FLF 2021 Action Forum Agora

ACCESS TO FINANCIAL SERVICES | REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT

Salah Goss, Rodrigo Garcia | Yolanda Daniel, Adam Wasserman

Areas of Focus

• Access to credit, banks and other financial services providers
• DEI reporting by issuers, private companies, and investment advisors
• Linking executive pay to progress on diversity initiatives

What Fellows should take on and how Fellows stay involved

• Get proximate to the issue: Establish relationships with all key stakeholders including the people impacted most deeply, understand traditional financial vehicles in a different way; get visibility on the full spectrum of business diversity for any number of business services
• Leverage our platforms/positions: Take a look at what our institutions are involved with or can control and what our sweet spot is; pay attention to both access to services and quality of services; recognize Fellows’ collective power of co-creating (small representation here in the room but mighty networks)
• Ensure a foundation of trust: Addressing trust in the communities where services are offered
• Promote initiatives at own companies: Create ways to encourage Fellows’ own companies to be leaders on DEI issues -- e.g., by reporting their EEO-1 data, linking pay to progress, adding diverse candidates to boards and management, partnering with CDFIs and Black owned banks, and/or publicly supporting regulatory initiatives (such as SEC rule making) that would promote such efforts

Recommendations for Aspen

• Get proximate to the issue: Establish relationships with all key stakeholders including the people impacted most deeply, understand traditional financial vehicles in a different way
• Identify where the Institute could be doing more: The Institute ought to be asking: what should we be doing but are not doing? And what is preventing us from doing these? Immediate, midterm, long-term. Are there other organizations, such as the Fellow-led National Black Bank Foundation, that we could partner with?
• Shift the narrative: Institute can play a role in framing the issue and weaving a better narrative to compel action
• Take action on specific issues: Focus on efforts that move the under- and un-banked communities in line with national levels. Look at how accounts are structured; support or organize support for DEI disclosures, increasing board and management diversity, pay for progress, and/or regulatory initiatives and rule filings focusing on such issues.
• Review how the Institute leverages capital: Understand where the Institute commits capital (not just verbal commitments). How can we hold each other and ourselves accountable?
• Identify tangible and actionable items for follow through

HOUSING

Tucker Bartlett

What Fellows should take on and how Fellows stay involved

• Shift the narrative to show the systemic nature of the problem: Commit to educating people in our spheres of influence about the monopoly game, as well as the broader issues and importance surrounding the racial wealth gap and the centrality of housing as a factor in the gap’s continued widening
  • The racial wealth gap is about race and about wealth. Though most programs are targeted only towards low-income families. Broaden targeting to focus on low wealth and People of Color. Both Fellows and the Institute should incorporate language that endeavors to capture a bigger picture of what we’re up against and broaden the language on who we are targeting.
• Build a comprehensive effort to tackle issue from all angles: Advance efforts that disrupt the cycle that contributes to the gap between white home ownership rates and Black home ownership rates, a gap that is larger today than it was when The Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968
  • Fellows should ask themselves what they can do to help low wealth families expand financial literacy, decrease debt, build savings, improve credit histories, and/or increase access to capital in communities of color

Recommendations for Aspen

• Leverage Aspen as a convener: The Aspen Institute should use its convening power to spread the gospel about the racial wealth gap and hold stakeholders accountable such that we disrupt the cycle that leads to an ever-expanding racial wealth gap
  • Make a concerted effort to shift the ‘Overton window’ regarding the issue of reparations.
• Move existing commitments to action: McKinsey has mapped more than $200 billion in commitments made by corporations and nonprofits in the time since George Floyd’s murder, 60% of which are geared toward the issue of housing affordability.
  • Aspen should seek to partner with some of these institutions to coordinate the commitments such that the momentum is sustained and the money is invested effectively
• Support regenerative capital models: Support more holistic regenerative capital models that value the importance of home ownership to wealth creation
• Leverage grant-making: Marshall resources and equity toward issues of housing and closing the racial wealth gap, especially in the form of grants to support strategies like down payments assistance and savings programs.

CAPITAL TO SMALL BUSINESSES & ENTREPRENEURS

Ellis Carr

What Fellows should take on and how Fellows stay involved

• Shift the narrative for younger generations: We need to think about how we build wealth and/or tell stories to kids of color around creating wealth in a different way; define what we mean by generational wealth
• Anchor wealth in communities: What can we cooperate on, and what can we do in our own community? We need to support efforts that build and maintain community agency, circulate dollars within the community that we want to support and help build up; there is an obligation that may end up costing something in the short run in order to sustain a community in the long-run.
  • Put $$ to support economic growth for the community
  • As an investor, find the best deals to invest your dollar- restrict investing to communities that are deserving and where you can make an exceptional return
• Dig deeper into specific issues: Examine the CDFI asset gap to ensure organizations with the greatest proximity to communities have the resources they need to support the communities they serve; specifically, diverse led CDFIs as they tend to be undercapitalized relative to majority led peers
• Leverage technology: Support technology which can increase efficiency and effectiveness of capital access and deployment

Recommendations for Aspen

• Increase policy efforts with a racial equity lens: Continue driving forward policies and initiatives, like the Responsible Business Lending Coalition, that center racial equity
  • Per Joyce Klein, we need a way to direct equity and grant money into Black- and minority-owned businesses; specifically, equity that can be invested in themselves and their business, and they would not have to pay it back
  • Support policy efforts that accelerate regenerative capital models and prevent extractive/predatory lending practices
• Build awareness & knowledge on equity issues: What are the potential opportunities for Aspen to educate on equity issues? How can the Institute leverage its connections and network such that access to capital can be a reality for more entrepreneurs of color?
• Support strategic deployment of capital: Enforcement & encouragement re: deploying capital into specific under-represented businesses
• Dig deeper into specific issues: policy work around basic universal income; examine the CDFI asset gap