More than 80 Children’s Savings Accounts (CSA) practitioners, policymakers, researchers and funders gathered virtually for the 2020 CSA Pre-Conference preceding the Prosperity Summit. Nearly half of the attendees indicated that this was their first CSA pre-conference. Their numbers align with the corresponding growth in CSA programs since the last pre-conference in 2018, with programs now serving nearly 707,000 children across the United States.  

The pre-conference opened with a field update that highlighted how CSA programs have navigated challenges related to COVID-19. As has often been noted, the pandemic has laid bare and exacerbated the economic and educational inequities between White families and families of color, especially Black, Latinx and Indigenous families. Meanwhile, the national furor resulting from police violence and the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Daniel Prude and so many others has increased the focus on racial injustice and inequity in our country and led many in the CSA field to reflect on what more can be done to address these issues. Within this broader context, the opening remarks identified several inflection points facing the CSA field:

• Ensuring the long-term financial sustainability of programs;
• Standardizing metrics and practices;
• Measuring and sharing the long-term impact of CSAs on participating children and their families;
• Addressing the racial wealth divide;
• Integrating CSAs into a more holistic set of services.

The pre-conference focused primarily on addressing the racial wealth divide and integrating CSAs into a more holistic set of services. 

In the plenary panel, “Meeting the Moment, Building the Movement,” Benita Melton of the C.S. Mott Foundation, Willie Elliot of AEDI at University of Michigan, Aisha Nyandoro of Springboard to Opportunities, and Maria Cadenas of Santa Cruz Community Ventures discussed how CSAs can be adapted to both meet this moment and connect to a larger movement.  Benita Melton underscored the need to “walk and chew gum at the same time” by adapting to meet families’ needs today while at the same time helping them focus on the future. Panelists offered differing perspectives on how to accomplish this, from wealth transfers to pairing CSAs with guaranteed income programs. Underpinning the plenary was a discussion of how CSA programs can purse racial equity and where they have come up short. 

Through the panel and breakout sessions that followed, several themes emerged:

• The field is increasingly focus on racial equity. Participants identified the need to define what equity looks like in the CSA space and support practitioners in implementing practices that increase equity (e.g. equity-based, progressive incentives). 
• There were calls for bolder, more transformative CSA programs. There was keen interest in two-generation strategies, especially pairing guaranteed incomes and CSAs. Several cities with CSA programs, including St. Paul, MN,  are in the  early phases of connecting their work to guaranteed income pilots.
• Some participants stressed the need to meet families where they are by addressing current challenges while implementing long-term solutions.  As Willie Elliot noted, thinking only about how people will eat today will never shrink the wealth gap or provide hope for their future. At the same time, we cannot ignore the current pressing financial and educational needs of children and families that will impact their long-term trajectory. There was consensus around the need to build meaningful assets by seeding accounts with larger amounts and boosting balances without asking families experiencing financial insecurity to reach into their own pockets.
• System integration will be critical in the years ahead. As programs proliferate across the US, integrating local and state CSA programs with other systems, such as education, will be key to helping families achieve their long-term goals. Practitioners are seeking additional opportunities to share best practices and challenges in places where local and state programs overlap. 

In addition to the pre-conference, Prosperity Now held two sessions focused specifically on CSAs at the Summit: the policy landscape post-COVID, which featured St. Paul’s Office of Financial Empowerment and the Pennsylvania Treasury, and how financial coaching has helped Oakland Promise families navigate financial insecurity and social isolation. All content from the Prosperity Summit will be available until June 2021 for Summit attendees. Visit the Prosperity Summit page for more details.

Prosperity Now would like to thank the Prudential Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the Richard W. Goldman Family Foundation for their generous, ongoing support of Prosperity Now’s CSA work and the Campaign for Every Kid’s Future, which enabled us to hold the CSA pre-conference.