Howard County Executive Calvin Ball Announces Impactful $250,000 Grant to Launch Financial Empowerment Center

“Community collaboration is essential to creating economic advancement,” said Bonnie Wallace, head of Financial Health Philanthropy, Wells Fargo. “Wells Fargo supports Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund’s work with local communities to help people build financial mobility, reduce debt, drive savings and ultimately build wealth.”

“Local leaders know first-hand the connection between family financial stability and community financial stability,” said Jonathan Mintz, President and CEO, Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund. “County Executive Ball and Howard County are working to join a growing national movement to bring free, high-quality financial counseling as a public service to their residents; we are proud to partner with County Executive Ball to help residents work towards a stronger financial future.”

FECs across the country have worked with more than 211,000 clients, helping them reduce individual debt by more than $370 million and increasing their families’ savings by more than $77 million. In addition, a CFE Fund evaluation showed that this program works even for residents with very low incomes and other complex financial challenges.

Howard County is the first county in Maryland to launch a Financial Empowerment Center program. Howard County has one of three FEC programs in the State of Maryland, joining the Cities of Baltimore and Gaithersburg.  Howard County is one of several dozen local governments across the country that are working to launch or have already launched a local FEC initiative. The Howard County FEC is supported by the CFE Fund and through funding from the Wells Fargo Foundation and APL Federal Credit Union.

Launch of the County’s FEC builds upon Ball’s vision and other initiatives to financially empower all county residents to ensure their wellbeing and ability to grow and thrive, including:

• As a Howard County Councilmember, Ball:
  • Advocated in 2006, for the Howard County Board of Education to mandate financial literacy in all Howard County Public School System public schools
  • Launched “Money Matters Month” in April of 2008. Held annually, this month-long celebration features free programs on financial literacy topics such as managing debt and financial challenges, credit improvement, and more.
• Selected by the National Association of Counties and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2019, to participate in the new “Economic Mobility Leadership Network” program. This program brought together 20 diverse and bipartisan leaders from across the country to explore the role counties can play to positively affect economic mobility.
• Initiated special assistance for dislocated federal government workers and contractors, including hosting numerous job fairs and partnering with the Howard County Economic Development Authority to host entrepreneurship workshops.  

About the CFE Fund

The CFE Fund supports municipal efforts to improve the financial stability of households by leveraging opportunities unique to local government. By translating cutting edge experience with large scale programs, research, and policy in cities of all sizes, the CFE Fund assists mayors and other local leaders to identify, develop, fund, implement, and research pilots and programs that help families build assets and make the most of their financial resources. The CFE Fund is currently working in more than 150 cities and counties and has disbursed more than $75 million to local governments and their partners to support these efforts.

For more information, visit www.cfefund.org and to learn more about the FEC Public movement, visit www.fecpublic.org.