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FOC Newsletter Snapshot
Upcoming Webinars August -September 2021
National Black Business Month Spotlight
Income Supports and Relief Resources
BCO Trainee at SER- Metro Detroit, Jobs for Progress, Inc. Detroit Michigan.
FOC News
LISC Family Income and Wealth Building periodically offers webinars and in-person/virtual training on a variety of topics connected to Financial Opportunity Centers such as Salesforce data entry, program management, financial coaching, workforce development, and much more. This newsletter will keep you posted on all upcoming events.
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Upcoming FOC Events
** Note: All webinars are listed in Central Standard Time**
Aug 31 | 1 PM CST | 90 Minutes | Prioritizing Savings and Credit Building with Twin Accounts™
This webinar will provide an updated presentation on how Twin Accounts™ works, the network accomplishment for 2021, and practitioners' advice on strategies to elevate Savings and Credit Building for clients. This session will have small group breakouts for coaches to share best practices to boost savings and credit-building conversations.
Participants: This webinar's information will benefit frontline staff, managers interested in learning more about Twin Accounts™, and active financial coaches working with clients on savings and credit building.
Sep 14 | 1 PM CST | 60 Minutes | Bridges Evaluation Results - Practitioner Perspective
LISC’s Bridges to Career Opportunities program has been in place for over five years. Through an award to LISC from AmeriCorps (formerly the Corporation for National & Community Service or CNCS), Abt Associates conducted an implementation and an impact study of the Bridges program and recently released the results which show that Bridges programming improves employment outcomes of participants.
This event is the second in our series on evaluation and follows an overview of the evaluation results (the recording of the first session can be found here). Now, this second event will focus on the practitioner's viewpoint of the results and will include a short overview of the evaluation, followed by a panel discussion. The event is intended for practitioners, workforce development partners, policy-makers, and funders.
Sep 28 | 1 PM CST | 60 Minutes | The Arc Tool - FOC Digital Intake
The Arc Tool is a client-facing digital intake combined with a financial assessment that is integrated with Salesforce. The tool’s primary goal is to connect clients and coaches using a digital approach to complement financial counseling services.
Check out this webinar to see how it works and hear best practices from the field on implementation.
Reoccurring Webinars
Sep 20 | 1 PM CST | 60 Minutes | Salesforce Support Hour
Salesforce Support Hours are held on the 1st and 3rd Monday of each month (excluding holidays). Drop into the Salesforce support hour to have ALL of your Salesforce questions answered, from data entry to reporting. This session is an informal setting that allows attendees to join in at any point during the time period. Come with questions or just join to listen to others' questions. * No registration required.
Sep 02, 16 & 30 | 1 PM CST | 60 minutes | Twin Accounts™ Biweekly Support
Hosted on a biweekly basis, this is an informal meeting to allow space for coaches to ask questions specific to Twin Account™ via Esusu. Stop by with all your questions or join in to hear from other coaches and the work that they are doing.
August is National Black Business Month
LISC recognizes the many contributions and vital work Black-owned small businesses owners and new micro-entrepreneurs provide in local communities. The Ally Signature Program supported by Ally Financial, implemented by LISC, creates a solid foundation with financial coaching. The holistic program approach engages entrepreneurs in creating a working process to improve personal finances, raise their credit score, and integrates business counseling to get on an established path of entrepreneurship. This program helps entrepreneurs like Karreecha Newby, who is passionate about education and wants to make a difference in her community.
Income Supports and Relief Resources
Child Tax Credit Advance Payments
Individuals eligible to receive the monthly advance Child Tax Credit (CTC) payments from July-December 2021 should have already started to receive their payments via direct deposit or check in the mail as of July. However, there are several important resources to help organizations continue to get the word out about the advance CTC payments for those who are eligible but may not be receiving them:
The Get it Back Campaign (a project of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities) has created an outreach toolkit for organizations, a “CTC 101” fact sheet, and CTC FAQs to help share key outreach messages and answer common questions about the advance payments.
The IRS launched a Non-filer Tool for individuals who are eligible for the CTC payments but aren’t required to file a 2020 tax return. They can use it to share their information with the IRS and begin receiving the monthly payments. (It’s likely that many, if not most working FOC clients have filed their 2020 taxes, but “non-filers” may include those who aren’t required to file taxes because their income is below the filing threshold or their only income is from a non-taxable source such as TANF, Social Security, or SSI.)
The IRS is also periodically updating its own set of FAQs on the advance CTC payments.
Emergency Rent Assistance
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has compiled a list of state and local organizations that are distributing emergency rental assistance as part of their resource guide for renters.
Fannie Mae has created a resource page for renters that includes an address look-up tool to determine if a rental property is financed by Fannie Mae and qualifies for additional assistance or protections.
Emergency Broadband Benefit
The Emergency Broadband Benefit is still taking applications to temporarily supplement the costs of at-home broadband connectivity. Interested households can either reach out directly to their existing internet service provider or apply via the USAC application portal.
