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How to Promote Savings? The Humble Savings Bond is Part of the Answer
One way the Ford Foundation improves lives is by providing "risk capital" to test promising new ideas. Successful ideas can then be adopted and expanded by business and government, reaching thousands or even millions of people. The story below captures one successful example of this approach, in which a proposal developed by a grantee is now being adopted by the federal government. This effort will make it easier for American families to build wealth and save for the future, a key goal of the foundation.
Published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: September 9, 2009
By David Nicklaus
When President Barack Obama announced four measures to encourage savings, one of them represented a victory for a non-profit group that's trying to find ways for low-income Americans to save. Since 2005, the Doorways to Dreams Fund has been saying that the savings-bond system should be tweaked to make it more useful to low-income families, and Obama adopted one of D2D's key ideas: Beginning next year, you'll be able to get your tax refund in the form of a U.S. Savings Bond.
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