CFED

CFED is pleased to have been able to work with SF EARN, Opportunity Fund, JUMA Ventures and SaveTogether to make this website a reality.

For over thirty years, CFED (Corporation for Enterprise Development) has been seeking to expand economic opportunity by helping Americans start and grow businesses, go to college, own a home, and save for their children’s and own economic futures.

We identify promising ideas, test and refine them in communities to find out what works, craft policies and products to help good ideas reach scale, and develop partnerships to promote lasting change. We bring together community practice, public policy and private  markets in new and effective ways to achieve greater economic impact.

Since the conception of the Individual Development Account in 1990, CFED has led the development of the matched savings field in the United States.  Since that time, matched savings has grown as a practice to 500 communities in every state serving roughly 82,000 Americans. CFED has worked with policy makers to enact supportive federal and state policy with bipartisan backing, and with private sector institutions to develop innovative financial products and partnerships that benefit low-income families.

Most notably, CFED has demonstrated the value and tested approaches to matched savings programs through large-scale pilot programs. CFED organized the American Dream Demonstration, which ran from 1997-2002, the first large-scale, comprehensively evaluated test of the efficacy of Individual Development Accounts.  And in 2003, CFED led the Saving for Education, Entrepreneurship and Downpayment (SEED) initiative to test matched savings programs for children and youth at 12 widely diverse sites around the nation.

Today, through the American Dream Match Funds (ADMF), CFED is working to connect people who have had the opportunity to live the American Dream with families who are working still to achieve it against long odds. The Bay Area Match Fund is the pilot and springboard for the American Dream Match Funds.  SaveTogether.org, is the first result of the larger effort, the first American Dream Match Fund.