These Innovative Ideas are presented to stimulate connections and exchange that will speed changes to expand economic opportunity for disadvantaged Americans. They do not necessarily represent policy positions of CFED or its funders.

Joy Anderson (Haddam, CT) is launching Healthcare_Uncovered, a venture designed to rationalize the cash market in healthcare through a community organizing process and an enabling card technology.  Healthcare_Uncovered empowers individuals and families by creating access to capital, lowering healthcare costs and driving preventative care solutions. For more information, visit www.criterionventures.com.

George Barany (Cleveland Heights, Ohio) is developing model initiatives that increase savings behavior of low- and moderate-income households through school banking programs, employee savings programs and similar approaches that reestablish saving and frugality as social norms.

Eileen Briggs and Anna Sarcia (Cheyenne River Reservation, Eagle Butte, South Dakota and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, Belcourt, North Dakota) are spreading an approach combining paid internships, employment, higher education information and Individual Development Accounts designed for Native American youth who live in communities marked by poverty and unemployment.

The Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative (St. Louis, Missouri) is developing a comprehensive program combining Individual Development Accounts, personal bank accounts and local job and support opportunities that help young people leaving foster care save to improve their future outlooks.

The contact at the Initiative is Carla Owens, director of communications and public affairs.

Denise Gabel (Madison, Wisconsin) is using an internationally refined concept to work with a number of credit unions to test and expand a new and rewarding savings incentive. The approach offers individuals and families the chance to win prizes while earning interest on federally insured deposits.

Emily Haisley (New Haven, Connecticut) is testing and evaluating changes in timing and other features that could improve the effectiveness of Individual Development Accounts with a group of practitioner organizations identified with the help of CFED.

John Hamilton (Concord, New Hampshire) wants to show others how to use an approach called royalty financing that works when typical venture equity does not. Royalty financing can deliver much-needed capital that will help preserve locally owned businesses and local jobs.

Saru Jayaraman (New York, New York) is expanding a worker-owned restaurant approach that originated with displaced World Trade Center workers post-9/11. Jayaraman aims to take that model to national scale by opening a center and restaurant where worker-ownership can be experienced first-hand by policymakers in Washington, DC.

Julie Kalkowski (Omaha, Nebraska) wants employers to establish loan-loss reserves for workers who undertake financial education courses. Workers will not only learn to avoid predatory financial products but will also have access to affordable credit supported by the reserves.

Ed Kirshner (Oakland, California) is searching for promising sources for “shared wealth accounts”—income sources such as lease of public resources, royalties from government-guaranteed monopoly rights and dividends from publicly owned or assisted companies—to give U.S. residents a permanent ownership stake that generates non-labor income.

Elizabeth Kuhn (Shelburne, Vermont) is spreading emergency loan and on-site resource coordination services for employed low- and moderate-income individuals. Employers benefit by improving productivity and worker retention.

Justin Maxson (Berea, Kentucky) has already worked with a dozen employers to offer a Web-based program that includes a term loan with a savings component as an affordable and accessible alternative to payday loans.

Leonard McCollum (Houston, Texas) wants to help former prisoners by creating social reintegration training programs coupled with online Individual Development Accounts. The matched savings accounts will help former prisoners build a financial foundation starting before and continuing beyond their reentry into the community.

Diane Bell McKoy’s (Baltimore, Maryland) “More in the Middle” initiative aims to retain and grow a linchpin population, Baltimore’s African-American middle class, to serve as a renaissance model for other regions.

Steve Perkins (Chicago, Illinois) is applying affordable, sustainable environmental solutions to help low- and moderate-income American households save thousands of dollars in household expenses per year through practice, market and policy approaches.

Mark Rukavina (Boston, Massachusetts) is developing an effective approach to help people negotiate significant reductions in medical debt to promote financial survival and recovery from unexpected and uninsured medical crises.

Chuck Shannon (Denver, Colorado) is exploring the possibilities of share purchase, cooperatives and Employee Stock Ownership Plans as combined Individual Development Account investment vehicles. Collective business ownership, in turn, could promote neighborhood economic development and job creation.

These ideas are presented to stimulate connections and exchange that will speed changes to expand economic opportunity for disadvantaged Americans. They do not necessarily represent policy positions of CFED or its funders.