Sarah in her spiffy polo!

We got a chance to sit down with Sarah Cohn, CEF’s first AmeriCorps VISTA, to talk about the growth of her involvement and where she is now. We’re incredibly happy and lucky to have her, as she’s been an amazing asset to the CEF family!

How did you get involved with CEF, how did it all begin?

It all began when I was studying abroad actually, which doesn’t sound like it makes much sense. I got an email on the Spanish Minor listserv about doing CEF Latino and responded to it, planning to get involved with that once I got back. I met Linda over that summer and then I started doing CEF Latino business classes that summer and continued doing them that fall. Then I saw how cool the rest of CEF was and wanted to get involved in the bigger picture.

How would you describe your time with CEF while still an undergrad? How did your involvement develop?

At first I was just doing CEF Latino– at that point CEF Latino was not very connected to the rest of CEF and so I mainly just went to the small business classes and went to CEF Latino meetings every week. I started meeting with a member Sonya during business classes and that was pretty much it- it was something I was involved in, but wasn’t spending a lot of time on it.

Linda asked me to apply for an open admin position as CEF Latino Co-Coordinator, because she was working a fulltime job at that point, had graduated, and was very overstretched.  I started getting a lot more involved when I started coming to admin meetings, which I previously didn’t know existed and [began] learning about the rest of CEF.

Clearly you’ve had a good time with CEF since you’ve decided to continue your work after graduation. What motivated you to work for CEF full time and were there any hesitancies?

Last year, my senior year, was the first time I started spending a lot of time in the CEF office and I just really liked it. I wasn’t that fearful working full time for CEF, because I know it was something I love doing… spending time in the office, working with Members, and working with other people in CEF.

I really wasn’t that worried about it. I didn’t know what I wanted to do after graduation. For a long time I did not want to stick around and anyone who knew me last year knows that I preached a lot about leaving Chapel Hill. It kind of dawned on me one time that I could do the AmeriCorps position with CEF and it was just a great opportunity

Did someone bring up the possibility of working for CEF?

People did– I remember people joking about it. I was one of the few people graduating that did not have plans. They told me I should do it and I literally laughed in their faces the first couple time, saying, “No, no I’m leaving.” I don’t know what happened it was seriously one day I was like “Wait I could do this!” It went from being a joke to a possibility, then reality.

What is your position within CEF?

My position is Member-Advocate Coordinator, and that means working to support Members and Advocates and their relationships. There are two other student volunteers who are also Member-Advocate Coordinators and the three of us work together to pair members and advocates and follow up with those relationships and make sure they’re going well. My job is to spend a lot more time in the office and keep an eye out for possible pairings, and also just provide structure and support to teams and everything that involves Advocates.

What are some goals you have for the year?

Technically I have a VISTA Assignment Description that lists the goals that I have to accomplish this year, which they call a VAD. So my main goal for CEF is to accomplish everything on my VAD. A big part of that is redefining the Advocate program, especially in terms of training and support for advocates. So, one of my main goals right now is to create a better training for Advocates, and throughout all of that make what I’m doing sustainable for the next year. One of the main goals of VISTAs anyway is to build capacity, and make it so that they’re not needed within a couple years.

I definitely want to develop myself professionally, just because this is my first full time job.  Just working on skills that are necessary for lots of jobs like speaking, grant writing, and things like that.

Do you have a favorite CEF moment(s)?

One thing I love the most about CEF is that a lot of things that you would expect to be awkward aren’t awkward. So, working with people that are older than you, that have a lot more experience than you, and offering them financial advice, you’d expect these interactions to be awkward and sometimes offensive, but 99% of the time it’s not. Members are really open too since they came to CEF for advice like that, so I’m always impressed with Members.

I don’t know if there is one particular moment- most of the things that I’m thinking about are when Members find jobs or something exciting happens for a Member and everyone in the office is really excited. It’s an accomplishment for everyone and people are so genuinely happy for the person, like when people meet savings goals and that’s cause for celebration.

By Olivia & Chiraayu

Over the weekend of October 10th to 12th, five brave CEF-ers took a fateful journey into the heart of Pennsylvania to meet some of their institutional role models. After seven hours in the car together (during which Chiraayu caught up on lots of sleep, Jon caught up on lots of Bo-Berry biscuits, and Emerson, Maggie, and Olivia engaged in enriching conversation) the group of five arrived first in Lancaster, the charming town that TABOR calls home.

TABOR is a non-profit organization that has been working in the Lancaster community for several decades, performing many functions such as financial education, housing assistance, and saving services. CEF has had its eye on TABOR for a few years now, primarily because of their well-developed and successful protective payee system and IDA savings program. The kind employees at TABOR gave us a behind-the-scenes tour of their facilities, shared their philosophy with us, and more than anything else, provided us with a concrete vision of what a young organization like CEF can become.

Following an afternoon in Lancaster, we headed north to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia to attend the annual Lend for America Summit, where we had the opportunity to engage with fellow campus-based microfinance organizations. This year’s summit brought over 200 people from 53 universities across 26 states. Lend for America was started in 2010 to provide more support to students practicing microfinance and community development. CEF was one of the original members of Lend for America and sends students to present and collaborate with fellow students at each yearly gathering. This year, Emerson and Jon gave a presentation titled “Unbanked in America, while Maggie discussed community assets as an integral component of community development. Jon also had the opportunity to talk to tech nerds about Salesforce.

The weekend involved as much learning as it did teaching. We had the opportunity to learn from our peers from universities like Fordham, Yale, and Tulane about recruitment, retention, taxes (getting excited about them!), and organizational identity. The conference gave us the chance to connect with other students from the South and develop greater potential for collaboration. We loved conversations with students from UNC Greensboro and Elon, who are looking to start their own community development organizations, as well as with University of Alabama representatives who have a well-established MFI. There were many chances for reflection on CEF’s direction for the future and new programs that align with our mission.

Furthermore, we had the chance to reunite with CEF’s 2012 summer intern, Peter Woo, who has since started a campus microfinance initiative at Notre Dame. We’re pleased to report that Peter seems to be doing splendidly, and JIFFI (Jubilee Initiative for Financial Inclusion) is off to an excellent start. (And what would a conference be without good food? The food was dope. A huge shout out to the delicious cupcakes, soft pretzels, pizza, and wings that were enjoyed this weekend!)

The Community Empowerment Fund (CEF) was featured as one of two case studies in a national publication on student-led microfinance programs. The report was written and published by FIELD at the Aspen Institute.

Titled “Catching Fire: The University Microenterprise Movement in 2012,” the report documents the growth and creativity of this unique model of service delivery in the microenterprise sector.

More info from Elaine Edgcomb, Director of FIELD and co-author of the study:

“University students delivering microenterprise services and microfinance? With some scale and effectiveness?

“Over the last few years, university-born and student-powered microenterprise organizations have emerged offering direct services (both training and financing) to low-income individuals and small businesses in their local communities. FIELD has closely watched the movement evolve, and FIELD’s latest study “Catching Fire: the University Microenterprise Movement in 2012″ describes the contributions this movement is making both to individual communities and the larger field. The paper provides two case studies of the Community Empowerment Fund in North Carolina, and Capital Good Fund in Rhode Island that illustrate its potential, and points out the next challenges that the movement must address if it is to fully capitalize on that potential.”

Our thanks and appreciation go out to FIELD, the Aspen Institue, and the Mott Foundation for their thorough research and thoughtful interviews. Thank you for documenting this work!

Check it out! Alex Biggers, CEF’s Savings Program Coordinator, was invited to write a guest post on the CFED Inclusive Economy Blog. We’re famous!

Read Alex’s entire and beautifully written post on the CFED Inclusive Economy Blog by clicking here, or check out the excerpt below.

“While traditional Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) work towards three main asset purchases – homeownership, education, and small business development – we recognized that savings and housing were in themselves assets to the homeless living in and transitioning out of shelters. While staying at shelters, expenses tend to be minimal. However, when it comes time for many residents to move out, they find that despite their best efforts, they still don’t have enough money – for a rental deposit, furniture, utility deposits, and a financial cushion for emergencies. Though some may have enough funds to move into proper housing, many people have a hard time keeping up with their rent while dealing with volatile incomes and unexpected expenses, and many even return to homelessness.

“Based on the unique need of our members, we structured the savings accounts to incentivize savings towards anything the CEF members see valuable, be it $2000 for an emergency fund, $150 towards a refurbished laptop, or $900 to move into new housing. CEF members define both the amount of the goal and the asset. Unlike a traditional IDA, the CEF match rate is only 10%. Although low compared to other match savings programs, CEF staff has found that this rate truly does incentivize saving, while still allowing the program to remain flexible and easy to administer.

“…Through a network of strong relationships, assertive individualized support, flexible accounts and matches, holistic education, and self-selected goals, CEF continues to facilitate savings, promote asset-building, and create access to a mainstream financial world for a population normally deemed “too poor” to be served by most IDAs. By continuing to listen to and believe in our members that have believed so much in us, we hope that we can move our community closer to realizing their own self-defined goals and promoting financial stability.”

Our thanks to the folks at the Corporation for Enterprise Development for spreading the word about the Community Empowerment Fund and our savings program!

A view of the White House from the front stoop

The Community Empowerment Fund was invited to the White House for a Community Leaders Briefing Series. Alongside social justice and grassroots activists from all over the country, CEF was there to provide our perspective and feedback on issues facing the Obama Administration.

The best part? We got to meet incredible people from nonprofit organizations, advocacy groups, public schools, and neighborhood associations from Missouri, Michigan, California, Kentucky, and many of the nation’s 50 states. This gave us the invaluable opportunity to learn from creative leaders doing important work in their towns, and to spread the word about CEF and our missions and methods.

For example, we met Donnie from reStart, Inc. reStart is a 78,000 square foot shelter facility in Kansas City that provides residential services to families in a manner that upholds their personal lifestyle, housing whole families, unmarried couples, same-sex couples, and single individuals. We were thrilled to hear that reStart just recently launched a financial literacy program for their residents. CEF looks forward to sharing our curriculum and experiences, and supporting their new efforts!

CEF also connected with the Lancaster County Council of Churches in Pennsylvania. Offering an array of social services, the council runs a smart and simple “Wheels to Work” program that sustains itself financially and provides motor vehicles or bikes to those who need transportation to become self-sufficient. Transportation is a huge barrier for many of our members, and a program such as this is an exciting model to learn from as we explore potential matched savings account options to meet this need.

And this is just a small sample of the community visionaries we met in D.C… Advocates for Pell Grants, school teachers, counselors for Latina youth – everyone we met inspired us and reminded us that the nature of the movement for economic justice is national in scope, and that even though we as a country have a long way to go, when we look on the local level, we see that grassroots leaders are continuing to fight alongside their communities and are making real change.

The experience solidified for us that the stories and voices of CEF members must continue to be heard on the national level. We look forward to staying engaged with the White House, using the new tools for communication we learned about at the briefing.

We were honored to be invited, and grateful to Chapel Hill Mayor Kleinschmidt for recommending us to the White House staff. Thank you, Mayor Kleinschmidt, for this great opportunity!

Along with fellow student-run microfinance institutions from across the country, the Community Empowerment Fund was featured in an article by Lyn E. Haralson in “The Bridges,” the magazine of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

To read the article, click here.

Thanks to the Federal Reserve Bank for sharing information with their readers about CEF’s work, and to all our fellow student-run MFI’s who do fantastic work and whom we continue to learn from — including the Intersect Fund (Rutgers University, NJ), the Elmseed Enterprise Fund (Yale University, CT), and the Capital Good Fund (Brown University, RI)