates, pushing it forward. It doesn’t get done before Trump comes in and they settle the case. Do you know how much so, $16 million right? Pretty good settlement. Do you know how many dollars the victims of that predatory scheme got? Correct, absolutely nothing. You know where $20 million went? To police and immigration enforcement.

So, you know, the way the case was filed, they had to get the court approval for that settlement. The court just said, No, that’s nothing is going to the victim. So, there are all sorts of problems with the settlement, including that. And so DOJ is just going to back out and settle the case privately. So, that’s the kind of enforcement, complete non-enforcement. In fact, it’s doing the reverse of what it should be doing, right? You’re funding the very oppressors that are, you know, partially responsible for the problems at a place like this. So, you look at, they’re taking away the tools like disparate impact, they’re not funding the organizations, and they’re not doing their own enforcement. So, the threats go on like Lisa [said], right. You could sit here all day and talk about the threats to funding, to fair housing and fair lending enforcement. So the answer is, better get out and vote.

Johnson 17:24 
And Reed, you mentioned, you know, taking away the tools. I mean, even use of the False Claims Act, it’s just, it’s such a distortion of the few things that we really did have that are effective litigation tools, you know, to advance forward. So, I mean, it’s we got a lot to deal with right now. So also, having worked at the Justice Department myself, I’m a little dismayed about the state of things. And, Mikael, this next question is going to be for you. So, if federal agencies de-emphasize enforcement and oversight, where would communities feel that first, and where should communities look to enforce their rights?

Rojas 18:10 
Happy to take on that question. I would love to start with a quick personal anecdote because this is a little bit of a full-circle moment for me. This is probably a similar story for many of the people in the audience. But, first of all, I want to clarify, based on my introduction, I don’t currently work at the Justice Department. I’m a former Justice Department lawyer. I was in the Biden Justice Department, played a small role on the Colony Ridge case that Reid just talked about. I don’t work there anymore. [I’m] back in private practice, where I represent civil rights plaintiffs and workers’ rights plaintiffs.

But, this is a really unique moment for me, and I feel compelled to say something personal because of what we just heard from the previous speaker who make no mistake about it, is not about even-handed enforcement. He’s about attacking communities of color, just like every other person in the administration, and we can go across the board from agency to agency and see how Black students, Brown students, Middle Eastern students are attacked on our campuses for their free speech rights. That’s something Mr. Trainor was responsible for personally in his previous role at the Department of Education.

We can talk about the workers’ rights field, where I spend most of my time these days, where the chairperson of the EEOC actually put out a Twitter post soliciting discrimination complaints from White men. I thought we heard a message of even-handed enforcement. The law applies to everybody. Everyone’s entitled to civil rights. Well, the message we get from across the administration, including the EEOC, is that we want your complaint if you are a White man, and as someone who spent 11 years litigating largely workers’ rights cases, people who come knocking at my door for representation for being sexually harassed or hitting the glass ceiling are not White men. And they’re overrepresented in positions of power across the board.

So, you know, I know you know this, but sometimes I find it refreshing just to state the obvious out loud: Mr. Trainor and the Trump administration don’t care about civil rights. They’ve turned the entire regime on its head, and it’s up to the people in this room to fight and preserve what we have.

And I said I was gonna start with a personal anecdote, which is I moved to Washington, DC, to work for Reed Colfax, and I’ve looked up to folks at NFHA and NCRC for a long time. It’s a real treat for me to be here and be speaking as a sort of peer with these with these advocates. And, I would not be here if it weren’t for the advocacy of people like those in this room. My parents are immigrants. They bought a house in a White neighborhood. First Brown family on the block. I got to go to [a] predominantly White public school that gave me better educational opportunities than the school district I would have gone to. Was able to go to college. First in my family to go to college, was able to go to a good law school thanks to the people making educational opportunities available for people of color and opening the doors at elite institutions.

So, I’m a direct product of everything that Mr. Trainor is fighting to deconstruct, and I just want to name that and say, you know, I’m not going anywhere and I know that no one else is going anywhere either, so they’re dark times. But you know, I know folks are gonna keep, keep fighting good fights.

So back to your original question, where do folks go now that the federal government is not really in the business of enforcing civil rights. We have 18,000 state and local governments across the country. State and local governments are an essential part of the enforcement ecosystem. With the federal government not really being open for business. We have a great crop of state AGs. We’ve been very active in challenging a lot of the discriminatory actions we’ve seen out of the federal government, and we have wonderful nonprofits like NFHA. We have civil rights lawyers like Reed Colfax, the folks at my firm, who have been picking up cases that have been dropped by federal agencies.

So, I don’t know if any of you are from the Midwest or Northeast and are familiar with the Sheetz convenience store chain. Sheetz was sued years ago by the EEOC for refusing to hire people with any sort of criminal background. And, we all know that the criminal justice system in the United States has historically over policed and over-incarcerated, people of color. So, you are much more likely simply by virtue of being a Black or Brown person, particularly a man, of being justice-involved. And, that results in many, many downstream effects on your ability to find a place to live and to find a place to work. So, the EEOC brought a case against Sheetz for its over[ly] broad criminal history ban. That case was dropped. Completely dropped. Not settled as terrible as the Colony Ridge settlement was. It was dropped because disparate impact is allegedly unconstitutional.

Mind you, Mr. Trainor worked at America First Legal before he came to government. They brought disparate treatment cases, and right-wing legal organizations continue to bring disparate treatment cases. But, our firm stepped in, filed a motion to intervene and continue that litigation. So, there are options out there. Elections do matter. You know, the federal government plays an essential role in the federal civil rights enforcement ecosystem.

But for those of you who are coming from the sort of regulated entities here, I promised the panelists I would make this pitch to you directly: please continue to enforce civil rights. Please do not be cowed by the government on their debunked anti-DEI theories. Because if you do, if you roll back and turn the page on civil rights and go back to discriminatory practices that have been challenged in the past, lawyers like me are desperate to sue you. Desperate, desperately looking to sue you for rolling back on your civil rights obligations. And, I have quarterly meetings with other folks to look at potential targets. So, the courts are doing their best in this environment. Lawyers, nonprofits, state AGs, local governments are doing their best to fill in the gap, but it’s going to take all of us working together.

Rice 24:25 
Can I just pick up on what both Reed and Mikhail laid down? And, that is this sort of ruse of trying to end discrimination by stopping and thwarting DEI efforts. We all see it for what it really is, and that is a rollback of civil rights protections and, actually, fomenting discrimination against certain groups under this guise of eliminating DEI. If you look at who is mostly being impacted by these anti-DEI efforts that the Trump administration has implemented it is Black and Brown people, even though the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action and DEI programs are White people. In fact, White women are the overwhelming beneficiaries of affirmative action and DEI programs, and always have been since the beginnings of affirmative action programs over 50 years ago.

But, look at who’s being targeted in this moment to Mikael’s point. So nobody is being fooled by this and rolling back civil rights protections and civil rights compliance just leaves you open because the arm of justice is long. It is very long, and you do not want to find yourself on the wrong end of that long arm of justice when this administration has concluded. So, I just wanted to double down on what both Reed and Mikael said.

I mean, listen, let me give you this example. You just heard Mr. Trainor say that they want to go all in on intentional discrimination. You just heard him say that. But, what he didn’t tell you is that there have been numerous cases where HUD issued a  probable cause finding for intentional discrimination. Let me say that again: numerous cases where HUD had issued a probable cause finding for intentional discrimination that this administration has rescinded.

We were leading a national advertisement campaign, a national PSA campaign, to educate the public about intentional discrimination. Now, what sparked that was a story of Dr. Raven Baxter, a marine biologist who tried to purchase an $800,000 home in Virginia Beach. When the owner of the property saw her and saw that she was a Black woman, the owner told her real estate agent, “I will never sell my home to a Black person.” Guess what? That’s intentional discrimination, and we had convinced Dr. Baxter to be the face of our intentional discrimination Public Service Announcement campaign. She agreed. We completed all of the collateral. We got all of the marketing pieces done. This Trump administration told us, “No, you cannot implement that campaign about intentional discrimination.”

So, all of these, all of these attestations about wanting to address intentional discrimination, it is not true. And, the more you know the truth about what is really happening, the more you can stay on your post, stay where you should be, and advance compliance with our nation’s civil rights laws, and that includes the bevy of fair lending and fair housing laws that we have both at the federal, the state and the local level.

Johnson 28:36 
Thank you. We’ve just got a few moments, but I want to… First, I am so, you know, this conversation is so necessary, and I wish we had hours more, you know, to delve into some of these things that we heard earlier. And, obviously we don’t. But, you know, if there was one thing that you could leave the audience with, you know, we’ve heard HUD’s priorities. You know, we heard what’s coming down the pipeline, we see what’s already out there, right? There’s one thing you could leave this audience with today, given all that we know, what would it be? And, I would like for each one of you, if you would, to respond.

Colfax 29:19 
Well, I think I would just pick up where Lisa left off, which is, keep on keeping on. We’re going to see the other side of this. But, if we participate in any way in this rollback, and speaking particularly to the financial institutions that are represented here: hold on. Because not only has it been good to the communities that you serve, but it’s good for your business to make sure that everybody has access to credit, to homes, you name it. And, if we stay the path and we get onto the other side. Even if the federal government saying, “You shouldn’t be doing this, and we’re certainly not going to enforce it if you fail to do it.” So what? It’s good for business. It’s good for our communities. It’s good for our society. It’s good for our country. So keep on keeping on.

Rice 30:19 
Thank you. I want to admonish you all. I’ve got a call to action for you. Last year, the Trump administration zeroed out fair housing funding in the fiscal year ’26 budget just as they have zeroed out fair housing funding in the fiscal year ’27 budget, and we were very successful in getting Congress to reverse that trend. And, Congress fully funded at least the Fair Housing Initiatives Program and the Fair Housing Administration’s program. So, I’m going to ask you all to go to our call to action, reach out to your congressional representatives and encourage them to fully fund fair housing, the Fair Housing Initiatives Program, the housing counseling programs. Please admonish your elected officials to do that. Bit.ly, B, i, t, period, l, y, forward slash, FHIP, f, h, i, p, 27. Again, that’s Bit.ly, forward slash, FHIP, 27. Please elevate this issue for your members of Congress to make sure that our local organizations can be fully funded.

Rojas 31:34 
I’ll just say briefly, we haven’t talked about AI, which is probably a relief to most of the people in this room who are tired of hearing about AI. But, obviously we’re in a de-regulatory environment when it comes to technology and innovation, and there’s a lot of risks, which all you know well, in terms of the civil rights impact of automating decisions across many protected areas, including lending, housing and employment. But, like Reed said, we’re going to get past this particular period in which the government is actively courting favor with Big Tech. And, I think people, like the one thing that is, like less popular than anything in the world is AI right now, and I think the balance will shift back where people want responsible AI. So, to those of you working on those initiatives and advocacy around those issues: Please, please stay the course.

Johnson 32:27 
Thank you. Thank you so much. Can we give them a round of applause please? Thank you. Thank you. We are going to move into some receptions and some other things this afternoon. You all know we’re going to the Hill. Please, please, please, please, please take this information back to Congress. It is important. DEI is not a dirty word. Neither is civil rights. And, the work that we do it’s, it’s, we still need it, okay, and the work that we do is so important.

Speakers:

Michael Barr, Federal Reserve Governor
Jesse Van Tol, President and CEO, NCRC

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Van Tol 0:07
Well, Governor Michael Barr requires no introduction. I’m sure all of you know him as one of the most important policy economic policymakers in the country, plays a critical role in setting interest rate policy and as a regulator, but we know Governor Barr as a champion of CRA not just for his work championing the 2023 CRA rule, but before that, as an academic, for his work at the Treasury Department in the Obama administration, championing financial inclusion. So a friend of the coalition, and I’m pleased to welcome you to the stage.

Barr 0:51
Thank you, Jesse, thank you. It’s really just a great pleasure to be with you, Jesse, such a wonderful leader of this coalition, and I have worked with NCRC now for 30 years, and I’ve just seen over the decades the incredible work that all of your members do all over the country in making our country a better place. So it’s just delightful to be here.

Van Tol 1:19
Thank you. We’re going to cover a number of topics today, starting with our favorite topic, the Community Reinvestment Act. Obviously, that’s an issue that’s near and dear to our heart, critical to our members. We’ve been on sort of a roller coaster ride, not just with respect to CRA but obviously a lot going on in the world today. But look into the future, we could rehash sort of what happened with the 23 rule, the agency’s proposal to rescind to the 95 rule. But as you sort of look ahead, the Federal Reserve was pretty clear, both yourself, Chairman Powell, who articulated that really the goal and the necessary outcome of CRA reform was an outcome that resulted in more, not less, investment in low- and moderate-income communities. So as you look to the future, what do you think are the key things the Federal Reserve is watching for now? What do modern CRA obligations look like a few years from now? A decade from now?

Barr 2:31
Well, you know, it’s a great question. I do think it makes sense to spend a little time on the history and then move forward. You know, when I was at Treasury in 1995, the agencies reformed the CRA rules to really focus more on outcomes and less on kind of process and paperwork, and that had a real effect of increasing access to capital around the country. But over time, as the financial services industry changed, those rules did not keep up with the kind of changes we had seen or the kind of great work that was going around in the country that needed more support. And so the 2023 rule was really designed to reflect those changes, to take care of issues around online banking, to provide clarity to community development financial institutions that they didn’t have to go through extra hoops to be qualified under CRA so banks could count on that kind of clarity to provide clarity on community development activities that qualified so more work could be done and less time was spent documenting that the work actually did what the local partners said it would do. Investments in rural areas were clarified. Investments in native lands were clarified so there could be more access to capital in native communities. And a whole set of reforms that were really designed to reflect these changes in the financial services sector, and as all of you know, unfortunately, the banking trade sued to block that rule, so we’re now in the process of going back to the 95 rule. But it doesn’t mean that we’re not thinking about what the kind of support that communities around the country need. That 2023 rule, I should say, had on the Federal Reserve Board Broad support. So what are the kinds of things that are important going forward? Well, one is making sure that banks and community groups can work together in a way that makes sense in their local community. So, staying attentive to the importance of local context in evaluating CRA. We don’t want to have an approach that is a one-size-fits-all approach. Every community works together in different ways. We want to make CR sure CRA is an effect. Active tool for that, as more and more lending is happening, not in the banking system, it’s important to think about the role of nonbanks in all of your communities. The Federal Reserve and the banking agencies don’t have the ability to change the application of CRA, but I think that’s an appropriate topic for Congress to think about. How should CRA obligations look in a world where there’s lots of nonbank lending, lots of FinTech lending going on? These are just some of the examples, but I would say, you know, the most important thing is the intentionality about it. That is, we can’t rest on the past. We can’t say CRA has done enough. All of you know that there are capital access needs in your communities that are not being met, and so I think you know it’s it’s most important that we as a country agree that the goals that we have, the shared goals we should have would be to making sure that homeowners have a chance to buy their first home, that small businesses have a chance to grow, that community development organizations have the capital they need to revive their communities, and if we can kind of work on building that shared goal as a society, maybe then we can start to think about the technical work that has to happen under CRA.

Van Tol 6:35
Governor Barr, as we see sort of an evolving financial services landscape, and this is not new, we’ve seen, obviously, over time, different segments of the of the banking sector have been disintermediated, new companies, new types of structures, money market, mutual funds, fintechs and the like. But today, we see more and more credit flowing through fintechs, crypto companies, private funds. Understanding that Congress would have to act to do something like applying CRA to different types of companies, how do you think about regulatory parity? How do you think about how we maintain sort of fair and equal standards as the financial services industry evolves? How do we avoid sort of a race to the bottom? You know, Chairman Powell said at this very conference that ‘like activities should have like regulation’, and yet we’re often sort of behind the curve, and you run the risk that a certain sector of credit sort of balloons and experiences difficulty and collapses, necessitating reform. How do you think about that? What’s the role of the Federal Reserve?

Barr 7:52
Yeah, you know, I agree that, you know, we should have a system where similar risks are policed and regulated in similar ways. It shouldn’t matter whether you’re a Fintech or a bank, you shouldn’t violate the fair lending laws. So there’s some pretty basic things, and the Federal Reserve has authority of two types in this area. And then I’ll talk about other agencies. The Federal Reserve obviously enforces consumer laws for financial institutions that we supervise under 10 billion in size, and we also do risk-based assessments of the largest banks to make sure that their risk practices for both safety and soundness and consumer protection are consistent with our standards. So that’s for banks. Then we also look at bank relationships with Fintechs. So if a bank partners with a Fintech, they have to comply with third-party risk management guidelines. What does that mean? They can’t just say, ‘Oh, the Fintech made me do it.’ The bank has direct responsibility for ensuring that if they have a Fintech partnership, that the Fintech is also complying with the law, is not marketing on a discriminatory basis, or is not failing to disclose information about terms of a deposit account or a loan. So that’s a second important way that we have a role. Now the third, most you know, third thing to think about is, well, what if you just have a Fintech operating, not in partnership with a bank? Well, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created to create that level playing field between banks and nonbanks. The CFPB is the only federal agency that has the ability to supervise nonbank entities, and it’s the primary entity that has enforcement authority over nonbank entities, so to avoid the kind of race. To the bottom that you’re talking about. We need a strong partner in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to do that. That’s, that’s sort of the system that was set up, and that’s, you know, pretty essential, I think, to having a level playing field so that banks and nonbanks alike compete, not on trying to trick customers in some way or not, trying to, you know, avoid their obligations, but compete based on the quality of their product and their ability to reach new markets. That’s the kind of competition I think we want in our society. And so I think it’s important that we have that strong partner to work with.

Van Tol 10:42
From a supervisory perspective, Governor Barr, you know, there’s been a lot of consolidation within the banking industry, but we’ve also seen companies coming in for charters, certainly at the OCC, the trend of stablecoin companies obtaining trust charters. We’ve seen a number of bank mergers. What kinds of community-level risks concern you the most when banks merge? We know that there are negative impacts. I think the Federal Reserve’s own research has shown that historically, some of the types of benefits that have been claimed by banks as a positive outcome of mergers have not necessarily come to fruition. That the sort of economies of scale don’t necessarily produce better pricing for the customer and for the community. How do you think about the public interest? How do you think about measuring how the community benefits and how to protect against harm in either the context of a merger or a charter?

Barr 11:55
Yeah, so let me, let me address each of those areas in turn. You know, on the merger front, we have a statutory lens that we have to look through for any merger that’s competition, financial and managerial resources, convenience and needs. So how are they affecting the community and, of course, competition. So we looked at all those things. If you have two entities merging, there’s always a risk that you’re going to lower competition in the market. And if you lower competition in that market, there’s a risk that prices will go up and the quality of services will go down. So competition is actually an important element in assessing whether a merger is going to actually help a local community or not. On the convenience and needs front, we’re looking at a couple different kinds of things. One is the record of serving the community in the past. So the most important thing there for us is: What’s the CRA record of that institution? And it’s not just the information that we get from CRA exams, but also, importantly, the input that we get from community-based organizations that tell us what’s been going on in that community, and that are important inputs into the CRA evaluation itself. So the work that you all do around the country, making sure that you know what’s going on in the banking sector and letting us know about it, is critical to that. And then we also look at the kind of performance that might be expected in the future, and there, I think we have a much harder time, so we don’t really know how the bank is going to act. And as you point out, there are examples where the result of the merger is less access than has been promoted. So one area, for example, where there’s quite good research is on access to small business lending. So one of the things that local banks do really effectively is relationship small business lending. They know their customer really well. They’re able to make loans that institutions that are more distant may not be able to make. And so one of the risks when you have a merger is that that local connection to the small business community is lost or diminished, and you might get less access to small business credit or there might be less competition for that. So that’s another that’s an important area to be concerned about. And also, if you lose that local connection, you might get less support for the local community development activity that’s happening in that area, as opposed to the broader reach of the institution. So that’s an area that we look at, but I’d say we have less insight into what the future is going to look like than the past performance, where we can say, ‘okay, this institution had an outstanding record of serving in community. That means it’s more likely to continue to do that in the future.’ If it has a record that was unsatisfactory, you know, I don’t know of a case where we’ve approved that. That kind of merger on the charter front, one of the things that I worry about when we when the agencies provide additional kinds of charter types is that not all the charters have the same regulatory and supervisory oversight. And so as we were talking about with respect to a race to the bottom before, you can get a race to the bottom, because there’s different oversight of different kinds of charter types, and that you know that, to me, is worrisome. In the in the context of the expansion of crypto activity, you want to be especially careful that the same risks in a bank that is chartered one way and a bank that’s chartered the other way are handled the same way. And if you get lower standards for different charter types that can provide less consumer protection, it can provide less prudential supervision, and so you might get new risk developing in the system that we’re not all ready for.

Van Tol 16:19
Absolutely. One of our concerns as well, I think, in this conversation about sort of stable coin usage, the Genius Act, some of the framework that’s developing around around cryptocurrencies is, is this question of yield, that you could see a flight of deposits out of the banking industry, which could either result in less lending or certainly it could result in less of a CRA obligation if we see that kind of flight. So, something that NCRC, obviously, we don’t always align with the banking industry, but we align on that concern. Shifting gears a little bit. You know, Congressman Foster laid out a number of pretty interesting issues with respect to AI. And as we start to see AI’s use expand in the banking sector, and we start to think about the potential for its use in credit underwriting, what sort of opportunities and risks do you see with respect to fair lending, and how do you think about your role?

Barr 17:29
Well, let me just say, first, it was wonderful to see Congressman Foster here to open up the morning. He’s been a great friend of community development, and I personally always learn a lot when I listen to Congressman Foster. He’s got just such a fascinating background and set of interests. I think artificial intelligence is generative. Artificial Intelligence is likely to be a significant force in our economy in the coming years. And so I think it’s absolutely critical that we grapple with its effects. That could be quite broad. I think in the long run, AI, like other technologies, is likely, over time, to make us a more productive society, and therefore allow us to have higher wages for people and if it’s handled properly, to bring everybody along on that journey. But you have to do it with intentionality. You can’t just assume that because there’s a cool technology, it’s going to help everybody. You have to up front be worried about and be focused on, how is AI going to affect the labor force? How is AI going to affect the financial sector? And focus your energy on making sure that it doesn’t push people back or just leave them behind. So that’s just big picture sense. So on the labor market side, we need to be investing. I think this is beyond our focus. But as a society, we need to think about investments in training, investments in education, investments in job creation that help people through what could be quite a disruptive transition. And on the financial services side, we need to make sure that the technology is used to promote access to credit and access to financial services. It could help in that regard, in terms of things like, right now people are using alternative cash flows as a way to improve access to credit, so generative AI might help in that regard. But you also have to be worried about the risk that generative AI because it’s soaked up all of the knowledge in our society is also soaking up all of the bias in our society and so generative AI might spit out outcomes that are just mimicking, reinforcing false claims about associative relationships that we have spent many of you in this room you know a lifetime fighting against. And again, you can’t take for granted that it’s going to be okay. We have to make sure that the models that are being trained are being trained on good data. We need to make sure that the models are not spitting out bad outcomes by looking at the outcome data. We need to make sure that when models are used, they can be explained so we don’t get an outcome that people say, ‘well, the model said, you know, this is just the model said it.’ That’s not a legitimate basis for making a decision under our fair lending laws. You’re not allowed to do that. So, you know, we need to be sure as regulators that there’s really strong model risk management going on in the banks. My experience thus far is that banks have been very cautious about using AI other than traditional machine learning for consumer-facing kind of decisional metrics, but we have to make sure that caution stays the same. And then when AI is deployed, it’s deployed with these clear guardrails in place. And if it’s done with the guardrails, as I said, it might be a way of enhancing access. We should be open to the idea that you can serve more people more cheaply, for example, using generative AI and that might improve access for people who banks saw before as not profitable enough. So there’s real opportunity, but you have to be careful and do it with intentionality.

Van Tol 21:40
You know, one of the things, really interesting, things that Congressman said, is, you know, potentially, every consumer now has, you know, the smartest consumer attorney, smartest financial advisor in their pocket. And one of the issues I’m not sure the banks are really thinking through, is that now in real time, you know, today, we attempt to detect fair lending and bias by sending in mystery shoppers and testers, and we look at data, but potentially, every consumer could, in real time, be sitting, interacting with a loan officer, recording it, feeding it into the AI and being told you’re being offered not the best loan. You’re being asked questions that are indicative of bias, and could draft and file the lawsuit or alert someone to that effect. And so we also think there’s potentially, you know, that kind of effect and that kind of thing to look out for. And then I think, on the other hand, it speaks to the need to have some standards around, sort of the public interest in AI. You know, in early days of the Internet, everybody thought it would be revolutionary and sort of in the ways of of creating more freedom for everybody. But as we saw over the course of the internet, the ways in which it was monetized became sort of less and less free and less and less open. And while today, many of the AI models are, you know, not fully monetized, you know, what happens in the future when the AI is not giving you an objective answer, but steering you to a product because it’s a paid offering, and so something we think about and worry about quite a bit.

Barr 23:30
And you know, again, I think this goes back to the point about intentionality. So we can’t just assume that it’s all going to be for the good. Now is the time to be focused on it, because AI is changing and growing very, very rapidly.

Van Tol 23:42
Absolutely. On the topic of disparate impact, Governor, you know, the CFPB issued new rulemaking around disparate impact, looking at eliminating special purpose credit programs, or at least discouraging them. Moving away from a disparate impact standard sort of saying discrimination must be intentional. And in fact, we heard from from the assistant secretary of fair housing, from this stage yesterday, his belief that that discrimination must be intentional to be problematic. How do you look at fair landing and what has the CFPB done on that front?

Barr 24:27
Well, you know, I’ll be careful on how to talk, but maybe I’ll just talk about the long history of the way those provisions have been interpreted. So you know, when ECOA was passed, the Federal Reserve at that time, had regulatory responsibility, and we issued a set of regulations that made it clear on all the issues you mentioned. You know, for example, made it clear that both disparate impact and disparate treatment approaches could be used under the law that was consistent with ECOA to do that to ferret out fair lending violations. And in my view, disparate impact has been a really important tool for understanding areas in our society where the practices and procedures put in place are facially neutral, but they have an effect that is really discriminatory, really exclusionary, and are not justified by legitimate business purpose. So that test balances, I think, really well, the importance of fair lending enforcement and the importance of giving financial institutions the room they need to run their businesses. So disparate impact and disparate treatment have both historically been really important, and when the CFPB took over rule writing authority from the Fed in 2011, it adopted that same approach. So there’s been a consistent approach on this for the history of ECOA, and this change would be a significant change from that approach. The same on special purpose credit programs. Special purpose credit programs have been around for a long time. A number of banks use them quite effectively to reach markets that they were not serving effectively before, and it found them to be really effective programs. So you know, and that’s been a long-standing interpretation under the law from the Fed and from the CFPB for many years. So I think, you know, those programs are really important to preserve. And the last area I’d mention is around rules around discouragement. You know, all of you know that it’s not just about when you sit at the table, how those negotiations go, or whether you get the loan or you don’t get the loan. There can be activity that a financial institution engages in, whether purposefully or completely obliviously, that have the effect of discouraging applicants from minority groups or from women from immigrant communities. And so it’s really important that we have strong rules that prevent unlawful discouragement. And that’s another area where I think it’s important to pay attention as this rulemaking proceeds.

Van Tol 27:27
Absolutely. Shifting gears a little bit, Governor, if you had a magic wand, we’ll engage in a little wishful thinking here. And you could fix one structural issue in the financial system to deliver, to better serve consumers, communities and small businesses. What would it be?

Barr 27:48
Wow. Well, I’d say one thing I’ve learned after a few decades in this space is there are no there are no magic wands. And you know, let me just start with the work that all of you are doing around the country. You know one thing I’d say, this is not a magic wand, but you know, the thing I think is most important is that your work is supported and bolstered and continued. Because, in my experience as a Federal Reserve Governor traveling around the country and before that, at the Treasury as an academic, is that the local organizations on the ground in a community make all the difference between success and failure. So if you want more people to get access to banking services, if you want more small businesses to grow in a local community, if you want more affordable housing, if you want more community revitalization, at the center of that, in my experience, there’s a local organization. It could be a community development financial institution or a community development organization or an advocacy group or a local sometimes philanthropy, but that is the glue that makes all these things work. So again, it’s not a magic wand, but I’d say, let’s figure out how to support your work more around the country,

Van Tol 29:29
Just as a follow-up, Governor, not a magic wand, but does the Fed need new tools? I mean, I think there’s sort of been this question, even with respect to interest rate policy, we’ve seen the Fed raise interest rates, and yet it’s not had quite the same effect, perhaps, as it has had in the past. We have our own views on that, that because of the scarcity of housing today in America, raising interest rates didn’t have the same impact on housing and housing prices, which in turn, didn’t have the same impact on a lot of people’s sentiment of how wealthy they were, that you didn’t really see home price declines in the same way that you see in the past, and so many consumers confidently kept spending and would continue to see inflation higher for longer, certainly not my area of expertise. But do you think that the Fed needs other tools, whether in the context of monetary policy or otherwise?

Barr 30:30
Well, let me speak first to monetary policy, and then we can maybe talk about that other areas. The Federal Reserve has the tools we need to meet our dual mandate goals of maximum employment and price stability. We have those tools. We can use them effectively. We pay very much attention, Jesse, to the issue you raised, which is, what’s the pass-through of interest rates into the economy? And so we are attentive to how financial conditions are affected by what we do. But at the end of the day, if we need to reduce demand enough to bring it in line with supply and bring inflationary control, we can do that. And if we need to support demand enough to bring our labor market up where it needs to be, we can do that. And it’s our responsibility, which we adhere to strenuously and assiduously, to meet those two congressional objectives and to use our tools to do that. So I don’t think on monetary policy, we need new tools. We need to continue to focus on the job we’ve been focusing on, which is bringing inflation down and making sure that there’s maximum employment. Now, the economy has been buffeted by a variety of shocks over the last number of years that make our job difficult. We had, you know, the COVID crisis, which was so devastating on a human level to so many communities and also fed into this problem of inflation. We had the war in Ukraine. More recently, tariffs increased prices, and now, right now, we’re seeing, at least on a temporary basis, elevated prices from the Middle East conflict. So we have to take those as a given. We don’t get to decide the world that we work in. The shocks come in and it’s our job to use our tools to do both those goals. And sometimes, like right now, they can be they can be intention. And so this is, you know, just reiterating, it’s our job. We take our job seriously. We will get the job done. We will do the work that is required of us. I think you know, more broadly, the question is, do we have all the tools that we need to help grow the economy in a healthy way? And that, you know, includes community development tools. Our primary regulatory tool in this space, is the Community Reinvestment Act. And I’ve been a strong believer in CRA for my whole career, and I think we need to continue to invest in CRA as a strategy for advancing economic inclusion. And, you know, we’ve had a big setback, but we have room in the next several years, I hope to revisit these questions and to continue to strengthen CRA. You know, the partnerships that we have with other agencies are really important to that. I think we’re going to need to make sure that those agencies are strong and committed to the work of inclusion. There’s been a lot of effort to support Community Development Financial Institutions around the country and CDFIs, in my view, have played really critical roles in helping local communities get access to capital, and in helping banks see the opportunity in low-income communities, or to take a risk position that a bank can take, to bring a bank in to serve local communities, and making sure we have strong support for the CDFI world. And then, you know, lastly, I’d say this is just a broad, general comment that I’d like to, you know, end with, if you think about financial services generally, including bank accounts, but more broadly, our financial services sector, it’s not really designed for low- and moderate-income people. It’s not really designed for low- and moderate-income communities, so we try and pull it there as best we can. But like, how cool would it be if we started from the idea of designing a financial services system to serve low- and moderate-income people?

Van Tol 35:04
I could not agree more, and I think the crowd also agrees. Governor, what, as you think about the current moment, what does the Federal Reserve’s data tell us about how households and small businesses are doing, both in terms of their credit access, and what that implies about the broader economy?

Barr 35:24
Well, you know, as many people have written about, there are kind of two speeds of our economy right now. For people on the upper end of the income scale, there’s a lot of capacity that’s increased spending. There’s a lot of wealth creation from the stock market that’s fed into spending. Consumer resilience: there’s been a lot of consumer resilience in the economy over the last few years. But if you look at lower- and moderate-income people, many people are having a much harder time. So you can see that in the data, you can see a little bit more credit usage and a little bit higher default or delinquency rates, not at a worrisome level, but you can see this. You can see the strain of people struggling to make ends meet. Low- and moderate-income people got hit very hard with the inflation that we had beginning in 2021-2022. People who are on fixed incomes, people who were struggling before when inflation hit, it hit them harder. It’s harder to substitute, if you’re already buying the lowest-cost good and the least of it you need, it’s very hard to change your patterns or behaviors to accommodate that inflation. On the small business front, we’ve had an extraordinary period of the last five years in new business formation in the United States, we have an incredibly dynamic entrepreneurial economy, but even on that very high base, we’ve had really strong small business formation over the last five years. And that’s been, of course, good for small businesses, but also good for productivity growth in the United States. Productivity growth has been elevated over the last five years, in part because these new businesses are more productive, and in part because they’re providing competition to incumbent businesses to improving their productivity. And we’ve also seen changes in business practices that improve productivity coming out of the COVID pandemic. So productivity is up. When you have higher productivity, you can have higher wage growth without having inflationary pressure. So we’ve seen wage growth starting to catch up for many people, not enough and later than the price increases, but that provides some hope that people will be able to, you know, have a better future for themselves with that stronger productivity. More recently, we’ve seen some diminution of credit access for small businesses reported in survey data. You can see a little bit more, I’d say, a little bit tighter terms, a little bit more reduction in small business access than had been the case one or two or three years ago. So that’s something to watch out for. But I would say the overall story for small businesses has been really extraordinarily positive over the last five years.

Van Tol 38:48
Yeah, as we shift to close here, Governor, I know, you know, there are no magic wands. There are also no crystal balls. But if you’ll indulge me for a moment. If we look ahead 10 years, what do you hope regulators will have gotten right about this moment? And let me actually sharpen the question. You have a crystal ball. You see that 10 years from now, there’s a strong likelihood of another financial crisis, but you can head it off. What would you hope in this time period, in the next 10 years, we get right that we address head on?

Barr 39:28
That’s a very big question. I’m going to take more than our allotted time to answer it. Let me start with a very short-term answer to the question. So one of the things that I think it’s really important for us to do at the Federal Reserve right now is to do what we always do. So you know, I’m the oversight governor for consumer protection right now, and for community affairs. What I’ve told our team is: Steady as she goes. The gift we give to the American people is to keep doing our work the same way we’ve always done it, not to veer this way, not to veer that way. And that stability, I think, is important in this particular moment. The second thing I’d say is we shouldn’t go backwards in this moment. So you know, when we see fair lending laws get weakened, or when we see cuts to our sister agency’s ability to enforce the law, or when we see, on the prudential side, weakening of safety and soundness standards that is inviting a problem in a few years. It’s not a problem today, in the sense that the banking system is very strong and very safe, but it’s creating risks in the future that we don’t need to take on now. Why would we…we’re in a period where bank profitability is incredibly strong. The banking sector is incredibly strong. Why would we weaken oversight at this time? Now is the time where you want to make sure you’re husbanding your resources, so that if bad times come, there’s a cushion and you don’t get a credit pullback. So both things I said are short-term. Let’s be steady as she goes. Let’s not undermine supervision and enforcement. And then let’s plan for the future. I think Representative Foster pointed out, I think, quite correctly, that artificial intelligence is going to be quite important in our economy. We need to be planning now and doing the work now, so that in five or 10 years, we don’t see financial stability risks or weaknesses in the labor market or societal dislocations, because we can see the trend line, and if we act now, we can make the world a little bit better in five or 10 years. So you know, longer term, I’ll go back to, you know what I said before, like, what if we decided that the most important thing in financial services was to make financial services designed for most human beings and most businesses and local communities, that would be a transformative moment. And we can do that work. We know what it takes. You all have been doing it in your communities. There’s lots of research and behavioral economics on the things that people need to actually do well in the financial system. There’s been lots of research on the needs of low- and moderate-income communities. So if we started the work now to say, in 10 years, we want a financial services system that is designed for low- and moderate-income households and also serves rich people really well, instead of…

Van Tol 43:01
I don’t think we have to worry about that.

Barr 43:05
…instead of a system that serves rich people really well and sometimes helps low- and moderate-income people. That would be a really fundamental shift, and I think that’s something we can do together.

Van Tol 43:16
That’s our time. I’d like us to give a warm, just economy, round of applause for Governor Michael Barr.

Barr 43:18
Thanks.

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Okay, what’s so funny about that? I think, all right, all right. So deal is, you’ve rarely seen a PhD physicist with walk up music. You know, this is…anyway, I just want to thank you all for for being here, and thank NCRC president and CEO, Jesse Van Tol for organizing this event and for his leadership in supporting community development, fair lending and community reinvestment.

You know, we’re really at a pivotal moment for fair lending, for access to housing and community investment. We’re also seeing the emergence of exciting and terrifying new technologies that have the potential to reshape financial services, specifically the emergence of artificial intelligence and agentic commerce.

Congress right now is is considering legislation, you know, really potentially very significant legislation to support the development and construction of affordable housing. The legislation that was passed by the House will streamline permitting for new construction, adjust FHA multifamily loan limits and make important reforms to existing programs like the Home Investment Partnership, community development block grants and Housing Choice Voucher Program.

The Senate has its ideas as well, and there’s an interesting negotiation that I imagine you may hear more about this later in this. It would also provide additional flexibility for banks to invest in public welfare, increase agency coordination to support our veterans, and make reforms to make it easier for banks to access capital they need to lend to our communities.

The Community Reinvestment Act remains an important economic policy but it’s important for it to evolve and to meet today’s banking landscape and tomorrow’s banking landscape. The reforms made in 2023 made progress in modernizing the CRA to better reflect online banking, nonbranch lending and persistent inequities. And while regulators have proposed rescinding the 2023 reforms, it’s essential that we continue working to ensure that the CRA achieves its goals as the banking system evolves.

We also have to ensure that programs like the CDFI Fund continue to support these efforts. Delayed funding for CDFIs has delayed important community investments across the nation, and I welcome the release of the remaining funding for 2025. However, I urge the administration to prevent future funding delays and to provide the flexibility for any challenges created by the delay.

We must also ensure that community development programs are not saddled with unclear requirements for executive orders or elsewhere that will make it harder for firms to do their work.

And then there’s the CFPB and consumer protection. You know, Democrats on the Financial Services Committee are very concerned of the administration’s demolition of the CFPB. The CFPB was the cop on the beat for fair lending compliance. It ensures and enforces rules that are meant to prevent discrimination in consumer finance, and these rules attempt to level the playing field and ensure that nobody is treated differently based on their race, sex or other protected characteristics. And so that’s going to be an ongoing battle.

But it will be changed by everything that’s about to happen to the financial system and in regards to artificial intelligence, you know, if we, if Democrats, have a good election, I’m in line to be the chair of the banking subcommittee in the US House and our financial institutions committee, so I spent a lot of time worrying about the effect of artificial intelligence in destabilizing our financial system. It’s going to happen both directly and indirectly.

The indirect effects will simply be the damage that AI will do to many long-standing business models. And you can see that the famous Citrini memo that caused the mini-crash on some sectors of the stock market a while back. You know, I think, frankly, that has a 50% chance of coming true. And it’s, it is there are a lot of rethinking that we’re going to have to do as a society, when artificial intelligence breaks the chain, the connection between talent and hard work and economic success. And so we’re going to have to, we’re going to have to, really, as a species, think about what it means to be a human, and what the value of a human is that’s maybe a little bit separated from the market value of their economic output in their labor.

But I’m specifically worried about a bunch of things it’s likely to do to the to the financial service system. You know, in the future, near future, everyone is going to have their own personal agent in their pocket. We’re going to have the best set of financial advisors that’s ever been, ever been assembled. As individuals, we’ll have. And so that will potentially simplify a lot of consumer protection. When everyone has a very sophisticated financial advisor, sort of automatically for very low cost, then there’s a lot of things that we will have to worry less about, but there’s a lot of work to be done to make that a reality. You know, for example, when my agent starts talking to your AI agent, the very first thing they’re going to have to do is sort of scroll down and hit, I accept and make sure that we that we have an agreement on data privacy and logging the conversation between our agents. Understanding, if you go into arbitration, the circumstances under which we have agreed to go into arbitration. Things like data privacy, you know, how long, if there’s data exchanged, how long that data will be retained. Who is going to audit the retention policies for that data? And so all of these things happen ought to happen sort of automatically and by default, when we have this new world of agentic communication, and we have to make sure that, if we do it well, that we’re going to have the mechanisms in place to prevent, prevent consumers that are maybe not as sophisticated as as the most sophisticated consumers, that prevent them from being hurt. And I think it can be a real leveling exercise.

A similar thing is going to happen in the law. You’re going to we’re soon going to have in our pocket the best legal team that’s ever been assembled. So, for example, if any one of you gets in a fight with a billionaire, the billionaire is not going to be able to threaten to bankrupt you with legal fees, because you will have just as good a legal team as he or she will in your pocket for very low cost, and you already seen that. Now there, there are some landlords are who, who are not repairing the air conditioner, are finding that that they’re, you know, their tenants are just consulting chat GPT, and chat GPT is filing all the paperwork to go into small flames court, or wherever it is, and, you know, and get the thing fixed. So they’re finding they’re having to fix the air conditioner, which doesn’t please all of them. And, but it’s a, it’s sort of a reflection of the dueling narratives that we have and, and what’s going to happen to AI, you know, in one extreme, you have, ‘oh it’s going to take everyone’s job and we’re all going to be unemployed’. The other one, ‘oh, it’s going to be great. It’s going to be a force multiplier. Everyone will be much more productive.’

And I think that the difference in how those play out depend on the on the demand for the for the product that you’re actually ultimately building. You know, one example of that is farming. There’s sort of a fixed amount of food that we need, and when farmers have gotten, you know, 100 times more productive with technology, we need 100 times fewer farmers. And that’s sort of what rural America and the rural world has been living through because of the fixed market for the fixed need for food.

Counter example of that is airplane pilots, as air travel has gotten as pilots have gotten many times more productive with technology in terms of passenger miles per hour of their time, you’ve found that the real price of airplane tickets has gone down, at least if you stay out of wars in the Gulf, it’s gone down. But these are but what that’s meant is, as the price of airplane travel has gone down, the demand has exploded, and the number of airplane pilots has gone up enormously, and so and so. I think that unfortunately, well for good or ill, I think the law is another area like that, where you’re going to see as the cost of lawyers goes to zero, the number of lawsuits is going to explode. And we have to actually understand how we’re going to deal with that, because we’re either going to have to provide a large number of judges or find a way to automate that, which is sort of everyone’s dream or nightmare of having, you know, instant computer-negotiated decisions.

So there’s a lot to worry about. You know, I worry about things like, like aI driven bank runs, if you all remember the Silicon Valley Bank run that took 40 hours, and when we had our emergency meeting with the FDIC the morning after that happened, you know, they look shell shocked because they’ve seen a bank run that fast and but if everyone had their AI financial agents sitting there with with, you know, standing orders that if you even hear a rumor that my bank’s in trouble, get my money the heck out of it. You know, these bank runs can happen in 20 minutes, and so we’re not ready for that. And I was just talking backstage with Michael Barr, who you’re going to hear from next. And so we agree that we’re not ready for a lot of this stuff. And that’s going to be one of the things…I think it has the potential to make a much more just and equitable economic system if we, if we, if we do play this right, but it’s going to require sort of all hands on deck and a real attention to, you know, to what it means to be human and what it is that we really value about our economic system.

I’ll close with one last thing, specific thing that we can do. There’s a just a plague of identity fraud that’s descended on everything online. And there’s a tool at hand for that that I’ve been working on for years, and now I’m a little bit optimistic it’ll happen, and that’s this, these digital driver’s license, mobile ID. Because when if you look at almost all the identity fraud that’s plaguing businesses and individuals all over the country, it almost all these, you know, romance scams, whatever it is, they always start and have at their core identity fraud. If you look at during COVID, there were hundreds of billions of dollars stolen from the Federal taxpayer through essentially identity fraud, much of it by hackers in North Korea and China. And this is money that could have done a lot of good had it stayed in the United States, doing its intended job. And so the tool that works and worked during covid For and is being deployed all over the world, except for here are these mobile IDs. This is where you simply you have a national, nationally issued identity, the real ID, driver’s license in the United States, and you give people the ability to present it on their cell phone. So you combine these three things: the nationally issued or nationally recognized identity document that proves you’re a single, legally traceable person, you associate that with a cell phone – take advantage of the fact that a modern cell phone is a unique device in the world that has a secret numbers in it that can be queried, but no one knows what the numbers are – and then you associate that with the the biometric login that you can do where your phone will recognize your owner and those you tie those three things together, and that’s the only realistic way and a good way for a person to prove they are who they say they are online. You simply get out, you smile at your cell phone, you present your digital ID, give it approval, and that, that is what is being deployed in the EU. In the UK, actually, after years of objecting to this, has realized it’s essential. Japan, Korea, the whole world is adopting standards that are already in every Android and iPhone. They were actually developed by NIST in the Obama administration, and the rest of the world has adopted them, but not yet the United States. And using those for onboarding customers would have been, you know, just a godsend during COVID, when we were trying to get COVID relief to people who were thin file clients, who didn’t have a record, you know, if you if they had been able to simply get out their cell phone prove they are who they say they are, the countries that had that had very, very rapid ability to help people, and so that getting that deployed in the in the US has been my, a priority of mine for a long time. I now have Pete Sessions, who’s about as card-carrying a Republican as exists, is my co-sponsor on something to try to get states some money to actually get these widely deployed.

So there’s a lot of work to be done here, and it will be. It’ll be, you know, consequential elections coming up, and if it ends up in a way that the public trusts us for, for, you know, being in at least partial control of the financial system during a very tumultuous next few years, then I think I’m optimistic we can do some real good. So I just want to thank you all for being, you know, in the conversation you’re in today, and everything you’re doing for people that will depend on all of us doing the right thing in the coming years.

Thank you all.

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

You know, the staff teased me about my walk-up song. That was Andre 3000 and Beyonce – their version of Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black. And one of my staff said the song was giving James Bond with a little horror, which I thought was appropriate, because my speech, like a James Bond film, is at its core a love story with the backdrop of imminent danger and a big threat to humanity as we know it. Last year, I told you the story of Gary. It was a story about my childhood. The story about the moment we’re in. About how the people now running the country took the myth of the antebellum South, stripped it of its geographic specificity, and applied it to the whole country.

They used it to turn people against each other to stoke resentment. Ultimately, it was a story about how powerful a story can be. Yeah, the plantation myth or the Lost Cause was a powerful story that motivated people, even if it was a lie. And you saw yesterday from the stage an example of how that has played out. You see in the Lost Cause myth, White people were the real victims of the Civil War. That before the federal government intervened, things were fine, idyllic even, and that it was the government putting a thumb on the scale for Black people that was the real problem.

The theory is reflected today on a broader level in the Trump administration’s approach to civil rights, which you heard articulated from the stage yesterday. When HUD asked us to speak, we had mixed feelings. We knew we were likely to hear things that we didn’t agree with, even antithetical to our mission, and yet, we felt it was important that you know that you understand how these ideas are being articulated, weaponized and the full implications of them. You heard within it a not-so-subtle threat that the administration believes that the real problem is the efforts of those of us who believe that the only reasonable interpretation of what has happened in America is that Black and Brown and Indigenous people have gotten a raw deal. That the racial wealth gap is real. And that our communities continue to experience discrimination and disparate outcomes in a variety of ways.

Now, I want to be clear, NCRC will always engage with ideas that we don’t agree with, because we have seen how they have power, and we believe that we must confront that head-on, to look them squarely in the eyes so that we can understand what exactly they stand for. But we are not afraid. Our courage will not waver, and our morals are not for sale.

Stories are powerful. Stories can shape the world. They’re how we connect with other people, they’re how we share our values. And so I want to tell you a different set of stories than the ones you heard yesterday. After my speech last year, one of my staff came up to me and said, Where do you come up with all these stories, Jesse, except the inflection was a little bit more sort of an implication that I make them up. Well, it turns out that the stories come to you because it turns out that life just keeps “lifeing”, as the kids say.

So this is a recent story, and it’s a story about me, and it’s a little raw, so if I have trouble getting through it, please lift me up. Many of you saw me last year at this conference, struggling to move. I wheeled around the event on a scooter and sometimes even a crutch. In fact, I spent much of last year dealing with and rehabbing from that injury. But you probably don’t know the back story. A few days before Christmas in late 2024, I checked myself into Suburban Hospital. My left leg had grown increasingly red, increasingly swollen. In fact, it was not the first time I had seen a doctor about my leg. This was the second trip to the emergency room and the fifth doctor that I had visited. It started with a trip to my primary care doctor. My leg is red and swollen, I explained. It hurts a little. I’ve had a low-grade fever, I noted. Examined my leg, expressed some concern, decided that I was at risk, in part, because of my travel schedule for deep vein thrombosis, and suggested that I immediately check into the ER to have it looked at. I visited Georgetown ER immediately. Five hours later discharged, slightly elevated reading on some of my blood work made the doctor suggest that I see a cardiologist immediately. I go to see a cardiologist. Nothing is wrong with your heart, he says, but I am concerned about that ongoing fever. Go back to see your primary care doctor. I go back to see my primary care doctor. I still have a low-grade fever. My leg is red and swollen. He checks me for walking pneumonia. He advises me to keep my leg elevated, and if it gets worse, to go into the ER. I go home, it gets worse. It gets a lot worse. What none of these doctors had noticed, and which I had not noticed, was a seemingly innocuous callus on my foot that hid an infection growing underneath. My second entry to the ER was conclusive, the infection had spread to my leg, a condition known as cellulitis. After over a week of misdiagnosis and, quite likely, some medical malpractice, I finally had an answer, but my troubles didn’t end there. The first doctor I saw in the ER put me on the wrong antibiotic, and for the next few days, the infection continued, seemingly unabated. During this time, my body staged a full revolt. Food wouldn’t stay down. My fever at times became intense, unbearable. Now, some of you know me, make my living as an advocate for others, and I am not shy, some might even say blunt, and I’m not known, or I am known for a more than healthy distrust of authority. In fact, I’m known to challenge authority on many occasions, but when it comes to myself, I am the last person to speak up about discomfort or concerns, and as I lay there in my hospital bed, Jesse Van Tol is: ‘I’m fine, nothing to worry about. I’m sure the doctors will be in soon. They know what they’re doing.’ Meanwhile, my wife became worried. She frequently informed the nurses that I seemed to be having trouble, that my fevers were worse, that my breathing seemed labored. The nurse assured me that they would let the doctors know. Finally, things came to a head. Seems that in my condition, I was nearly septic when I entered the hospital, that some organ function was compromised. Unbeknownst to me, fluid built up within my lungs. My blood pressure soared. 160, 170, 180, my pulse was 130, my oxygen saturation started to fall into the 80s. Through it all, I insisted I was okay. My beautiful wife, Lauren, who some of you have met here at the conference, is quite the opposite from me when it comes to health. First of all, Lauren is the type of person who goes to see the doctor when she has a cough. I don’t know that she’s met a disease yet that she didn’t think she had at some point. And second of all, when Lauren sets her sights on something. She gets it done. She is a pugnacious advocate for herself and for others. As I lay on the hospital bed vomiting, pale, sweaty, Lauren, who knows better, says to me, ‘You’re not fine, you’re delirious.’ And Lauren starts to get loud. Lauren starts to go to work. Armed with ChatGPT in one hand and a call to my mother, who is herself a doctor, with the other, Lauren goes to work. Now, whoever thought the best metaphor for a certain kind of behavior was a bull in a china shop. Never saw Lauren go to work more like a cupcake with a chainsaw, sweet, but dangerous. As Lauren mobilized teams of doctors swoop like a medical drama, they get to work, they stabilize me. I survive.

The rest of the story is long and involved, maybe a story for another conference, but a byproduct of my infection was a weakened foot, which, in the aftermath, I further injured, resulting in several broken bones and a need to repair my Achilles. Many of you saw me in a boot; all told, I spent over three weeks in the hospital, endured five surgeries, went through months of physical therapy. I stand before you today because one woman, Lauren, wouldn’t take no for an answer. I stand here today because she spoke up.

At a previous conference, I shared with you the story of her mother, Bonita, and how she was a victim of medical racism at many points in her life, ultimately resulting in her death of cancer at age 68. And because of that experience, Lauren knew, Lauren understood, that she could not sit idly by while people supposed to protect me and my health, overlooked my condition. Now, Lauren could have trusted the doctors, and it would have been perfectly natural for her to accept the limitation that she was not the authority in the room, that she was not a doctor, had not gone to medical school.

But Lauren knew. Lauren understood.

People told her she was wrong, but she knew she knew something was wrong. Did not hesitate to challenge the things that she knew were wrong. Not a doctor, but she knew she understood the patient was lying on the bed, dying, and she did not hesitate, did not doubt, she went to work.

You’re going to have to wait to hear the moral of that story while I introduce another character.

Been reflecting on the Reverend Jesse Jackson Jr, a great hero of mine who recently passed away. Some of you know that I was named after Jesse Jackson. My father, whose here today, with my mother. Was a delegate for Jesse Jackson for president, 1984 the year that I was born. And my parents liked my name. And some of you know that Jesse Jackson was a great friend of NCRC. That he spoke here at the conference many times. That, in fact, he and the Rainbow PUSH Coalition took office space with us in our building, and that my predecessor, John Taylor, served on his board.

And so many times in my career, I had the opportunity to see him at work. Reverend Jackson was among the hardest-working people I have ever met. He would fly into DC on his way to South Africa. He would fly to far-flung parts of the country. To West Virginia to stand with the coal miners.

He was an ally, a leader for so many causes, and he worked tirelessly. After the Reverend recently passed away, I was reflecting upon his legacy, and I wondered in a daydream what would have happened if Jesse had not been called to leadership. If you can imagine Jesse Jackson standing at the Lorraine Motel in the aftermath of Dr King’s assassination, had just said, ‘Look, it’s not my job to heal the nation.’

Reverend Jackson could have moved on with his life, and because we know now how that history turned out, it is natural to believe that it was destiny for him to act as he did. But if you think of that moment, Dr King had just been shot dead in front of him, and it was not how he was murdered, but why. They killed him for speaking out, for his moral leadership, for challenging authority, for not sitting back and accepting the circumstance of Black people in this country.

And so in fact, the Reverend Jackson’s leadership was the most unnatural thing for anybody to have done. First of all, at that moment, the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, he was just 26 years old. And second of all, he was there as his mentor, the leader of the movement, was killed because of the power of his speech and the moral clarity of his ideas. The consequence of leadership was not esoteric for the Reverend Jesse Jackson. It was a real and present danger.

And yet Jesse went to work. Unlike my wife Lauren, he didn’t have the opportunity to save the patient. But he went to work, and he spent his life pursuing that work, culminating in his historic run for president in 1984 and again in 1988 when he won 11 primaries and changed American politics, paving the way for the historic victory of Barack Obama in 2008.

Over the course of his life, Jesse Jackson was critiqued time and again. And these critiques, some fair, many unfair, are revealing I think about how we think about leadership. I bring it up because I think it reveals something about how we expect others to fight our battles for us. Deeply revealing about how we, as a movement and as a nation, expect courage and leadership to come from some other place. About how we place our expectations upon others. Most common critique I hear of Jesse Jackson was that he didn’t keep the civil rights movement going. That he failed the movement. I call bullshit, as someone said yesterday, and as Dr. Benjamin said so eloquently from the stage.

Reverend Jackson didn’t fail the movement. We did. In the aftermath of our great victories in the 60s and 70s, we went to work. We took our victories, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act, the Community Reinvestment Act, and we went to work. We professionalized the movement. We built nonprofits, and we did the work. Not as a movement, but as an industry. But as we built, we became victims of our own success. The nonprofit corporation itself, modeled after private corporations, has its flaws and limitations. To illustrate this, I want you to imagine a scenario for a moment. Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernath, and Bayard Rustin are having a conversation about tactics, and Bayard, the great tactician of the movement, said, ‘I think we should do a march from Selma to Montgomery’. And Martin says, ‘What are the risks in doing that?’ And Bayard says, ‘Well, we might get beaten and bloodied, and we’ll probably all get arrested.’ Ralph Abernathy says, ‘I don’t know. I doubt our D and O insurance will cover that.’ King says, ‘And how will Ellen Jesse feel about it? Maybe we should add it to our strategic plan discussions this fall.’

Now I’m not here to tell you that nonprofits are not effective. I lead a nonprofit that is itself a coalition of nonprofits, but I am here to tell you that the federal government is not the only institution we must rebuild in the wake of this moment. We have to rebuild our institutions so that they can be more agile and more courageous. We have to rebuild our moral voice, and that starts with the stories that we tell. You see as a field, we have spent significant time and energy making the economic case for our work. The cost of racism. The opportunities within our communities. And we must still make those arguments, because they are good arguments. But we live in a moment where more than that is required. And much more is required if you see and understand what is happening all around us. We see it when our president compares Black people to apes. We see it when policy treats entire communities like targets instead of people. We see it when leadership treats the rule of law as optional, when inconvenient. We see it when our government looks at its own citizens, its own people, and sees a battlefield. We see it when our government shoots first and asks questions later.

As I travel the country, a sense of despair, a sense of what is to be done is all around. A desire for somebody to come forth and save us. Which person will speak up, which party will win, which candidate will emerge? I’m here to tell you that the patient is lying on the table and that they are dying, and that the patient is all of us. The patient is your next-door neighbor. The patient is our multicultural democracy and whether it will live to see tomorrow.

And I have news to you, for you, there are no doctors of democracy coming to save us. And if there are prophets waiting to emerge, let us not risk the judgment that we sat idly by because it was not our job and we did not know what to do. The only doctors of democracy are we, the people. That much the founders had right, as deeply flawed as they were, and the burden falls to some of us more than others.

Let me put it to you this way. If you’re not the patient, then you must be the doctor, then you must be Lauren, then you must be Jesse. In that speech Jesse gave at the Democratic Convention, he said two words over and over and over again. He said, ‘I understand. I understand. I understand,’ he said. Jesse Jackson was every man. The story of America was Jesse Jackson and Jesse Jackson was the story of America. His struggle was our struggle. But the problem here in Washington is that they do not understand. They don’t understand what it’s like out there in America, because they live in a different America. You’ve got to make them understand. You’ve got to tell them about the America as you experience it. And just as that myth the old South was a powerful story, so too are our stories powerful. We too can tell a story about a greater America, but one that does not exist in the past. We too can tell a story about a greater America, but ours does not set neighbors against neighbors. We too are America.

I’m not here to tell you that the entire burden of saving our democracy lies with you, and I’m not even here to tell you that words are enough, that telling a better story is the solution to our crisis. But I am here to tell you that there are moments in our lives where you have a chance to be Jesse, not me, the other one, you wouldn’t want to… There are moments where you have a chance to be Lauren. There are moments where you have a chance to speak up and to take action. Each of us has sat by in the face of injustice. Each of us has led a leader, a colleague or friend take those stabs in the back, too afraid of the sacrifice it takes to lead. Each of us is guilty of wishful thinking that someone will come forth, some authority, some outside force will emerge to save us. But each of us has opportunities, in big moments and in small, to save the patient, whoever that might be. To lead with moral courage. To tell a more powerful story, and to take the actions needed to make it come to life.

I want to close with this thought. I’m a fan in many of my speeches of bad aphorisms. And one such bad aphorism is the idea that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Have you heard this one before? Turns out, it’s not true. Turns out, you catch as many or more flies with vinegar as honey. And since I’m kind of a piss and vinegar type of speaker, I’ve used this to great advantage. We can catch flies with honey or vinegar if we must.

But there is another, another aphorism that I was reflecting on as I wrote this speech, and that’s the idea that it is always darkest before the dawn. It turns out that this too is bullshit. It varies a little bit based on the time of year and your time zone, but it turns out that it’s darkest around midnight. Who knew? You’ve accepted this as gospel truth your entire lives. You were lied to. But the definition is psychological. You see, we feel most alone, most in the dark, just before dawn, in the middle of the night, our eyes have slowly adjusted, and we cannot tell that it is getting lighter. By your actions, I believe that it will not be midnight America, but that dawn will come. Come hell or high water, we will make that sunrise.

As Jesse said, ‘Wherever you are tonight, you can make it. Hold your head high. Stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but the morning comes. Don’t you surrender. Keep hope alive.’

And if I might dare to suggest one amendment so that we act with the agency of the leaders that we seek to be, we must bring hope alive.

Bring hope alive. Thank you very much.

Applause.

The Fellowship for Equitable Development (FED) is an 8-month paid program that connects top-tier Master’s and Ph.D. students with leading community development organizations to cultivate the “leaders of tomorrow.”

Through this initiative, fellows receive a $20,000 stipend to work approximately 20 hours per week on high-impact projects addressing systemic challenges like climate change, wealth disparities, and housing shortages. By bridging the gap between academic research and grassroots advocacy, the program empowers participants to create tangible solutions for low-to-moderate income and BIPOC communities while gaining professional experience and access to the NCRC’s national network.

Speakers

Laura Bentley, Director, Grant Administration, Community Impact, NCRC
Dia Henderson, Program Manager, Community Impact, NCRC

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Bentley 0:06
Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We’re going to go ahead and get started. So welcome to the 2026 Fellowship for Equitable Development informational webinar. This webinar is intended for students who are interested in becoming fellows for the program.

So we’re going to get going here. If you do have any questions, please go ahead and place those into the Q and A. And as we get started, just want to remind everyone about the NCRC code of conduct. So this code of conduct does apply to all gatherings, including this one. Secondly, this webinar is being recorded, and this will be available on the fellowship homepage, and we’ll be sharing that link in a moment. We do not permit any AI chat box, so please know that those will not be permitted in this session. But again, the recording will be made available for everyone to review afterwards. As I mentioned, any questions, please add those to the Q and A as opposed to the chat. We’ll be answering those throughout the session, and we will also make sure to go through that at the end as well, during our Q and A time. And using the Q and A feature means they won’t miss anything as well. You’ll see in the bottom right some essential links. The first is the NCRC homepage, and secondly is the homepage specific to the fellowship program. So that’s where you’d want to be checking for all the up-to-date information on the application when it’s released, etc.

Those of you who might not be familiar with us, we are a National Community Reinvestment Coalition, or NCRC, and we are a national network nonprofit of over 700 members, and we focus on a wide variety of topic areas, from housing counseling to health equity, research, etc, but all under the same roof and with the same mission of building wealth in low-wealth communities across our nation. So the fellowship program is one of our offerings, and as we move through the agenda today, we’ll be introducing ourselves, the community impact team within NCRC, we’ll be talking specifically about the fellowship program, the role of the fellow, benefits to fellows. We’ll be sharing some past projects. You can all get a sense of what those projects might look like. And we’ll be going forward with the fellowship timeline and also giving a preview of the fellow applications. You’ll know what to expect. And lastly, again, we’ll have that Q and A time at the end to address any questions.

My name is Laura Bentley, and I’m the director of grant administration with NCRC for our community impact team. And so that you all are familiar with our team members, we have Luis Ortiz, who is one of our program managers, and Dia Henderson, as well, as a second program manager for our team. Dia is the lead for the fellowship program. So for all of you who are joining us today, she would be your main point of contact. But just in case you’re running into Luis along the way, we are part of this particular team. At this point, I’m going to pass it over to Dia, who’ll be taking over the rest of the presentation and sharing with you more information about the fellowship.

Henderson 3:02
Thank you, Laura. Again, my name is Dia Henderson. I am one of the program managers for community impact, and I will be your lead for the Fellowship for Equitable Development. So we’re here to talk about what exactly is this fellowship. So we’re asking you all to be a part of the next generation of community development leaders. NCRC has this Fellowship for Equitable Development to help empower you all to tackle on the issues of tomorrow – even today – by spearheading some local community development projects that we have chosen. So as graduate-level students, we’re going to pair you with NCRC members, member organizations for the next eight months. It’s a pay fellowship, and you all are going to help drive real world impact in affordable housing, small business development, climate resilience, community health and wellness, racial wealth building and so much more. With these projects, we try to prioritize fellowship projects that really aim to move the needle on racial wealth building, community health and wellness and environmental justice through avenues of housing, small business and workforce development, specifically for BIPOC and LMI folk in our target geographies, which I will touch on in two seconds.

So this year, we had a very competitive application process, and we were able to choose eight fellowship projects in the following areas. So we anticipate having placements in Connecticut, Michigan, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Washington, DC, DMV area. We are planning to announce those pretty soon. So please keep an eye out. But we are expecting there to be an in-person placement to these projects. So we ask that if you are in these areas, you fulfill that in-person placement.

So what are you going to be doing? What is your role? We are asking that the fellows execute the tasks assigned by the host organization. So all host organizations submitted a work plan that clearly outlines the milestones and the deliverables, and I’ll also show you that in a little bit. But we’re asking that you complete those deliverables and do those tasks. We also ask that you fulfill the 20-hour per week part-time commitment. Then finally, we’re also asked that you again, have that in-person aspect. So we’re asking that you please show up to the fellowship projects in the workspace at least once a week. Each host organization has a schedule. Again, I’ll show you that in a little bit. They have a schedule of what days they might you know specifically want you to show up or want you to be in the office. And then NCRC has a few requirements also, so we ask that you participate in regular check-ins with me. This is just giving me some time to get to know you one but also just see how you’re progressing throughout the eight-month fellowship, and seeing what you’ve learned and what you’ve gained from this experience. We also ask that you attend monthly professional development training. So we have trainings that vary from leadership skills to also what it’s like to go from graduate to intern, fellow to professional space. So we develop these trainings to not only for you to get to know NCRC, but for you to really develop as a professional. We also are asking that you join virtual cohort meetings. Excuse me, eyelash, virtual cohort meetings. This is just a chance for you to get to know each other. Seeing that all of the placements are everywhere around the nation, we want our fellows to get to know each other before they join us at the Just Economy Conference. So that goes into our next requirement. We ask that you attend our Just Economy Conference. We host a conference every year. Next year, we’ll be in Washington, DC again in May, and this is just a chance for you all to not only meet, meet us, the staff, but also get to meet other nonprofit and community development leaders across our nation that are a part of our membership. Then, finally, we ask that you complete two reports, the intern report, and then the closeout. This is just giving me and Laura a better understanding of how the fellowship went and how is it going halfway through and at the end.

So those are two our few requirements, the benefits of being a Fellow. You have a few benefits. I think the best benefit, one of the best benefits, is you’re getting paid up to $20,000 in a stipend for your 20-hour commitment. You also are receiving high-quality training from our host organizations, and then also the people you’ll meet along the way, whether that be within NCRC or within your host organization. One of our fellows favorite parts is the free admission to the Just Economy Conference. So this includes admission, lodging and transport for those outside of the DMV area to our annual Just Economy Conference. And then finally, with some depending on some university policies, you may receive potential academic credit for fulfilling this fellowship.

So I just wanted to give you all an idea of what some of our past projects look like. So we have a fellow in Oregon right now working with Housing Oregon to really do some research and advance racial justice in homeownership, in small businesses in Portland, Oregon, and working with some banks to really bridge that gap, that racial wealth gap for bipoc communities. We also had a fellow last year working with the community foundation for Greater New Haven mission Investments company. That fellow is working to help map resources and really provide some technical assistance to small business owners in the New Haven, Connecticut area. And then finally, we have a fellow working with Hip Hop Caucus, who’s really addressing that green banking space and really focusing on climate finance issues, engaging with the community and really investing in those MDIs and CDFIs for BIPOC folk. So just to give you a visual what the process will look like. Like I said, we already had our members apply, and we are finalizing those projects. So from there, once the projects are posted, you all will be able to select projects on the application, these at. Applications will be reviewed by NCRC. The top candidates will be sent off to the host organization for their review. We both will do an interview, and then we will make the selections, and then finally, we would onboard you all along with your host organization. And then the fellowship will begin. To give you a little more specific dates on that timeline, April is your time to apply. So April 8 through May 8 will be your time period to apply. May, we are looking to at least or we are looking to select our finalists and begin our interviews in June, hopefully awarding and then agreement signed towards the end of June. August, we will have our host fellow orientation, onboarding meeting. And then September is when you officially begin your fellowship. February is when we’re looking for those interim reports to be due. And then may we have a busy May, but a fun May. May is the Just Economy Conference. And then the fellowship will be ending in May, following those with the closeout report.

So like I said, your application will be open April 8 through May 8. I did want to give you guys some insight of what that content might look like. So we’re asking for your current enrollment status. So we’re expecting that fellows have completed at least one semester of of graduate- or higher-level school. So we’re asking for transcripts. We are also asking to see if you are an international student. Also, we’re also asking for your address of where you’ll be staying through the eight months of the fellowship. So not necessarily where you’re from, but where are you going to be staying during the duration of the fellowship? Your current employment status, whether that be full-time, part-time or not currently working. Class schedule. I know that most schedules don’t come out until right before school year. So if you had a rough estimate of what that schedule may look like, or an idea of I know a lot of doctoral students, they’re in their dissertation at portion of their program, so they might not have real classes at that point. So if you have any idea of your class schedule, please let us know. A updated and most recent resume. Which project you would want. And then also describing your qualifications and why you would be the best to be selected for that organization and that project. And then finally, some optional demographic questions so we can get to know you a little bit better.

Oh, actually, I did want to go back and show you all a work plan and a project profile. Okay, so this is an example of what the project profiles will look like on our homepage. At the top, you will see the name and the address, again, with that in-person aspect, we are asking that you are relatively within the area of your selected project or host organization. We also have provided an official title for the fellow. So you won’t just be a community impact or NCRC fellow, but you will have an official title. We also give you a synopsis of what the organization does and who they are, and then also the project description and responsibilities for what the fellow will be doing. We also, on the host application, asked them to identify any qualifications and skills they’d be looking for in a fellow so we have listed those also on the project profile, along with their preferred schedule of when their team might meet in person or when they would like you in person versus on online or virtual. We also provide additional information like, what is the topic, whether it be housing, small business or workforce, if this is a new or continuing project, and then how you will be paid, whether as a w2, part-time employee ,or a 1099 contractor. We also attach the work plan to the project profile. So at the top you’ll see the deliverables you’re asked to complete by the end of the the fellowship, and then it also is just broken down by month of what are some milestones and activities that you’ll be going through and conducting to complete and reach those deliverables. And this also includes when the closeout and interim reports are. And at the bottom is just a few requirements, reminding you all of the 20 hours per week and the minimum once a week in the office requirements. So, I did want to show you all that, just to give you an idea what that would look like.

So as we wrap up, I did want to just highlight again that the fellow application will be opening April 8 and will be closing may 8, at 5pm Eastern. The application link will be at the top of our homepage, and then also this webinar will be attached to the homepage, also, if you wanted to go back for reference. So if you have any questions that I didn’t cover, didn’t answer in this session, please contact us at impact@ncrc.org, again, if you want to stay updated or just wanted to get the gist of what the fellowship actually is, please go to our fellowship homepage, where you will find again, this webinar, the application link, and then also those project profiles and their descriptions. And then, if you had any questions about the Just Economy Conference or anything NCRC membership-related, please contact our membership team. They’d be happy to answer any questions you may have. So at this time, I think Haley might have dropped the link, I’m not sure, but there should be a survey in the chat. If you could all complete that just to give us any feedback, that’d be great, but also we’d be taking questions at this point.

Bentley 16:33
Yeah, so I have been looking through the Q and A and thus far, all the questions have been answered, but we’re going to stay on the line for a little bit longer, in case folks are looking to type anything in now that link to the survey has just been dropped into your chat, so you’ll see that there, and that’s really helpful for us. We want to make sure that these webinars are providing useful information for you all, making sure that you have a full grasp of what the process looks like, and so if you’d be able to just take a second there and let us know if there’s anything we can do in the future to make sure that these are as effective and understandable as possible. We really appreciate that. In terms of the questions that I have shared answers to, I do just want to raise those up as well, in case folks haven’t seen that in the Q and A . The first question is, are you required to be a student at the time of the application? And so the, I don’t know if you want to mention that.

Henderson 17:26
Yeah, so I can go back to…so like I said, we are asking for your student enrollment status. We are requesting that you submit transcripts. The requirement for us is that you have completed at least one semester of a graduate or higher level semester, so you do have to have had a semester under your belt to apply and to be eligible for the fellowship.

Bentley 17:55
Yeah, exactly. Secondly, there was someone just checking if there are any California placements at this time. So if you want to pop back to the geography slide really quick, Dia. So as you’ll see, that there is not a California placement anticipated at this round. I do just want to mention that our geographies do differ from year to year. So if your location is not on this list, but you still find yourself, you know, be in a graduate program and otherwise eligible for following rounds. Please know that this is not always the list of geographies. We do vary across the nation, so we just invite you to sign up for our newsletter, say following our social media and in future rounds, these may be different placements as well. We had a question here, Dia, just to confirm if someone lives in a state other than the ones listed, would they not be eligible? And I think it might just be helpful to highlight the in-person requirement and what we’re looking for there.

Henderson 18:53
Yeah. So for the in person requirement, we are asking that you stay in those areas that in person, like I said, that in person aspect is going to give you a better idea of what it’s like working in a in an office and having that that help right there next to you, versus just being virtual, which can make it a little bit more difficult when you’re just all virtual and not having that one on one connection with your supervisor in that team. So we are asking that you have that in person to to build those relationships and get that experience.

Speaker 1 19:35
Thanks. Let’s see here, we had a question just to confirm as well if, if a person was graduating this May, would they be ineligible? And the answer to that is, yes, unfortunately, you would be ineligible. As dia mentioned, you need to be currently enrolled. But congratulations to anyone who’s graduating soon. We have a question here as well. Can multiple fellows be selected for one placement? I’ll just say that in the past, we have had situations of multiple fellows in one placement organization for this round. We don’t anticipate for that to be the case. And if that changes, that would be communicated with applicants who are finalists in the selection process. But at this time, we don’t anticipate that. Let’s see. Now we have a question. When the application opens, we’ll have the addresses of the host institutions. Do you want to speak to that, Dia, of what additional information they can expect between now and the application?

Henderson 20:29
Yes, so within the next couple of days, we will be publishing and announcing the specific locations with the cities and the areas that we are or that we have chosen host organization so that will be on the website, attached to the project profiles, and then also on the application when you can select which projects you are interested in.

Bentley 20:55
Exactly. Okay, we have a question here just about the geographies come on to clarify on the website, they saw some additional other geographies listed, and so that’s something that will be updated as we publish those final selection of host projects. So good catch there we did for our host application phase. It’s just finishing up. We had a slightly wider net of target geographies. But of course, it’s a competitive process, and we just have room for eight slots this time around. And so we have windowed those projects down. And so these eight that you see on the screen are the locations where we anticipate projects for this time around, but good catch, and that will be updated again by the time that the application launches, so that you’ll have the exact location of the projects and those work plans that dia was showing earlier. All of that information will be refreshed on the website to make sure it’s up to date for that application. We have a question about, what if, to dia, what if you’ve received, let’s say, a master’s in a in the particular area already, but you are now enrolled in a different program. Would you be eligible even though you, you know, have one degree, but you’re pursuing another at this time?

Henderson 22:19
Well, one, congratulations for degree. Again, as long as you have that one semester minimum under your belt. So that means, like you’ve already completed a semester of this new program that you that you’re in, you would be eligible. Is not as much as, oh, I’ve already had a degree. Am I eligible with Morris? Have you completed a semester within this new program? But you having the degree in economic development definitely does align with some of the qualifications some of the host organizations may be looking for.

Bentley 23:05
Yeah, so we have a question that is for somebody who, for example, is living in New Jersey, or will be in New Jersey at the time of the application. And so they’re mentioning, you they could, in theory, you know, take a train somewhere else, say to Connecticut or Washington, DC, and so would they be eligible? In that situation? We’re looking for folks to be located, really, within the hour or even half an hour, of a host placement. And the reason for that is because we are looking for that in-person schedule to be something that is convenient for both parties. And so what we found in the past is if folks really have to do a significant amount of travel to make it to their host placement, it just becomes difficult for that to be a fruitful relationship. Sometimes, you know, an additional opportunity will come into your or will come up for our host organizations. They want to invite you to something. They want you to see a client visit. And so this can be really enriching experiences, or they are doing a staff event on a different day. And so when folks are located nearby, it makes those additional opportunities accessible and facilitates a stronger relationship. So we’re looking for you to be in the near vicinity of that host organization, and to make sure that you’re comfortable with that commute, just to make sure that that is a really an ideal match on both sides.

See, I think that that was the last question coming in, so we’ll leave it up for a second. Dia, do you want to pop back to that how to contact us page, and folks can just make any note of our email if you have, again, any specific questions to your situation that you want to address separately. We can definitely support you in that afterwards. And then I know also in the chat, you’ll see some information that was entered that mentioned about the Just Economy Conference for this year coming up with just a couple weeks, so might be short notice for some of you, but again, if you want to get to know us, if you want to just learn about the different work that NCRC is doing, and learn from all of our member organizations, so there’s over 1000 people who attend this conference, from bankers to nonprofit community development professionals, other emerging leaders. Our current cohort of fellows can be a great opportunity to learn, join the informational sessions, listen to our incredible mainstage speakers, and also just be able to connect again with our team and other folks in the industry. So that’s in there as well, in case anyone is interested. Students do have discounted tickets. And with that, I’m going to pass it back to you, Dia, I don’t see any other questions that have come in.

Henderson 25:50
Sounds good. Well, thank you all for joining us today, like Laura just mentioned, and I have up now. If you have any questions, please contact us, and we will get back to you with those answers. Please keep a lookout on those updates to the website. Again, the updates will include the projects for you all to observe, and then also the application link. So just keep an eye on that, and then also the specific cities and areas where we will have host organizations. Thank you all. I hope you all have a great day.

Learn more about the application process to receive grant support for your direct service to clients, while building your agency’s knowledge on how to address heirs’ property challenges and ensure your homebuying clients retain their intergenerational wealth.

The Field Empowerment Fund (FEF) empowers NCRC network members to level up established service lines.

The Housing Counseling Services series within FEF supports HUD-approved housing counseling agencies in building know-how for their staff and driving homeownership opportunities for their clients, such as through pre- and post-purchase counseling.

Speakers

Laura Bentley, Director, Grant Administration, Community Impact, NCRC
Luis Ortiz, Senior Program Manager, Community Impact, NCRC

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Bentley 0:07
Hello everyone, thank you for joining us. We’re going to get started here. Welcome to the 2026 field Empowerment Fund, housing, counseling services, grant programs, informational webinar. Really excited to have you with us today and share some information about the program, and we will kick it off right now. So first, some housekeeping things before we get started. First is that the NCRC Code of Conduct applies to this as well as all gatherings. Secondly, this session is being recorded and it will be posted to the FEF-HCS homepage. For any questions, we do have a Q and A module at the bottom of your screen, so please go ahead and add any questions there as we go through the presentation, and we’ll be sure to answer as many as we can during our Q and A session at the end. And of course, if you do have any further questions following the session, we’ll be sharing our information at the end of the presentation, and so you can definitely reach out. We’d be happy to help as well with any further questions. At your bottom right, we have some essential links. The first is the NCRC homepage, and the second is the FEF-HCS homepage, specifically so Field Empowerment Fund – Housing Counseling Services, that is the acronym that we use to describe the program, and that FEF page is where you’ll be able to see the recording, as well as all other important information related to the program. For those of you who may not be familiar, we are the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, and we are a national nonprofit network organization of over 700 members, we focus on a wide variety of topic areas, from health equity to research to housing counseling, all under the same umbrella and with the same mission of building wealth in low-wealth communities across the nation. In terms of our agenda for today, we’re going to introduce ourselves for the community impact team. We’re going to talk about the FEF-HCS grant program in general, and then get into some more specifics regarding eligibility criteria, what the benefits of the program are, what the specific timeline is, and also give you a preview of the application content so that you can be prepared if you do proceed to submit your application, and then lastly, we will have a Q and A at the end for any questions. My name is Laura Bentley. I am the director of grant administration with NCRC and the community impact team. And there are two members of our team as well who I would like you to all be aware of and get to know, if you don’t know them already. Our first is Luis Ortiz. He is our program manager, actually, as well as Dia Henderson, a second program manager on our team. So Luis will be here, is here on the presentation today with me. He is the lead for the FEF-HCS program. Dia works on other programs within our department. So if you are kind of engaged with us in other ways, you might know Dia from those programs. But with that, I will pass it over to Luis to take over the rest of the presentation.

Ortiz 3:12
Perfect. Thanks, Laura. All right. So let’s get started. So the Field Empowerment Fund, or FEF, as we call it, is designed to support NCRC network members in strengthening and expanding the service lines that they already have in place. So this is really about helping your organization level up the work that you’re already that you’re already doing in the community, in your communities. So within FEF, this series specifically focuses on supporting HUD-approved housing counseling agencies like yourselves in advancing homeownership. This includes activities specifically pre-purchase counseling, helping clients get prepared and positioned to successfully buy their home and it’s important to note that this opportunity is not focused on any other services such as rental counseling or foreclosure prevention. The emphasis is on homeownership and the services that directly support that goal. Additionally, the program includes a strong focus on building knowledge around heir’s property issues. This is critical in helping first-time and low-income homebuyers not only achieve homeownership, but also understand how to retain and pass down wealth across generations.

The FEF-HCS series is made possible through partnerships with KeyBank and HSBC, these partners are investing directly into communities where they have a bank branch presence. So funding is the target geoc… I hate this word, geography… Laura, targeted geography…

Bentley 5:11
I’m too busy chuckling a little bit, Luis.

Ortiz 5:12
…geographically. I always gets stuck on that word, geographically. Within those footprints, you got it through these partnerships, a total of $4 million have been committed $2.5 million from KeyBank, $1.5 million from HSBC, and these funds are specifically designated for sub-grants that directly support direct-to-client housing, counseling services. And again, it’s important to emphasize that these funds are meant to support counseling activities that directly impact clients on their path to home ownership. As you can see, there are three rounds of funding. We’re completing the 2025 round now, kicking off the 2026 round of funding, which includes $850,000 from KeyBank, $510,000 from HSBC. This multi-year structure provides a great opportunity for agencies to plan ahead to build capacity and potentially participate in multiple rounds of funding.

All right. Next slide, eligibility. So to be eligible for this funding opportunity, there are three key requirements. First, your organization must be an active NCRC, 501 c3, member, and you don’t have to be a member to apply, but if awarded, membership will be required. Secondly, you must be a HUD-certified, HUD-approved housing counseling agency. This is important because funding is specifically intended to support high-quality, HUD-compliant housing counseling services. And third, and this is an important update, your organization must have a physical office location or be currently serving clients in an eligible geography. So I want to emphasize this third requirement is a change from 2025 previously, eligibility was more strictly tied to having a physical office in the geography. Now it’s more inclusive. So if you do not have a physical location in that area, you may still be eligible if you are actively serving pre-purchase clients in that geography. This change is intended to better reflect how agencies are delivering services today. You know, a lot of it is remote. And to expand access to funding for organizations already making an impact in these communities. And to help determine eligibility, there is a program eligibility checker available for each funder at ncrc.org/fef, and we’ll take a look at that site on the next slide.

All right, so, so in order to determine if you’re eligible to apply for the FEF-HCS grant opportunity, you’re going to have to go to enter your address into the eligibility checker. And Laura, I think it’s best if we just go over to the website and kind of go from there so that I can better explain how this is done.

Bentley 8:42
Sounds good. So I’ll stop here for one second. Bear with me. Here we are coming back.

Ortiz 8:52
Perfect. So this is the field, Empowerment Fund, housing, counseling services, web page. It’s important that everyone is able to access this web page. As you can see, there’s a register now for the the today’s call, but there’s also going to be, this is where we’re going to place the application link, also on, I think it’s the 23rd we’ll discuss that a little bit more. And as you scroll down, you’ll see other, some other information that we’re discussing now. And as you scroll down a little bit further, you’re going to see the awardees from previous years. If you scroll a little bit back up, Laura, you’re going to see the eligibility checker for each one of the funders. And let’s go ahead and click on the HSBC eligibility checker. This is where you’re going to go ahead and enter your office location into the map, and then we’re going to hit check eligibility. Let’s see what.

Bentley 10:02
I popped in the NCRC office.

Ortiz 10:07
Yeah, so we’re using the NCRC office address, and as you can see, our office is not located. Our office isn’t located in an eligible geography, but if you scroll, if can you scroll out a little bit on that?

Bentley 10:23
Yeah, I’m sorry I selected all the fonts, so it’s giving me that. Let me refresh you could maybe Okay, yeah, yeah, I got one second. Pardon my There we go. There we go. Okay, I’m back with you. Luis, unfortunately, not eligible,

Ortiz 10:48
Right. So listen, we’re not eligible. Our office location is but I believe you can scroll out a little bit, Laura, and if we scroll out, you see that there’s this blue area to the right of our office, and those are eligible areas. So even though, if we were a housing counseling agency that provides direct services, even though our office location is not in an eligible geography, if we’re providing pre-purchase services in that blue area, we will still you will still be and we will still be able to apply for this funding under the believe this is HSBC funding? Correct.  All right, so, and we recommend that you go into both eligibility checkers to see your eligibility under both funding opportunities. So this is this one is clearly labeled, KeyBank, and you’ll do the same exercise here. You’ll enter your address, go to check eligibility, and let’s see what happens with KeyBank. So it looks like we’re not eligible in KeyBank as far as our office location is, what if we scroll out, there’s certain geographies that are eligible under KeyBank as well. So if we were to be providing pre purchase services in those blue areas, we would still be able to apply under the KeyBank funding as well. All right, I think we can, if we can go back to the to the original slide. Laura.

Bentley 12:42
Good, one second, here.

Ortiz 12:43
And what I did want to mention is, when it comes to these geographies, if your agency serves areas that fall within both funders geographies, you can absolutely be considered under both funding pools during this review process. However, it’s important to note that agencies will not receive separate awards, so instead, being eligible in both geographies simply provides additional consideration and flexibility during the selection process. Let’s see here. And also keep in mind that you’re going to be required to check eligibility like we just, like we just went over and do the program requirements. We will be verifying eligibility in the areas that you work in. So we will do a part of the review process is verifying that you’re eligible in these areas. I think we’re ready for next slide. All right, eligibility geographies. The following states contain eligible geographies, so please use the map tool for exact locations within the state, so similar to what we just did, but this slide kind of outlines the states that have eligible geography. So you know, for HSBC, you have to be in one of those states, and for a KeyBank your state, it has to be one of those states in order to qualify. But you still need to go into the eligibility checker to make sure that the areas that you provide services or your office location is located within an eligible geography.

All right, I think we’re ready for the next slide. Laura. All right, so let’s talk about some benefits, obviously, starting with benefits to awardees, starting with the funding support. Selected agencies will receive subgrants to directly support their housing counseling services. These funds are intended to enhance your ability to serve clients, specifically those working towards homeownership. The. minimum award amount is $10,000; however, final award amounts may be, may vary depending on several factors, including the number of applications that we receive, the number of clients that your agency serves, and how well your work aligns with NCRC’s partnership with KeyBank and HSBC, I know $10,000 is the minimum amount. We haven’t determined a maximum amount yet, but last year’s awards, most of them, were significantly, significantly higher than that. So just keep that in mind. In addition to funding, there also is a strong knowledge building components. Awardees will participate in a virtual training session focused on their heir’s property challenges and strategies for preserving general generational wealth for clients. And to ensure agencies fully benefit from this opportunity, there’s a minimum benefit, a minimum attendance requirement of one member of leadership and one HUD certified housing counselor per agency. The training will be hosted by NCRC National Training Academy, and we have an anticipated date for this training of July 2026. We’ll send out additional information once we have a concrete date set. So be on the lookout for additional information on that training. All right. Next slide, let’s walk you through some of the key dates for this opportunity so that you can plan accordingly. This application period opens on March 23, 2026 and will remain open through May 1 of 2026. During these times, the agencies can submit their applications for consideration. Make sure that you stick to that application period. We don’t anticipate extending that period at all. In June 2026, NCRC will announce the selected awardees for both KeyBank and HSBC geographies. The performance period will officially begin July 2026, and also in July, there will be the required training for all attendees focused on the heir’s property that we discussed earlier. Midway through the performance period, an interim report will be due on January 30, 2027, and this will cover activities from the beginning of the performance period, so July 1 through December 31, of 2026. The full performance period will conclude in June of 2027, and finally, the closeout report will be due on July, July 31 of 2027 which will cover the second half of the performance period from January 1 through June 30 of 2027. You know, this time I gives you almost a full year to implement those services, along with some structured checkpoints and to track progress and outcomes.

Next slide, this slide outlines the key components required as part of the application. So it’s important to begin gathering some of these materials early if you don’t have them readily available. First, you’ll need to provide an application point of contact. There should be someone who could respond to any follow-up questions that we have during the review process. Next, you’ll include your organization’s address and confirm your eligibility based on the funders’ footprints that we discussed earlier. Also, we will need to you to upload your 9902 for FY 25 quarter four, covering the period from October 1, 2024 through September 30 of 2025. This helps to demonstrate your agency’s housing counseling activity and capacity. And one thing that I did want to mention is important that you upload the report that is already in the HUD HCS system, as opposed to maybe a 9902 that is generated from your client management system. We will only consider reports coming from the HUD HCS system. In addition, you’ll be required to submit a roster of all active HUD-certified housing counselors, including their HUD ID numbers and copies of their HUD certificates to ensure compliance and verify that your team meets program requirements. And lastly, you’ll confirm your agency’s ability to attend the required heir’s property training. Remember that at least one member of leadership and one HUD-certified counselor must participate.

All right. Next. Line. So upcoming key dates. Application period opens, March 23, 2026 at 10 pm. There’s going to be a link, a live link in the website that we just visited, ncrc.gov/fef that we shared earlier, and it closes may 1 of 2026 at 5 pm once again, no extensions, and there’s a posted a link there for FEF, the homepage for the FEF-HCS grant there at the bottom.

Yeah, let’s go to next slide. Okay, we also want to invite you to connect with us in person at the NCRC Just Economy Conference. This is taking place April 14 and 15th, here in Washington, DC. It’s a great place to it’s a great opportunity to engage directly with our team and connect with peers across the network that do a lot of really cool work and maybe similar work that you also do. And in addition to networking, the conference will feature a variety of workshops and sessions focused on topics like housing, community development, economic equity, and there’s a lot of valuable content that you can bring back to your organizations. And if you’re interested in attending or want to explore the full agenda of the workshops, you can visit ncrc.org/conference. Think there’s going to be a link in the chat for that as well. We’d love to see you there and continue the conversation in person.

All right, next, next, next slide. If you’re not already a member of NCRC, we encourage you to learn more about joining the network by visiting our membership page. Like Laura mentioned earlier, NCRC is a network of over 700 local and nonprofit and national nonprofits as well as government and educational institutions. And while funding opportunities like this, FEF-HCS series are a great benefit, membership also provides access to a wide range of additional resources, partnerships, training opportunities, advocacy efforts that can support and strengthen your organization’s work. I also want to emphasize that NCRC membership is required if you are selected for an award. So if you’re considering applying and are not currently a member, it’s a good idea to start exploring that process now.

And that’s it, just the best way to get in contact with us. If you have any questions regarding this, opportunity is to email impact@ncrc.org. You can also schedule a meeting directly with me through Zoom at my calendar link, which is listed here. I will also be holding and announcing and holding some open office hours during the application period, so that if you have any questions, you could just hop on and I can help to answer any questions that you may have at that time. But you know, you could feel free to email or request a meeting there on our calendar link as well. The NCRC, the FEF-HCS homepage is listed on here. The membership email is listed on there. In case you wanted to reach out to some of our membership teams to have them answer any questions regarding membership, benefits, costs, things of that nature. And that’s all I have. I think we can open it up for questions, Laura?

Bentley 24:05
Yeah, yeah. So I’ve been adding or answering a couple of those in the Q and A as I’ve been going as quickly as I can here, so I will raise a couple of those here for the group. One question that we had is, is there a difference between having a HUD-certified counselor doing work and being a HUD-certified housing counseling agency? There? There is a difference to that, and you must be a HUD-certified agency. So that would be something to verify and ensure that you have that certification.

Ortiz 24:39
Right. So you need to be a HUD-certified housing counseling agency, but you also must have a HUD-certified housing counselor employed at your organization in order to be able to participate, since they’re going to be the ones doing the pre purchase counseling.

Bentley 24:55
Exactly, yeah, we have a question, maybe just to reiterate, Luis, and I can go back to the eligibility checker here, but we have a question of if our office isn’t within an eligible area, but we service some areas that are in that eligible area, are they eligible to apply? So maybe just go over the if your office isn’t within the area,

Ortiz 25:16
Right, right, right. So if you’re so there’s two ways to kind of qualify for the for the for this opportunity. One is if your address, your office, is in an eligible geography. So you’re going to enter your information into one of the into both of these checkers, actually, because you should be applying for both the HSBC program and the KeyBank program. So enter your office address. If it’s in the blue area, then you’re good to go. But even if it’s not in the blue area, if you scroll out of the map, but using the little minus sign there to kind of expand the map some, you’re going to be able to see if other areas within or near your office that you are that are eligible, and if you’re currently servicing clients in that area, you still will be eligible to apply for for that opportunity, for that particular funder. We’ll do some. The application that you’re going to be completing will ask questions if you’re not, if your office isn’t in the in the eligible area, it’s going to ask a few other questions. If you say, well, our office isn’t in the isn’t eligible, but we do service some clients in the next town over which appears to be eligible. So we’ll ask a few more questions as far as how many clients or what percentage of your clients are in that eligible area. But I hope that answers your question.

Ortiz 27:00
Yeah, that’s that’s helpful. We have a question here. What’s the maximum amount that you can apply for? And I just want to flag that you won’t be asked to request a certain award amount that’s not part of the application. The award values are determined in the selection process based on the volume of applications and other factors from those who have applied. And so what we do know is that the minimum award is $10,000 but it can be more than that, again, depending on the selection process and the number of applications, et cetera. We have a question here. Luis, how can folks see if they are an NCRC member?

Ortiz 27:44
Um, that’s a good question. If you’re not sure if you’re an NCRC member. I think the best way to do it, should we give that membership@ncrc.org? I think just go ahead and send an email to that email address asking if you’re a member, and one of our membership teams will will respond and let you know if you are and if you’re not, they’ll also give you the steps that you need to take in order to apply for membership and just go over the benefits of being a member.

Bentley 28:20
Yeah, exactly. And so we’ll leave that up there for any folks who either want to double-check on their membership status. Aren’t sure if it’s still active, or if you’re not, you know, familiar with us, you’d like to learn more about joining. That’s the that’s the place to go. We have a question here. Would we qualify for a sub-grantee of a HUD intermediary? Yes, you would just note that you’ll need to apply like do the application yourself, under your agency name, not related to your intermediary. So the grant will go directly to you if you’re awarded, and if you are an intermediary, or thinking about your sub-grantees and your network, we’d love for you to share the word with them. An intermediary is not able to apply on behalf of its its agency, so each agency would need to apply separately and be assessed separately that see here, and there’s a question, does an organization need to use their main address is their location, or can they use any physical building location if they have multiple the address that you’re going to want to use is your headquarters. So your office headquarters, one that appears on your 9902 and is associated with your organization with HUD. But as Luis had mentioned, if again, you service a different area as well that’s also eligible, you can just go through that second process of noting the percentage of your clients that you serve in the eligible blue areas as well.

Okay, let me see, Luis, what else might be new here? There’s a question to put the eligibility link in the chat. That’s the FEF homepage. So for folks who are looking at this current slide to your bottom left, the FEF homepage, ncrc.org/fef, that’s where the the checkers are located.

Ortiz 30:28
Where the checkers are located. That’s going to be also where the application link will be located once it opens on the 23rd.

Bentley 30:38
Exactly. Yeah, let’s see, there’s a question for organizations who are part of the previous cohort and receive funding in previous years, you are able to receive funding again through this current round. And there’s a question about how we evaluate organizations in that situation. Obviously, we’re looking for current grantees who have been timely in their reporting and correctly carrying out the grant requirements for this year in order to be eligible for the upcoming application. So bear that in mind, but there is no inability to apply from one year to the next, so we invite you to apply again. Let me see, there’s a question, if there’s going to be an opportunity to apply for funds in future years. Do you want to just mention the multiple year structure, Luis.

Ortiz 31:42
Yeah, yeah. So this is definitely a three year, three year opportunity. We’re already well into the 2025 round, closing it out here in a couple of months. 2026 rounding is opening here in March, and we’ll definitely have a round in 2027 with similar award amount. So, so definitely another opportunity next year.

Bentley 32:06
Yeah, absolutely. Question, if the PowerPoint will be available, this recording is going to be added to the FEF website again. So if you check back there, and you know, a couple of days, our team will be able to add it back up there, and most of the information, if not all of it that you’ve seen in the slides is actually on the website, already in written form as well. So that would be a great resource for folks who are looking for the slides in the next couple minutes. A couple more questions. Yeah, go ahead. Luis.

Ortiz 32:49
I was just going to say I see a question relating to census tracks, and if we can use to that to determine how many clients would they typically serve in that area, or is it enough to confirm that they service that particular area that’s eligible?

Bentley 33:09
Yeah, you will need to list the percentage of clients that you serve in those areas. So depending on your different record keeping systems, how you keep track of your clients, and I would leave that to you to determine what would be the most effective way for you to determine but it’s within your client population. So if you serve 100 clients in a year, and looking at the neighborhoods that are marked blue, you see, okay, some of those clients, let’s say 20 of our clients this past year are in those neighborhoods, then you’ll be able to say 20% on your application, and just know that in the if you are awarded, the funding will need to be used in those specific eligible neighborhoods, and we will be doing kind of a sample set of that in your reporting. So do make sure that you are operating already in those areas, as that will be verified, and that’s where the grant funding needs to be used. Luis, we have a question about for organizations that do more comprehensive housing counseling beyond pre-purchase, such as foreclosure or rental counseling, are those services eligible to include in our accounts under this grant?

Ortiz 34:21
Not, not for this particular grant, the FEF-HCS series primarily focuses on pre-purchase counseling with a with an emphasis on increasing homeownership in LMI communities so no rental, no foreclosure in this particular opportunity. Those can be those services are supported by the HUD comprehensive housing counseling grant, and definitely others are focused on that as well, but not for this particular service.

Bentley 34:57
Absolutely and. Then, okay, we have just kind of to drive this point home regarding the eligibility locations. We have a question of my agency is just 40 feet outside of the service area. It’s coming up ineligible. Do I have to do the alternate way you do so in this case, because your grant funding is something that we need to be able to have a dedicated process for and make sure that that process is equal for everyone, and kind of has distinct guidelines that are in line with the agreements that we have with KeyBank and HSBC. If you are, if your office is showing up as ineligible in the checker, you do need to do that alternative method. And so we’ve been able to work since last year, where we were unfortunately only able to go off of ineligible or eligible. We’ve been able to work through this year to add that added flexibility. So that is the alternative option. And if you’re not showing up as eligible through that checker with your office address for your 9902, you are going to need to do that alternative method, and we appreciate your effort in doing that, and are excited to be able to offer that as an opportunity this year for some folks who weren’t able to access last year’s funding pool.

I’m going to glance in here for anything else. If there is a question that you have that’s very specific to your particular agency, again, I will pop back to our information page and leave that up as I’m glancing through again, and we are more than happy to help you determine specifically any answers to your questions or any situation that you’re currently dealing with, there’s a question about if the heir’s property training that is required is going to be virtual, and it will be virtual, just going to confirm that. There’s a question about, what if I’m not currently operating in the surface areas, but I plan to expand going forward into that area. Am I eligible? You’re not eligible for this round. You do need to already be serving clients in that area. But as Luis mentioned, there will be an upcoming round next year as well, and so in that case, you would be eligible to apply at that point when you do have clients already in those service areas. And I think with that, I think that’s all of the questions here without duplicating different answers. So I’ll give it a couple more seconds here. But with that, we’ve covered everything. So again, everyone, thanks for joining, and you have our information there. Impact@ncrc.org is how you can reach Luis, who will again be the point person on this particular program. And as he’s mentioned there, his Calendly is also available. So we really appreciate your interest in this program. We look forward to your applications and look forward to working with you as well, moving forward. And thank you again for the work that you do for this important pre-purchase work and helping folks build wealth through their housing. So thank you again, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.

Learn more about the application process to host a graduate student for a member-designed, 9-month fellowship project that drives your organization’s mission forward.

The fellowship pairs innovative, graduate-level talent with NCRC members to address pressing issues such as climate resilience, affordable housing, food and water security, community health & wellness, wealth building, small business development, and workforce development. Fellows will spearhead a project that the host organization would otherwise be unable to undertake, while gaining real-world experience and receiving a $20,000 stipend.

Member applications for the 2026 Fellowship for Equitable Development are open from February 3-27, 2026.

Speakers

Laura Bentley, Director, Grant Administration, Community Impact, NCRC
Dia Henderson, Program Manager, Community Impact, NCRC

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Bentley 0:07
Hello, everyone. We’re going to get started now. Thank you so much for joining us today and for your interest in the Fellowship for Equitable Development. This is our member informational webinar for those who are interested in becoming hosts for the fellowship for the 2026 cohort, thanks for joining us. As we advance to the next slide, you can please make sure to introduce yourself in the chat, and we will get going. So first, some housekeeping notes. First, is that the NCRC Code of Conduct applies to this as well as all gatherings. Secondly, we did not allow AI chatbots to join the call. However, the call will be available to attendees afterwards on our fellowship homepage, so it will be recorded and made available to you all. And of course, if you do have any questions, you can submit those via the Q and A module at the bottom of the Zoom screen. We’re going to answer as many of those as we can at the end of the session, and we’ll be sharing our contact information as well, so you can always follow up if anything else comes up after the session. And lastly, you’ll see at the bottom left, there some essential links and tags to follow us and to be able to engage with our content at NCRC. And at the very bottom there, you will see the homepage for the fellowship specifically, so that’s where the recording will be made available, as well as all information around the fellowship. With that we will get going.

So first, for those of you who may not be familiar, NCRC is the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. We are a national nonprofit organization with over 700 members as part of our coalition, and we focus on a variety of different areas, from health equity to research, housing counseling and policy, all under the same umbrella and with the same goal of building wealth in low-wealth communities across the nation. So our agenda for today we’ll be going over the community impact team introductions. We’ll be talking about the fellowship. We’ll be going into the role of host organizations for members. We’ll be talking about benefits for members to becoming a host organization, examples of past products/ projects, so you can get a feel for those. We’ll be going through the fellowship timeline in more detail, and then we’ll be giving you a preview of what to expect in the host application. And then, of course, we’ll have time for Q and A at the end.

So next, my name is Laura Bentley, and I’m the director of grant administration with NCRC and part of the community impact team. And so in addition on our team, we have Luis Ortiz, one of our program managers, and also Dia Henderson, our other program manager within community impact, and she is the lead for the fellowship program, using the acronym FED for Fellowship for Equitable Development. So you’ll see that acronym coming up a fair bit. And Dia will be both the lead on this program, your main point of contact, and she’s joining me on this presentation to take it from here, so I’ll pass it to you, Dia.

Henderson 3:14
Thank you, Laura. Hi everybody like Laura said, I am Dia Henderson. I’m one of the program managers for community impact, and again, I am the FED lead and your primary contact for the fellowship. So I just wanted to give everyone an idea of what exactly the fellowship is. The Fellowship for Equitable Development is a program that prepares our next generation of community development leaders to help address the current and future challenges that we all are facing now by advancing programs that you all propose through housing, small business and workforce development, through direct community impact and a pipeline development with community members. So this is an eight-month paid fellowship for graduate students, graduate students, specifically graduate students and above. So that also includes our doctor and PhD students, MBA students also. So this eight-month paid fellowship helps the fellow not only learn more about this industry, but also helps drive your mission forward via a member design community development project. These projects will address affordable housing, small business development, climate resilience, community health and wellness, racial wealth building and so much more. So we are prioritizing fellowship projects that reflect this framework that we like to use. We are looking for projects that aim to move the needle on racial wealth building, community health and wellness, environmental justice through the avenues of housing, small business and economic mobility for BIPOC and LMI communities in our FED target geographies, which I will touch on literally in the next slide. So the. Is our priority geography, our target areas that we are prioritizing for this upcoming fellowship. Our areas include Buffalo, New York, Denver, Colorado, Detroit, Michigan, Hartford, Connecticut, Los Angeles, California, Nashville, Tennessee, North Carolina, Tacoma, Washington, Tennessee, the overall, and then Texas and Washington, DC, we are asking that you all have physical office locations in these areas, because there is a in person aspect to these placements, and it is one of our biggest requirements for the fellowship. I’ll get more into why we’re having in-person placements, but as of right now, we would love for you to know that we will like you to have physical locations in these areas.

So what is your role as a host? So for next year or this upcoming cohort, we are asking that, as a host, you supervise the fellow and track their deliverables. I’ll touch more on deliverables when we get into content, but these are deliverables that you all set for your fellow, and we ask that you track their deliverables and make sure that they are following the plan to execute the mission or execute your project, and advocate for your mission, for your organization. We also ask that you provide opportunities for in-person team connection. We found that when the fellow has an opportunity, opportunity to be in person with their host organization, they not only are building that bond with a team, but also getting that professional development of being able to work with the team and have resources and being on the ground to really see the communities that we are all working for. We also ask that you administer a $20,000 stipend to the fellow, along with respecting their 20 hours per week, part-time commitment. Again, these are graduate or higher-level students, so they do have commitment to school. So we also, we want to emphasize that you really do respect that 20 hours a week. And then finally, we ask that you turn in two reports as a host, one being the interim report and the second being a closeout report at the end of the fellowship program.

So what are your benefits? What are you getting out of this? You get to collaborate with new talent to help advance your organization’s mission. You also get to empower the next generation of community development leaders and really teach them what it means to work for and towards a just economy, alongside really pushing your mission and what drives you all’s organization every day, also, you will receive a $5,000 administrative stipend for your own use. And then finally, there’s little to no cost to do this program. This program really is to highlight you as an organization, but also really, like we said, empower that next generation and all we really are asking for is your time and commitment to not only the fellow, but to NCRC.

I wanted to give you all an idea of what some of the projects that you propose can look like. So here are some past projects that we have. So we have a fellow in Portland, Oregon right now working with Housing Oregon to really advance and advocate for Black homeownership and Black housing and really closing that racial wealth gap for BIPOC communities in the Portland, Oregon area. We also have a fellow right now in Connecticut, New Haven, to be specific, with the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven Mission Investment Company. This fellow has been doing some research, been looking for resources and also doing some technical assistance for new and small businesses within the area, focusing on BIPOC, SEDI and women owned organization, women-owned small businesses, and really helping them find those resources for funding. And then finally, we have Hip Hop Caucus, where they have a fellow currently working on their green initiative for green financing and really supporting the bank black Green campaign by doing some research, and also their fellow has been doing some advocacy work and doing some speaking engagements, also to really advocate, to help mobilize investments into MDIs and CDFIs, and like I said, the green financing.

So just to break down the application process right now, NCRC members will apply. Then we will have some time to review applications and select those projects. After that, our students will select, pick from those projects. They will select which project they would like to apply to, and they will apply. The top candidates we interview by us, and then we will take some of those top candidates and have you all interview them, and you will come back with your selections. After selections, we would have a NCRC member and student onboarding / orientation process. And then come September, I believe the fellowship will commence. Yes, so just to give you all some more specific times on that timeline, February is when your host application will open. March is when we will do that selection of hosts and projects. April is the time when the fellows will apply. Come May, we will start doing the finalist selections, and then by the end of May, I hope to have you know a few finalists for you all to interview. So come June, you would have those interviews with those finalists. You would tell me what those who your fellow would be. I would send that fellow an award letter and an agreement to sign for both you and the fellow. Then come August, the pre-launch orientation meeting, just to go over some housekeeping and you know the general rules. September is when the official fellowship will start. In between, there we’ll have some check-ins and some trainings for the fellows. February will be our interim report being due, and then may is our busier time. That’s when we have our just economy conference, where students are required, and we highly encourage our host to join. We also have the time when our fellowship will be ending, and then our closeout reports will be due also. So again, your fellow, your application process is from February 3 through the 27th just to give you an idea of what that content will look like, we’re asking for some contact information. We’re also asking, Where are you so in regards to those target areas that I showed earlier, like I said, we will be prioritizing those areas on that list. But that does not mean that we are not encouraging other folk to apply that are not necessarily in those target areas. So we do want to know where you all are.

We also are asking for the supervisor or the like, the point of contact, for the supervisor, for the fellow, alongside what is your full-time staff and what is your capacity? We also are asking for Sorry, I have like a cold, so I’m trying to get through this. But we also are asking you to describe your project and how that moves the needle on community development and for a just economy. So referring back to that framework that I showed earlier, where on that framework do you all in your project live? We’re also asking for the fellow title and summary of their main responsibilities. We’re asking that you all just don’t say NCRC fellowship. We want you know our fellows to have a real title and have something that they can really represent on their resume, alongside some of the key and core responsibilities that they will have. Then we are looking at having you all submit a work plan, which I will show in just a bit. That work plan basically will break down exactly where our fellows should be by month or by quarter, while also showing us those deliverables that we talked about earlier. We also ask that you give us a descriptive insight of what your schedule looks like if you’re fully in-person, or if you’re a hybrid office, what that would look like. And then also what your preferred dates or days you will want your fellows to be in the office. We just want that schedule so we can match it to their schedule. And then also, we’re looking for onboarding, training and supervision plans. So what is that going to look like when you all meeting? When would they expect to get paid? How long would the training take? Are you going to take a week before the official fellowship starts? Are you going to take the first week? Just so we have an idea of how to prepare our fellows. And then finally, if you have any additional funding sources for this project, please let us know we would love to to have some insight.

So I’m going to show you all our work plan template, if you can give me one second. So this is our work plan. We ask that you all resubmit this as an Excel through the application, we will be providing this template on the application, so just download it and then fill it out and resubmit. But essentially, it comes with a blank version and just a reference version or example. So you have some idea of what to report on or what to fill out. But up here, we ask that you give us some detailed deliverables that you would like to be, you know, have done by the end of the fellowship time. And then also this blue section here is the full work plan. This is where you’ll tell us the milestones and activities that the fellow will be completing month by month, just so when you all check in, you have something to reference going back to like, if you’re in November and you’re looking you’re reflecting on September and October, just making sure that those milestones and activities that you did record are done. Or if there needs to be a pivot, you have a reference point. We have put the key dates of the closeout reports in here, and then we also have the requirements at the bottom. So again, remember, in that 20-hour per week commitment, and that when you are filling this out, just try to be realistic in that sense of how much capacity and work can a graduate-level student do over the course of the next eight months. So again, here’s that, that example for reference. If you have any questions or, you know, get stuck with what this should look like. We’ve tried to break it down by month, but if it works better to break it down by quarter or by a different timeline, that’s still perfectly fine. Again, I ask that you submit this via Excel and not a PDF, so I will reshare really quickly.

So again, some of those key dates for you all would be for the host application. It opens February 3 at 9 am Eastern and closes promptly at 5 pm eastern on the 27, of February. The application link will be posted on our homepage for the fellowship, where you all went to press to watch the to register for the webinar. That’s where we’re going to put the application. So come the third please be on the lookout for that, and that is where you can apply. We also ask that you stay connected with us, so if you have any specific questions, if you could just contact us at impact@ncrc.org, I will try to get back to you as soon as possible, hopefully I answer most of the questions here, or you know, after this, we will have our Q A session. But if you have any specific questions or just need some clarification, please feel free to reach out to us. And again, our fellowship homepage has some details about the fellowship. Also that we have host testimonials. We have just a breakdown of the timeline there, also, and then also our specific description of the fellowship with those target areas also. We also, I’m not sure if Ralph is on here, but we also have our membership email. So if you have any specific questions about membership, or about your specific membership, please email membership@ncrc.org if you’re not yet a member, one thing about this program, it is required that you, as a host organization must be a NCRC member. So if you’re not yet a member, please feel free to go to ncrc.org/join and make sure you join our membership.

Cyrus 17:30
Yeah. The one thing I was also going to add is, if you want to know about other membership benefits as well, feel free to reach out to myself or my colleague at membership@ncrc.org. We’re happy to talk more about what other membership benefits you’ll be able to utilize.

Henderson 17:52
Thank you, Ralph. And then also quick reminder that we have our annual just economy conference coming up April 14 through the 15th. Here at Washington Hilton, here at the Washington Hilton in DC, we also have Hill day where folks get to really get on the ground and get to talk to our officials on April 16. So I would encourage you all, if you’re interested, to really look into that and go to ncrc.org/conference, to get more information and to register for the conference. So I just wanted to take this time to answer any questions that might be in the chat. I can’t physically see the chat, so if somebody can read some of the questions for me, that’d be great. But I’m here to answer any questions you may have.

Bentley 18:41
Yeah, I can pop in there to share some of those around the the Q amp a I have been answering those in writing, so we’ll go over a couple of the the big ones here, and feel free to continue to use the Q amp a module to submit your questions at the same time as we begin to go over these, I believe Haley will be adding into the chat a quick survey for you all to share your feedback on how this session is and so we continue to improve these sessions going forward. So please feel free to see that popping up in the chat and to answer that. Okay, so going through some questions here. The first question, Dia, could you go back to the section that talks about the timeline for the fellowship application, and could you just clarify, maybe go over that process again? I think the that blue flow chart, this one, okay, there’s just a question in the chat, if you could clarify that process.

Henderson 19:44
Yeah, for sure. So come February, you all would be applying. Once February is over, and I’ve already, you know, evaluated some of the or all of them, actually, all of the applications, we would then look at the rubric make sure that all the requirements are met. We. Would then select our host organizations or our projects. From there, we would make a project profile to put on our website for our students to see. Our students will then apply for their fellowship while also evaluating your project. So they’ll pick a project, and then they’ll also put it like in their application the top candidates for each project will be interviewed. After we interview them, we also send our top one to three candidates, depending on how many people apply, one to three candidates to you all to interview. Once you come back with your notes, we will all make the final decision. The fellow be notified. We will have those agreements signed. And then around August, we will do a onboarding slash orientation for both the member or host organizations and also the students. And then September, beginning of September, that’s when the fellowship starts.

Bentley 20:57
Thanks. That’s great. Let’s see here. We have a question of, will proposals be accepted outside of the priority areas?

Henderson 21:07
Yes. So we, again, we are prioritizing those that are in those target geographies. However, we will be considering and looking at proposals and projects from other areas, also.

Bentley 21:20
Awesome. Thank you. Could you share that slide just with the geographies? I think some folks were hoping to see those again and all. Oh, yeah, go ahead

Henderson 21:28
Also, like I mentioned at the end on our fellowship homepage, these same geographies are there too for your reference. Wonderful.

Bentley 21:38
Thanks. And there was a question about, what’s the process to become a prioritized NCRC geography? So that’s not an application process at this time. Those target geographies are established per cohort year. So this is just related to the 2026, fellowship cohort. Those were established to focus the NCRC resources and the grant funds that we have available for this to maximize local impact. And so these target geographies were determined following a research assessment that include a variety of factors, including demographics, housing affordability, rental costs, the impact of extreme weather events and bank presence across US geographies as well as other factors. And so just to be aware that these analyzes will continue to occur in the future, and so they may also result in different geographies for future cohorts. But again, as Zia mentioned, if you’re not located in one of these priority geographies and you’re still interested, please do apply. We just want you to know that these are the areas that would be prioritized for this particular cohort. And let’s see. We do have a question here, Dia, will you consider fellow candidates that are referred to by the prospective host organization?

Henderson 22:55
Yes, please. We are really working with our universities right now, but also our host organizations to recommend any specific people and or work with their local universities to really put this program out there. So if you do have someone that you want to recommend, please encourage them to apply, and we will review their application.

Bentley 23:18
Thank you. Let’s see here. There’s a question of, will the presentation be shared with all participants? That’s been mentioned? It’ll be on the fellowship homepage. Maybe Dia if you want to pop back to that end slide with the fellowship homepage listed there. That’s where all of this information will be available too. So if you’re wondering when Will, where will the application be posted, or what’s the date on a particular thing, that information will always be on that homepage. So feel free to use that as your as your one stop resource, as well as obviously letting us know if you have any questions. Let’s see here, we have a question on whether or not the project needs to focus on one community in particular, just as we were talking about the focus geographies, our hope is to provide localized impact in those geographies. And so certainly, we’d be looking for proposals where that is where the impact is located. So if you do have multiple, perhaps footprints that your organization covers. It would be ideal if the fellowship project is focused on one in our target geographies, and again, if you’re outside of those geographies, then obviously that does not apply. It can focus on multiple geographies as well. If you have something that covers a number of different areas, so that was just something to bear in mind. If you’re able to tune into some of those target geographies, that is where our focus is, and if not, you can also suggest your proposal as it is. Let’s see here, Dia, can you just talk a little bit about the payment? So there’s a question you know, Will. Most organizations be responsible for paying the fellow from their own funds. Can you just go over a little bit about the funding breakdown and who receives what and who pay with the money?

Henderson 25:10
Question, yeah. So as far as payment we, as NCRC, we give you all the 20, $20,000 type in for the fellow, and it is up to you to distribute that. So that’s why, when I mentioned here we are, so when I mentioned the onboarding, training and supervision plan that would include payment, also, if you plan on having them as a What is it, w2 worker or a contractor, and how they will be paid? So that sometimes we have folks that add the fellow to their current payroll, whether that be bi-weekly or bi-monthly, or we do have a few months few folks that also do, like every quarter they get paid. So that’s just something that you as an organization will have to work with your finance department. But also, we’ve had a few people work with the student to see the most beneficial and optimal way to be paid. But at the end of the day, you all are paying that stipend does not come from, like we don’t directly pay the fellow. You all would pay the fellow with the funds that we give you.

Bentley 26:15
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that highlights point that this is a essentially a no-cost program, right? We will be providing the funds that you will pass through to the fellow, and we also provide an administrative stipend that $5,000 that dia mentioned to help offset any administrative costs associated with providing payroll services to the fellow, etc. Let’s see that’s coming through to most of the questions. If you did happen to post something in the chat and it hasn’t been answered, please go ahead and put that into the Q and A.

Henderson 26:53
And again, if you haven’t had the time to Haley dropped a survey in the chat, and we would love if you could fill that out for us, please. Thank you.

Bentley 27:04
And then lastly, there’s a question about accessibility to students with disabilities. Regarding the application, to the best of our understanding, it is accessible to folks. If there’s any concern that anyone may have in terms of accessing the application, please let us know so that we can continue to improve how the application is set up. So we’d be happy to get any additional questions on that specifically as well. Not seeing any additional questions. So maybe we can just pop to that contact page again, so that for all of you to be aware, of course, we’re not going anywhere, you can always find us at impact@ncrc.org, and we’d be happy to answer any other questions that do come out, Now, I’ll pass it to you to close this out to you again.

Henderson 28:06
Just want to remind everybody to please join us at this year’s just economy conference at the Hilton, at the Washington Hilton in DC, and also Hill Day, if you are able to make it again, that registration link would be ncrc.org/conference, I would like to thank everybody for joining us today. Again. If you have any specific questions, please reach out to myself or Laura at that impact@ncrc.org I’m here to answer any questions. I do appreciate everyone for considering being a host organization for the fellowship program, and I hope to hear from you all, and I look forward to reading everybody’s application.

In the second of our 5-part series covering the essentials of SNAP E&T, NCRC’s Economic Mobility team share how community-based organizations evaluate and assess the alignment of your training programs and support services with SNAP E&T requirements as well as the capacity of their current workforce development staff.

We walk through the SNAP E&T work components and reimbursable support services. Then we assess if your staff capacity and tracking systems position your organization for success as a third-party partner. This includes reviewing the administrative infrastructure needed to successfully operate a SNAP E&T program such as participant tracking systems, service documentation requirements, and eligibility verification processes.

Speakers

Jonathan Osei, Principal, Adage Ventures LLC, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Simon Want, Economic Mobility Specialist, NCRC
Brandee Davis-Douglas, Director, Economic & Financial Mobility, United Way of Greater Nashville

Transcript:

NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.

Osei 0:07
Good afternoon, everybody.

Today, we’re excited to be sharing our SNAP E&T series webinar on assessing capacity infrastructure and staff requirements for SNAP Employment and Training Success. So just a little bit of housekeeping before we get started. So we have our code of conduct that applies to all of our gatherings. But if you have any questions, feel free to raise your hand with that raise your hand button in the zoom, and then one of us will acknowledge you, and perhaps have coming off mute or even send your questions to the chat. I know this is a relatively small group, so it might be actually a little bit more engaging too, so if you have any questions, please just ask away.

So just want to acknowledge some of the challenges that the ecosystem is facing right now, whether it be the funder and partner priority shifts, there’s more with less, conundrum, uncertainty, existential threats. All of these are like pretty serious and critical challenges that the whole like nonprofit ecosystem is really facing right now. And a lot of organizations who are doing this work of workforce development and economic development work, and just want to acknowledge that these are some of the things that are really affecting how we do this work right now. And also acknowledge that this is really an opportunity for us to think creatively about how we do this work and support participants and support communities despite all of these things going on. So hopefully this opportunity for folks to really like, “Oh, this is a clear opportunity to build out our programming and to like, strengthen some of our existing programming when it comes to serving participants through workforce development, career readiness programming.”

So here’s our agenda for today. As you know, this is, as you may know, this is the second webinar of our five-part webinar series on SNAP Employment and Training. And we’re really excited to welcome and introduce a couple of folks that we’ve brought together, recap some of the things we discussed on this first webinar in the series. Discuss the objectives for the day. Give a little insight onto what it takes for third-party providers to build their organizational capacity. Mention a tool, provide some actual strategies, and even have a guest who can field some questions. And hopefully we’ll support with questions as well, and we’ll talk a little about some next steps in the upcoming webinar, in the third webinar of our series.

Well, I’m Jonathan Osei work resolvement consultant with NCRC, and founder and principal of Adage ventures LLC, and I have over nine plus years of work resolment experience In the context of both community and national nonprofits, dedicated economic mobility advocate, working at the intersection of government, private sector, nonprofits and philanthropy to really modernize jobs, expand resource access and foster financial stability. We’re excited to have on the economic Project Specialist, economic mobility product specialist, Simon Wang as well, and I’ll pass the mic.

Wang 3:48
Yeah, thanks, Jonathan. Absolutely, so very happy to be moving into the second session of this series that hopefully is going to help everyone walk through the steps that are required to get involved as a third-party partner in SNAP E&T. We know it can be convoluted, and there’s lots of steps and lots of requirements. And so hoping to demystify some of that today and build off of the introduction that we had a couple of months back, which is now on our website. So super excited for today, Jonathan. And yeah, feel free to put in the chat, drop questions, use the Q and A feature. We have a smaller group today, so don’t be afraid to be interactive and to interrupt us and ask questions. And yeah, thanks, Jonathan.

Osei 4:31
Right on, right on. And then I want to introduce our special guest, Brandee Davis, who is the director economic and financial mobility at United Way of Greater Nashville, and also a SNAP E&T guru and administrator in the state of Tennessee. And I’ll just pass the mic to Brandee to give a little bit more introduction and excited, really, to have her.

Davis-Douglas 4:57
Thank you, Jonathan. Good afternoon, it looks like, time is flying. Brandee Davis-Douglas, as Jonathan mentioned, I’m the Director of Economic and Financial Mobility here at United Way. So I oversee all the financial stability and economic mobility work here. Some of those programs consist of the voluntary Income Tax Assistance Program, the SNAP Employment and Training program, where we serve as an intermediary statewide for the Department of Labor and the Department of Human Services, and also oversee the Financial Empowerment Center. Long history of state, local and federal government, grant work, project management work, lot of experience in scaling up programs and just demonstrating capacity and sustainability over time. So thank you guys for having me. If you have any pointed questions, just let me know.

Osei 5:57
Yes, please bring all the pointed questions, everybody. This this group, this smaller group, I think, is like the perfect sort of environment for that, too, as well. Well, here’s a quick overview of SNAP Employment and Training, or E&T, as we say, for short. So it’s a federal program, administered by USDA, specifically, the Food and Nutrition Service that helps SNAP participants gain skills, training and work experience. It connects all those individuals who are interested in who are enrolled into education, job readiness and supportive services that ultimately reduce their barriers to work. And it promotes long term economic stability by really providing those holistic supports that along the way to that career stability. And it ultimately is a tool to help community-based organizations expand their reach and strengthen their existing workforce programs. So you may be wondering what makes a SNAP E&T third-party provider? Here’s a couple of bullet points that we’llpoint to it, but we’ll talk a little more about capacity in a couple. So a third-party provider is an organization delivering SNAP E&T services on behalf of the state or in partnership with the state, using existing workforce or training programs to serve SNAP participants. What really makes a strong third-party provider is mission alignment, so having intentional workforce training or programs already built out the capacity to track those services and costs, so whether it be the data capacity, the staffing capacity, and then the ability to offer the training and supportive services so the holistic supports that ultimately can help provide participants with the necessary supports to get to that eventual job, career, educational goals, and then a stable non federal funds for the 50-50 match. So really being prepared fiscally to be a third-party provider.

Okay, so now, now we’ve spoken through some of the things, like briefly did a brush on SNAP E&T and what it is, our objectives for today are really to, like, talk through and identify these core processes, like tracking participation, delivering service and verifying SNAP E&T eligibility. We’ll get more into some of these two along the way, as we go through this five-part series on SNAP E&T. We’re also here to assess existing systems, tools and workflows supporting SNAP E&T activities, really understanding that current capacity, and then identify capacity gaps and infrastructure staffing that may limit program effectiveness. And then perhaps we’ll get into some actual solutions. Like, we may not do some solution hearing on this call, but like, we’ll at least, like, provide you with a couple tools and a framework to really think about how you might solve some of those gaps as well. So this is a very key picture. I think this has circulated around for many years. Like what it really takes to be in SNAP E&T alignment, as you can see, it’s having the right participants, having the necessary funding, having the correct services and having the correct capacity. And then in the blue outer rim, you can’t quite see it, that’s like understanding your state context. That’s really a key as well. And the center is a 50/50, third-party provider, or third-party partner. And once you have each of these buckets in alignment, right, you’re. You may be in position to really be a third-party provider. We’ll talk a little bit more about the funding on in our next webinar. But today we’re going to really focus on capacity and then the services piece. So when it comes to services, there’s three key types of services. So we have the components, which are these, like very broad categories of employment, treatment activities, defined by the Food and Nutrition Act. We have the case management, which is that guidance and support during participant during participation in those components. And then we’ll dive a little bit deeper into each of these three types too, as well. And then we have the supportive services, or the participant reimbursement, is what we call it, but supportive services, so they’re the wraparound services, holistic services to increase access to participation. And these are what can be reimbursed by the state for administering and providing to participants.

So when it comes to what third-party providers must do to really meet that service alignment, they have to write at least one of the components have that case management, and then have access to supportive service, either themselves or through partners, so being able to provide those supportive services. And we think of supportive service something in like transportation, childcare, training, things like that. And when you think of case management, we’re thinking about that one on one support, the coaching, and then the components, John this next slide are like supervised job search, job search training, the education, job retention, workfare, work experience or self employment training. Like these are like a base for, like, existing offerings that your organization must have to be eligible to be a third-party provider. These are essentially what make you into a workforce agency, and like, having these offerings are what make you a workforce agency, a workforce provider. So when it comes to assessing your workforce development capacity, sort of mentioned three key pieces to think about, just from like an operational standpoint. So evaluating your current programming, those staffing models and the different roles, assessing the staff skills that your staff currently has, training and then a SNAP E&T readiness, so really preparing your team to really engage in SNAP E&T, because you have already built up an existing and successful program, SNAP E&T as something, as a tool to really like build your base of your program, and then understanding the workload, supervision and sustainability considerations as well. So how do you make this program last from a compliance standpoint and really being integrated into the services that you already offering? And to quote Seattle Jobs Initiative, Kathy Metcalf once said, she says, ‘SNAP ENT is ultimately a layaway program, so helping you to reimburse those supportive services that you’ve already offered.’ So you’re investing in your participants, and then utilizing your capacity that you have to reimburse through state funds, those supportive service that you’ve offered up to the participants. Okay, so here’s one of the tools. It’s a capacity assessment tool for readiness. Is there a certain amount of individuals that we must must be served annually? So this is one of those questions that’s going to be very specific to your state context and your partnership with your state administrator, or your administrating body like and this is something that you as a third party provider when you eventually become a third-party provider, eventually become a third-party provider, can really, like have an intentional discussion about, I think this might actually be a place for even Brandee to chime in to talk specifically about that question as well.

Davis-Douglas 14:34
Sure. Great question, Vanessa. Honestly, what we do here is encourage partners to start small, so we don’t want you to reinvent the wheel. And usually scaling up shows much more long-term success than starting big, because starting small allows you to kind of work out the kinks. So we have partners, we have small, Mom and Pop type workforce development partners to larger partners that are well known in different industry sectors that are offering kind of the full gamut of different credentialing and apprenticeship, skilled Up program, skilled trade programs. So no, there is not a specific amount served that you as an organization needs to serve annually. However, as Jonathan mentioned, sometimes those are conversations that take place on the front lines with your state agency who’s kind of managing the program or administering the program, as long as it aligns with their goals. So I hope that answers your question in a roundabout way, but we have partners here that serve annually 10 clients where they are touching like young adults that are aging out of foster care. So they’re serving a small amount of individuals, and then we have partners that are serving 720 individuals because their programs and their organization are much larger. Yeah, I hope that helped to add some context. Thanks. Jonathan.

Osei 16:15
Right on. Thanks, Brandee and great, Vanessa. So here’s one of the tools that was developed in partnership with her red if Seattle Jobs Initiative Center for Employment Opportunities and Fair Start created. This is one of the great capacity assessment tools. We’ll make sure to drop in the chat and also include it in follow up after this webinar. But it’s really a good tool to, like, do a bit of that mapping to your current capacity and really assess, like, what your staff is currently able to do. There’s also another tool specifically on that component side too, to really just do a checklist of see if you already are currently operating one of those components. And this is really about just seeing whether you’re small or large you have the correct fit to even begin. So when it comes to mapping, I’ll use the frontline staff example. So frontline staff might include case managers, employment specialists, intake coordinator, job developer, or just the skills transfers that occur. So really, there’s a few potential SNAP E&T functions that any of these frontline staff can really be especially effective at completing.

Whether it’s the wraparound support so the actual case management, which is a core function of their existing role as already so, which includes that support service coordination, and then also case noting, which is a key part of the delivery of those frontline services. Then there’s that initial eligibility screening. So when it comes to SNAP E&T having that, there’s already some level of intake and screen that you might be doing as an organization right now. So really, including that SNAP screening as a key priority to ensure that folks who are already SNAP eligible and SNAP participants can be SNAP E&T participants as well and really see if they’re appropriate for the services that are offered, and then the ability to verify or conduct a process of verifying their eligibility and understanding whether they’re a good fit. And then the job placement services and employer partnerships, which is the services that sort of really help to get that next level for participants, and also show a lot of the impact that your organization is having in connecting folks to job opportunities. And then the employment skills training, so whether it be the soft or hard skills, really preparing folks for the workforce. But this is like a common example of like a frontline staff in the roles. And in the next slide, you’ll see the broader mapping tool. And this checklist really covers the staffing roles, their workload capacity, the data tracking and reporting systems, the service delivery workflows, compliance and documentation readiness, like, really it’s like 11 pages, and I think it’s a pretty good resource for waiting through the complexities of potentially adding SNAP E&T or becoming a third-party provider of SNAP E&T. You. So this is really a good tool to identify where there is room for your current programming to grow in terms of its alignment with the SNAP E&T model, to prioritize and sort out whether you’re either a good fit now or maybe there’s something for you in the future, and then maybe align some of the systems that you have internally to better support the third-party provider onboarding process. So would the state agency send us her for or we identify you? Thanks, Vanessa, for the question. So I can’t speak broadly to this, but I’ll pass the mic to Brandee, because Brandee might have some context specifically for Tennessee that she could speak to as well.

Davis-Douglas 20:58
Sure. So it can work both ways. Vanessa, you got some great questions this morning, keeping me on my toes in the chat and paying attention to Jonathan throughout the presentation. So Tennessee operates through direct referral systems. So the state agency, the Department of Human Services, their case managers, as they are determining eligibility real time with individuals. They go through a quick snippet of SNAP E&T and if individuals work, registrants, of course, who are required, based on policy, to look for a job and become employed, agree to employment after training and educational services. So they send direct referrals to partner agencies, sometimes through the American Job Centers, and sometimes directly through third-party partners. The way Tennessee works currently, we work twofold. So the State Agency, Department Human Services, sends direct referrals through the American Job Centers, and then we have a third-party partner model, and what that looks like is reverse referrals. So that means agencies such as yourself, Vanessa, you have individuals that are already walking through your doors. You’re already in the community, and that way, you send the referrals through whatever process your state agency has to them to determine eligibility. Once eligibility has been confirmed, then you are free and clear to onboard them and enroll them into the SNAP Employment and Training program. So it’s really, honestly based on your state and how they roll out its SNAP E&T program, because all states do it differently. Some simply do it through direct referral process, because you have a state agency that really, pretty much handles the administering and the management of the SNAP Employment and Training program, and then you have some states that do a two fold similar to Tennessee, where we do a third-party partner model, but we also offer those services through our American Job Centers. Was that helpful?

And if I may, Jonathan, I want to piggyback on the first question that Vanessa asked. I thought about this after I kind of wrapped it up. What we do here in Tennessee, just as an example, when we are having conversations with partners that are interested in becoming third-party partners, while we assess their capacity based on the programs that they currently offer, we ask for a percentage of individuals based on that population that are receiving SNAP benefits or that may be eligible staff for SNAP benefits. So for instance, if they’re serving already in a skilled trade program that they’re offering, that you may be offering through your organization, and you’re already touching 100 individuals annually that are coming in and out. Based on that current 100 individuals, what is the percentage? Because I’m sure you’re already doing screening questions prior to enrolling them into your program. So you’re already asking some of the direct questions around, are you receiving any type of government assistance? What does that look like? And that can kind of give you a better idea of how much of your population you’re already currently serving outside of SNAP that may be receiving SNAP food benefits. And so if it’s 10% then, then you would agree to serve 10 people in that particular component. But you may be, you may have another arm of a training program, or let’s say, job search training, that you’re currently already offering in a different gamut of some of your workforce development programs, and let’s say all of them are 50% of the 100 are SNAP eligible because you already confirmed that through their self-attesting or whatever processes that you currently have in place, and so you are able to build capacity in different components versus just offering one component. So you may offer job search training, you may offer Work-Based Learning. You may also offer some vocational arm let’s say CDL or CNA training, and you got different pipelines of individuals that are coming through all three of those programs based on those pipelines and based on your assessment that you’re currently your intake and assessment screening processes that you’re already doing for those particular programs, you can identify what the population looks like as it relates to SNAP food benefits, which will give you a better idea when it comes to projecting and estimating how to propose what your program and what your partnership will look like under SNAP E&T.

Osei 25:48
Awesome, awesome. And folks, as I said, this is a smaller group, so ask those pointed questions. Please, please. So just one more point on this SNAP E&T staff mapping tool, so I’m dropping it in the chat, but essentially, it’s a tool to help you identify strengths and gaps, prioritize some near term improvements and align to those internal systems so readiness could look like dedicated staff time towards SNAP E&T participants, a clear intake and referral process, the ability to track participation hours and outcomes and then establish documentation reporting practices.

So I, I think this really positions us to, like, really think through some of the actionable strategies, and to what I would say is like open up a little bit for questions, too, about gaps that folks may already have identified, but also acknowledge some gaps that may be existing with your current programming in terms of being eligible and being ready to be a third party provider. So yeah, so the key steps to move from assessment to participation, so, like, now that you’ve identified these gaps, now you might have used that mapping tool, like, like, what’s next? Really getting to that what’s next, whether it be the lining of staff and current training and the supportive service with the state or county plans, really understanding those state or county plans and being in communication and then just having some strategies to strengthen partnerships and maximize that community impact, I think, really position you well, but we can get to sort of broad level, actual strategies and some of the weedy ones as well. So and you’ll notice when I the strengthening partnerships for impact piece, like, there’s a reason why Brandee specifically is on this call. Like, engage state or county administrators early, really having an understanding of who they are, like know your people. Really understand that plan and set a shared expectation when internally for your referrals and reporting and communication, and externally, communicate that with those partners that you’re working with as well, and then just leverage those partners to extend services and reach more participants like ultimately, this is about shifting opportunities for your your community, in your region, and it really starts with like, how you prepare your organization to serve the participants, and if you’re already doing the work well, like, the third party provider model really is a way to, like, bolster those efforts that you’re already doing right now. Okay, so we’ll mention a couple popular gaps, and then some practical strategies. And like, some of these are a little more weedsy. Some of these, I would say, like, they might be just like the nature of doing the work. So please, please feel free to ask questions, and we could dive deep and sort of parse some things.

So, next slide, sorry about that. So maybe you have no dedicated SNAP E&T lead. So this could be you essentially deputizing somebody who has, like, strong compliance, strong grants management, contract management abilities, and figuring out a way to, like, provide shared responsibilities, maybe to their other tasks and other responsibilities they’ve already have in their in the current state of the organization. So it also could be limited or manual tracking systems. So like, and this is really thinking about whether the organization, small or large, like what it means to like, adjust, what it means to shift and. It means to rethink those tracking systems. So maybe it’s starting simple with your tracking tools and templates, maybe going back to the drawing boards a couple times. Like those data conversations are, they’re gonna take some time to really iron out. So just be willing to, like, keep going back to the drawing board a couple times, and then maybe it’s unclear intake and referral process. So really documenting basic intake and referral steps. I’m a big standard operating procedures person, so get you that SOP, get ready to really, like, put pen to paper about what you already are actively doing, and maybe you can identify some gaps from there. Like, Oh, wait, this doesn’t make sense. Or wait, this is an unnecessary step, like, so it’s really about who you’re centering and these processes. So from an organizational standpoint, how are you building out systems that work for your team, that work for participants, that work with your community partners as well? Like, there’s a lot of different stakeholders to think about, but it helps to think about that early. But build something that could be sustainable by adjusting as you go to as well, And then the staff training gaps. I think it’s from my experience, it’s been really helpful to have, like, strong state administrators in this part, I think, specifically, and also being connected to a good national partner. It helps as well to like to really help you understand. So obviously, NCRC is is running a few different communities of practice on SNAP E&T, offering webinars, but like a strong state administrator, may set up intentional time or intentional spaces for you to build that understanding of how to really work through the SNAP Employment and Training like and I’m talking about like deep weeds of levels of like compliance. So they utilize those existing state guidance and peer learning opportunities. And then another good question from Vanessa, I see, ‘are participants required to report weekly to verify compliance participation? Do we sanction if non-compliance?’ Okay, so this is going to be heavily dependent on your state, and your your or your county, or your your context that you’re existing in. So whether it’s like, are you talking about, like, job search logs, are you talking about ensuring the correct usage of supportive service, like, maybe a little more context? Okay, yes, um,

Davis-Douglas 32:40
If I may jump in.

Osei 32:41
Yeah.

Davis-Douglas 32:42
So participants aren’t required to report anything. Honestly, it’s your responsibility as the provider to follow up, as required by FNS, every 30 days, not monthly, because months change. So you may have 28 days, like in February, you know, and so on and so forth, and 31 days in another month, but every 30 days, as a provider, your case managers are responsible for following up with the individual, and that’s just really to assess, like, how is training going? Are there any other barriers that have come up to remain in compliance? But it’s not the participants responsibility to call you and say, I’ve done X, Y and Z. It’s the other way around. I hope that answers your question.

“So this is different from traditional, traditional welfare transition programs.” Can you give me some context on welfare, transitional, transition programs, trying to make sure I understand. Sorry, Vanessa, we’re making you work this morning.

Osei 34:13
We may be able to, we may be able to add her in as a to speak, if, if she…

Davis-Douglas 34:19
Yeah, required to come into the office weekly, amount of hours, whether training, job search, etc. So again, this is based on your state. So every state’s policy looks different when it comes to SNAP. Now you know a parameter FNS and the Fed set a parameter for what policy looks like for the administrative entity to roll out SNAP benefits. However, as it relates to SNAP E&T and in some states, those processes look a little different. So like here in Tennessee, there used to be a. Day and time where individuals had to record when they did job search training to remain eligible. So I want to make sure we’re not mixing apples with oranges, because you have a population of a bonds able bodied adults who are required to show proof in order to continue their benefits outside of that three-month time period. And so to that regard, yes, they will be required to show documentation to support them continuing to receive those benefits. But the workforce development arm looks fairly different. Again, the responsibility falls on the provider to ensure that the program and the individual remains in compliance, because it’s our job as providers to help lead the way for them to be successful. And participants don’t know how to do that, but from a food benefit standpoint, and I believe that’s what we’re talking about, a little bit, they are required, an able body is is required to demonstrate that they’ve done all the things to continue to receive their benefits that’s totally different from either E&T part, the Employment and Training Part. Was that helpful? Okay, thanks, Vanessa.

Osei 36:17
Right on. Right on. Vanessa, we appreciate you asking some great questions. Okay, okay, Brandee, so I have a question for you. So what are some popular gaps that you’ve seen working with third-party providers in your role, or like, or what’s like? One that stands out the most, one that is like, maybe the easiest, lowest hanging fruit to address, and it’s sometimes dealt with.

Davis-Douglas 36:39
That’s a great question. Jonathan, I think the popular gaps that you name are dead on, one that we see a lot with E&T programs that are definitely scaling up or showing that momentum is partners like reinventing the wheel. So they there’s an attempt to create a program that fits into all the regulation and and policy and compliance requirements in order to be a SNAP E&T partner. And so they are tweaking and changing their internal processes and practical processes to fit into SNAP E&T to be eligible for the thing. And so that’s what we walk away from. We do not encourage that at all. We don’t want you to reinvent the wheel. You’re already doing the work as a workforce development partner, as the provider or the intermediary, it’s our job to figure out where you best fit and to assist you in scaling up and growing so don’t reinvent the wheel. Again, we see a lot of partners and providers that create programs that sit outside of what they’re they are being successful in, and it’s almost like this is a whole new thing, SNAP E&T so we’re going to push the people over here SNAP, they go through this track record when traditionally, your processes look totally different. So that’s a huge gap, and a misconception with a lot of providers, is that okay? Well, we offer workforce development training opportunities programs. We say it’s we name it this, but in your state plan, it says this, so maybe we need to change it to this, so it can look like this, so it can look like the thing to do the thing. And that’s where you find a lot, you know, inconsistencies, a lot of gaps and transparency and communication, a lot of huge compliance risk and red flags, because you are creating something to fit into something when our job as the provider is to figure out where you best fit, so that you’re not reinventing the wheel and doing something. We want partners that are already demonstrating success, that are already investing into these individuals in their community, these potential participants in their communities and their programs are already standard, for the lack of a better word, so we don’t want you to reinvent anything in order for it to fit. It’s our jobs to help kind of guide you and lead the way to figure out where you best fit, and to really help you make minor, if any, tweaks in order to be in compliance with the E&T part versus the WIOA piece. So let’s say you’re touching Title One, folks, but you’re also touching SNAP E&T, folks. And so there’s a lot of cross-pollination going on here and a lot of shared successes that are going on here. Most of the individuals that qualify for Title One also are receiving SNAP benefits. So how do we leverage that and braid those dollars so that Title One is paying for tuition and maybe SNAP E&T is covering all the supportive services, like based on your budget, based on your agreement, and based on what the model is or the practices is within your state that’s how you can better assess, like, how to scale your program, or how to share the successes versus, you know, cherry-picking who should go one way and who should go another way.

Osei 40:15
Amazing, yeah, like that. That’s awesome. Really speaking to how SNAP E&T can help bolster an existing program and really strengthen and the supports that you already provide to the participants that you served. Okay, so one of the questions I have, I’m not quite sure where folks are at in their SNAP E&T journey, or even their workforce development agency community organization journey, but like, what do you say to that organization that’s a little bit newer to the work of like, building out a workforce development or career readiness or programming? Like, what do you say to them when, if they come to show interest in potentially working with you to build a SNAP E&T third-party provider partnership?

Davis-Douglas 41:03
Definitely want to make sure that their workforce services are in alignment with our state plan. And do they which component do they actually fit in? Again, every state looks fairly differently. They roll their programs out differently. And what is beneficial to the provider, so that we are not layering work and providing extra responsibility than they’re already doing. So, figuring out, like, where the sweet spot is to onboard them, ensuring that they have identified and have adequate non-federal funding set aside, and really driving home what success is. Because success to your organization may look totally different to what success means to me, to United Way and to the program overall. So really understanding the SNAP plan, understanding the SNAP E&T plan, the state plan, understanding what the state agency’s expectations are, understanding if they can meet those internal deadlines. Because keep in mind, as an intermediary, you have to filter parameters for your internal processes and deadlines in order to meet the state’s required deadlines. And again, it just kind of goes up the chain. So the state is required to report to FNS, and then that folds down. So finding the sweet spot so that we are not creating bottlenecks for providers. We’re not creating levers of stress because we’re asking them to do more than they typically do is some of the things that we kind of think about while we are assessing if this is a good fit, because you may have great programs, doesn’t mean you’ll be a great SNAP E&T program, I mean partner. So there, there’s a difference there, you may have great programs, great successes. You may be serving 500-plus individuals every year, but if you can’t meet those administrative pieces, then it doesn’t work for any of us.

Osei 43:13
Okay, okay, so conversely, then, okay. So what do you say to the powerhouse organization that is, they’ve done WIOA, they’ve done this, they’ve done this, they’ve done that. They receive a lot of funding, and they’re interested in adding on another potential funding source, or via the reimbursement model. In this case, what do you say to that organization?

Davis-Douglas 43:33
Again, what does your non-federal funding, your unrestricted dollars, look like? Because you named a lot of different organization that receive federal dollars, yeah, and so really identifying and ensuring that we are not duplicate, being duplicate love. You know what I’m trying to say? I know I couldn’t get that to roll off my tongue. But ensuring I would slow walk a partner that is really, really big, because they have money coming in from our gamuts and so in to ensure that we’re not putting them in a compromising position, and that we are clearly articulating what the requirements are to be a SNAP E&T partner to receive those reimbursements on the back end will be a very candid conversation that we would need to have, because, again, you have title one, you have, you know, SNAP E&T, and then there are a number of other federal funding sources that support workforce development trainings really just to ensure that those dollars either they’ve lost this identity and it’s no longer considered federal funding at some point, there are some programs that does that. They are pass through dollars, and by the time they get to you, they are considered unrestricted dollars. Don’t want to go down a rabbit hole, but there are a lot of circumstances where that happens, and so ensuring that if that’s a situation, we need to clearly be able to follow the trail to ensure that we are not using federal dollars because it’s a huge audit finding that’s for the state, which again, flows down to the partners and the intermediary who’s kind of managing those relationships. So that’s what I would say. I think it’s exciting to know that they understand the landscape of workforce development. They understand what those goals are. They understand how to identify different participants and what arm and what pathway they need to go to, and where there are opportunities for co-enrollment, which is huge, because you’re braiding dollars and you’re leveraging dollars against other programs, which is great because it helps you grow all of your programs across the board. But again, just that federal funding stream and ensuring that it’s non-federal dollars, and what’s the difference between restricted and unrestricted? That gets lost on some folk.

Osei 45:49
Right on. Okay, okay, so you’re jumping ahead a little bit. We’re gonna talk about that’s our next webinar. But no, but the point is, the point is not lost. I’m hearing a piece really around, like mission and alignment and like, what people call scope creep. So like, making sure that your organization has a very clear scope of why they’re doing the work before, like, instead of chasing the dollars. And I know, like, chasing dollars feels like the work of a regular nonprofit, especially now, so it’s just like a little bit of a warning to folks like, this isn’t one of these opportunities to chase dollars. This is like, to like, bolster up what you already have. Yes, absolutely. Okay, so thank you for answering those questions. I now kind of want to open up to like, the audience. I know we’ve had a couple folks chime in via the audience, but like, one of the things that is like, very key to alignment outside this capacity. We spoke about funds. How many services and capacities we’ve mentioned funds lightly. We’re not getting too deep into that until our next webinar, but the state context that that ring around all of this that really helps the third-party provider to be successful. So I think what have you found in your role as, like a state administrator has been like, just the most beneficial for folks to just come to the door with like or then also, what do you see is, like, a key part of your role in like, helping third-party providers to be successful, right? Those, those are the two questions I’m really thinking of, but really opening it up to the audience as well, to chime in too.

Davis-Douglas 47:39
I don’t see anything coming in. I think my role, from an intermediary, nonprofit provider standpoint, a part of our role is, as you said, to ensure alignment, ensure that partners that are coming to the table have the intention of providing the necessary skill and also warm handoff to employment. So the goal is to train them up and get them employed. And so we have experienced some providers that provide great services. I mean, they’re doing all the things, but what they’re what they are very clear about is it’s not their responsibility to ensure the individual gets a job. Well, that’s a that’s a red flag for me, because the intention and the goal for the program is to scale them up and help them give them a warm handoff to an employer. So those employer relationships are very important. So when providers or potential partners knock on our doors and want to learn more about the program. One of the things that we asked through, through our assessment is, what does your employer pipeline looks like? Do you have direct relationships, indirect relationships? Are they pen to paper through MOU agreement, you know, contractual, or are you guys just friends and they are willing to hire, you know, we need to see a strong commitment that these employer pipelines are willing and ready to hire individuals fresh off the press, once they’ve completed training. If there isn’t an employer pipeline, you may not be a good fit, because our requirement as it relates to FNS, and then our, our direct partner, our contractual partner, which is the Department of Labor. We are required,  we have KPIs that we have to meet, and not that, you know, this is just another data number that we’re checking off the box, but we are really ill equipped and participants to train them and not hand walk them to an employer to get them onboarded for a job, we have to remember that most of the individuals that we serve need the skill, but also don’t have the social and the other life skills to help them retain the job, not to mention walk into an interview and, you know, and kill it and actually get offered the job. And so it’s our responsibility as partners that we are holding their hand throughout that process to ensure that we’ve landed them in the right space based on that skilled trade program, based on whatever their credentialing program look like that they went through to demonstrate success, because you can have success through successful completion, but if that employment number isn’t one in one, that’s not a success.

Yeah, I hope I’m not too forward, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s a skill ’em and to get them employed. And so without those employer relationships and that pipeline, essentially, you’re just training people and giving them a certificate of completion.

Osei 50:49
Yep, yep at the end of the day, like you’re a workforce development organization, a workforce agency, a workforce community lever, you’re supposed to be helping to develop the workforce, like, if it’s not, lead to jobs really, really questioning what the purpose of your program is. Brandee, appreciate you providing a little bit more context. I don’t know the state context is really, I think what helps to, like, prepare folks to really, as you said, walk through this journey of becoming a SNAP E&T third-party provider really want to open up the floor once again, to additional questions. I have more questions. So if y’all are, if y’all have any more questions…

Okay, so one of the questions that I had too so specifically in reference to the state context, is like responsiveness of the state. Like, if I call, will you answer? That’s kind of what I’m wondering. Like, the level of like engaging as a third-party provider, like, is there a certain level of like preparation that requires to engage with you in the first place, or do you reach out first like, how does this partnership really build?

Davis-Douglas 52:21
It should happen twofold. So, you know, the state agency develops the strategy. They develop the state plan. They pretty much set the parameters of what they would like their employment and training program, SNAP Employment and Training program to look like. And then it is the provider or the intermediary or the partner’s responsibility to articulate that real time with serving within the community and really championing that. What makes of a great partnership and alignment, just across the board, is transparency and open communication. We understand that government agencies are also reporting to the federal agencies, and thinking about the scope of that from a national standpoint, that takes time, and so you’re not going to get a quick response oftentimes when you’re working directly with your state agency. But the intermediary piece allows you to have a buffer with your partners, because they are the experts at the table. They already have the community relationships, the network to build upon to provide that real time hand coddling or hand-holding support that some of the new providers may need as it relates to policy. And so, you know, our government is, you know, is bureaucratic. So there’s a lot of bureaucracy that goes on with policy. And how do we say the thing? Or we don’t want to say it directly, so we’ll round about say it. And so that’s where the role of the intermediary and the partners come in for us, as you know, United Way being the intermediary, we do all the monitoring of our partners, you know, our network, our model is handled by us. So all the technical assistance, all the monitoring, all the training, ensuring that we are up to speed on policy change and possible policy shifts and understanding how to be more responsive and quickly responding to individuals when it comes to participants, what’s allowable, what’s not allowable, and things like that. Most of those parameters are already set within your state plan, and so understanding what the state stake is and what their direction is, will help the intermediary, such as ourselves, be able to provide that, that timely response. Sometimes, as things shift though between the relationship with the intermediary and the state agencies, not to mention when you’re in a state, when you’re dealing with two state agencies, sometimes that kind of bottlenecks and slows things down. We know leadership changes often, transitions happen, and so giving everyone at the table a little grace, but also having enough keen and knowledge with yourself and your team, your staff boots on the ground to be able to provide that hands on support when needed, makes for a seamless process. But I don’t think any state is perfect, especially within this program, because of the systemic barriers that already exist that they are already maneuvering around. You know what I mean? And some of it is at no fault of their own. However, we’re all just kind of in it, trying to make the best of it. I hope that kind of answers your question.

Osei 55:47
No, definitely answers the question. I think you sort of paint the larger ecosystem that, like, it’s like, we’re busy, but we’re listening, but we’re busy. Like, I sort of get that dynamic as it shows up in the work that y’all are doing. Well, first and foremost, I want to thank you for taking something out your busy schedule to be here. It really shared a lot of like, key insights that really helped folks understand SNAP E&T from both that third-party provider perspective as like, what it takes to become one, and then also being that state administrator, being that intermediary who helps folks to navigate becoming that third-party provider. One thing I’m wondering from you, I guess, before we wrap, is just like, is there any insights they provide these 10 folks, or these five, these six folks, this this group of folks with and then even to a larger community, because this, this will be recorded as well, so folks can watch it as well that they should take in mind and keep in mind when they go on their journey to become a third-party provider.

Davis-Douglas 56:59
Ask questions for sure, ask all the questions. If it doesn’t make sense to you, definitely ask the question. No question is a silly one if you are if you don’t quite understand or can’t articulate, reach out. Ask for help. Make those relationships. Build those relationships with your state agency. Visit the FNS website or your state agency’s website to get a better idea of what their intention and their mission is as it relates to their goals and plans for the SNAP Employment and Training. Kind of get a wrap your head around what their processes is when it comes to what processes are as relates to how to determine eligibility, what compliance look like. And some kind of, you know, understand some of the hoops that you may have to jump through based on its current state within the ecosystem. Because, again, each state looks fairly different. Some have case management systems. Some do things manually. So, you know, just understanding what it’s going to take and what a team needs to look like for you in order to build and scale up your program over time. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Stay strong and be an expert in what you know. Do what you’re already doing. Again, this is a great model, outside it kind of sits on the island by itself, because, in essence, it’s a grant, but really it’s a reimbursement program. And so you can invest as much money as you want, demonstrating that you’re already spending these dollars, you already have the capital and the investments in place to be able to support these participants, so that you are able to receive that 50% reimbursement on the back end. And understand that the reimbursement on the back end, in essence, is a reward. It’s a bucket of revenue that loses its federal identity, that allows you to reinvest and scale up either your SNAP E&T program or other programs, or add additional programs, increase staff capacity and so on. The idea of this model is for the program to ultimately pay for itself. And so our program here as an intermediary, we hope we have a 5% administrator fee that we hold back for managing the partners, monitoring the partners, training the partners, reimbursing the partners, while we are waiting to be reimbursed by the state. And so that keeps the ebbs and flows moving very smoothly, but it also creates, again, a bucket of revenue that we have been able to create that is now well over several million dollars. And so as we continue to scale up our programs over time, in essence, United Way as a provider, I mean, an intermediary is no longer investing in the program, because the program is now paying for itself. So it’s covering all our operational expenses, any supplies, any staffing, any fringe benefits, any other great things that we want to offer our partners. It’s covering itself. And so it does take time to build that bucket of revenue to ultimately pay for the program itself, but that’s ultimately what you end up doing. And so you’re just creating more impact. You’re able to serve more participants, offer more programs, and really help spotlight your agency for being a great workforce development partner. A great program to be a part of.

Osei 1:00:25
Thanks so much, Brandee and y’all. If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the chat or send them we’ll try answering like it’s it. Thank you all for for being here today and appreciate your time, Brandee. One thing we’ll mention is, if you noticed, Brandee mentioned the reimbursement model and budget strategy very frequently throughout this whole presentation. So our next webinar will be funding your SNAP E&T program, a 5050, reimbursement and budget strategy on March 18, 2026, so stay tuned for a bit more insights on like the fiscal element of SNAP E&T there’s a whole lot of ways to think about how you can sort of fund your operations and reimburse your operations for the work that you are already doing. So would love to have you there. Stay tuned and get registered. Once we send out information, we send that on the follow-up email as well. But thank you all for your time today.

Davis-Douglas 1:01:30
Thanks for having me. Bye.