Strategic Collaborations for Success

On October 10th and 11th, The Economic Opportunities Program of the Aspen Institute and the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas held a conference entitled Achieving Sustainability, Scale and Impact in Community Development Finance: Strategic Collaborations for Success. This conference was the fifth in the series co-sponsored by Aspen and Federal Reserve.

In a series of presentations, panel discussions, and collaborative activities, participants from throughout Texas and nearby states explored the key issues that enable community development organizations to achieve scale, as well as many of the barriers that prevent them from doing so.

Among the key themes discussed were new trends in community development finance, new approaches to fundraising, and collaborative business models. Participants on the second day worked together to explore new initiatives in public relations for community development organizations in Texas, and in the possible formation of new sources of capital for CDFIs and CDCs.

Our thanks to the Community Affairs office of the Dallas Branch for graciously hosting this conference, to all the speakers and panelists for their thoughtful and engaging presentations, and to all the participants for engaging so thoroughly throughout the proceedings.

This web site is a record of the event at the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas, Texas. The documentation of the session includes text and images that were captured throughout the course of each day of the session and captures each group's work chronologically (in the order that things happened). The text is not a transcription of the event. Rather, it represents the documentor's synthesis of the presentations, team reports and group discussions.

This record is intended as a reminder to the participants of the conversations that took place during the conference, as a stimulus for further conversation and it serves as an artifact of the group's work.

For anyone who was not present at the event reading this, you may lose some of the energy and creativity the participants expressed - and some of the ideas may not translate completely without that context. If you have any questions about the content or anything that is represented here please speak to someone that participated in the process or Langdon Morris at InnovationLabs.

Photographs of participants and the scribing are included throughout the Real Time Record. To view a larger version of a board, click on the thumbnail image. The larger image will open in a new window.

Session Design, Facilitation and Documentation by

Langdon Morris
Michael Kaufman
Christopher Fuller