Welcome and Opening Remarks

I would like to welcome you on behalf of the Federal Reserve. I want to recognize the members of my staff who have put this event together - thank you for all of your hard work. We have a very full day and a half planned for you. There will not be any formal breaks after this morning. You will be working in breakout teams, and you will be able to take breaks as you need them.

This is the next in a series of workshops that we are holding with the Aspen Institute based on their very important research. How can we bring organizations to scale? What can we learn from the private sector? We published Kirsten and Greg's research, and we've sent you links to that information. There are more resources available in the workbooks that you have been given.

I will be very brief this morning - my role is simply to welcome you. I want to thank the Federal Reserve of Chicago. They were the first location to host one of these workshops, and thanks to their hard work, we have now agreed to hold a series of six of these workshops.

We started this work in the community development finance field. In doing this work we learned about scaling issues. At one of our previous meetings, someone recommended that we focus on EITC and tax preparation.

Up to this point, there has been a very interesting and logical progression of work that you have all been a part of. This started with the Earned Income Tax Credit, and has moved towards tax preparation, and then asset building and savings. All of us have been moving in this direction, but no one has really planned it this way.

We are at a point where we need to make some tough decisions. We are experiencing some growing pains, and there are some assets available now with national partners. We need to ask the difficult questions. This workshop is our opportunity to explore whether we are an industry or a movement. We have representatives here from the IRS. This is a very exciting learning opportunity for us all. We can see how our different roles can connect with each other. We need to come up with some common definitions and practices. What are the barriers to growth, and do we want to grow at all? We have some very good minds here, and we have some very experienced practitioners. Let your guard down - you may be here to represent an organization or institution, but please speak your mind.