AFN Updates and Announcements
AFN Grantmakers Meeting 2012
Paving the Road to Financial Security
Meeting Framework
This year's meeting of the Asset Funders Network was held on March 20th and 21st in Houston, TX and served as a forum for a series of in-depth conversations on the grantmaking strategies needed to help protect, rebuild, and grow the assets low-income families lost during the great recession.
Merle Lawrence and Benita Melton have been active members of the AFN steering committee, and we are excited to have them lead AFN as co-chairs this year. Thank you, Merle and Benita!
Merle Lawrence
Merle Lawrence is a Senior Manager with the Levi Strauss Foundation, an independent private foundation that conveys the pioneering spirit and enduring values of Levi Strauss & Co.: originality, empathy, integrity and courage. She leads the Foundation's U.S. grant making in two areas: helping low-income people save and invest in their futures and advancing social justice. She joined Levi Strauss & Co. in 1991 as Manager, Child Care Fund, a new initiative to help the company's manufacturing employees access quality child care options in their local communities. During her 20-year tenure with Levi Strauss & Co., she has managed various programs including Community Affairs and Employee Volunteerism, as well as cause branding projects and corporate social responsibility initiatives.
Merle served as Program Manager at the Children's Council of San Francisco and the California Child Care Resource & Referral Network, where she led the California Child Care Initiative public/private partnership, and on the founding board of the Mission Asset Fund.
Benita Melton
Benita Melton is a Program Officer with the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Headquartered in Flint, Michigan, the Mott Foundation is a private philanthropy supporting nonprofit programs throughout the United States, and on a limited geographic basis, internationally. Its major grantmaking programs are Civil Society, Environment, Flint (its home community) and Pathways out of Poverty. Benita joined the Pathways Out of Poverty Program in 1995 and currently manages the Foundation's work on budget and tax policy and asset development issues. Within the broader philanthropic community, Benita serves on the steering committee of the Grantmakers Income Security Taskforce and now as co-chair of the Asset Funders Network.
Prior to joining the Mott Foundation, Benita worked for The Pistons-Palace Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Detroit Pistons basketball franchise. A native of Detroit, Michigan, Benita graduated from Michigan State University and is pursuing a Ph.D. in public policy from Wayne State University.
Learn more about Levis Strauss Foundation and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.
AFN Announces Merger with Microenterprise Funders Group
The Asset Funders Network (AFN) is pleased to announce that, effective October 1, 2011, the Microenterprise Funders Group (MFG) has become a part of AFN. This merger acknowledges the important connection between investments in microenterprise development and AFN’s focus on asset accumulation, retention, and preservation for low-income individuals and communities.
Like AFN, the Microenterprise Funders Group was formed in 2005 by a group of foundations seeking a forum to explore their mutual interest in microenterprise development in the United States. As both organizations looked to increase their ability to serve as a catalyst for change it became clear that we could leverage the talents, expertise, and resources of both funder groups to build a sustainable organization capable of having a real impact on the overall asset-building field.
As AFN welcomes the former members of the Microenterprise Funders Group into the Asset Funders Network, the merger will offer several critical advantages:
- Access to an expanded network of funders dedicated to asset development
- Opportunity to participate in a broader roster of learning events connected to the full asset building continuum
- Ability to combine forces for advocacy and policy relevant to low-wealth individuals and communities, and
- Greater opportunity to explore the increasing connections between microenterprise and microfinance practice, credit building, savings and other forms of asset development.
Elaine Edgcomb and Joyce Klein of the FIELD program at the Aspen Institute, who currently manage the Microenterprise Funders Group, will continue to provide their leadership and expertise in leading the microenterprise programing of the Asset Funders Network. We are thrilled that they will be joining us and looking forward to having them on the team.
For more information, please contact Rick Williams at rick@assetfunders.org
AFN Welcomes Beadsie Woo of The Annie E. Casey Foundation to Steering Committee
SEPT 2011
AFN is pleased to welcome Beadsie Woo, Senior Associate in the Center for Family Economic Success at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, as our newest AFN steering committee. We are excited to bring her talents and expertise to AFN. Welcome, Beadsie!
Beadsie's work to increase financial stability for families and children includes strategies focused on asset development and protection, including those related to foreclosure, as well as those focused on work supports, including access to public benefits, tax credits, and work-family policies. She is a co-author of Upside Down: The $400 Billion Federal Asset-Building Budget, that examines the size and distribution of federal support for individual asset building. Beadsie holds an AB in Economics from Davidson College, a MPP from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and earned her PhD in the Department of Economics from the University of North Carolina.
Learn more about the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
For more information on the Bay Area AFN, please see the Bay Area AFN webpages on the Northern California Grantmakers website.
Please email articles and information to be included in the AFN monthly newsletter to Rick Williams at rick@assetfunders.org. Not all submissions will be able to be included in the newsletter. Thank you for submitting!
