Coalitions and Networks

Arkansas Assets Coalition
The Arkansas Assets Coalition is a diverse group of stakeholders including IDA providers, financial institutions, members of the religious community, government employees, and other supporters. The AAC’s primary mission is to advocate for federal and state policy change primarily to support IDA program implementation and expansion, but it now engages in a broader asset building agenda. www.arassetpolicy.org

Arkansas Coalition of Housing & Neighborhood Growth for Empowerment (ACHANGE)
ACHANGE is coalition of community development corporations and other housing providers that organized to provide professional development training and advocate for policy change to support affordable housing activities.

CFED
CFED (Corporation for Enterprise Development) expands economic opportunity by helping Americans start and grow businesses, go to college, own a home, and save for their children’s and their own economic futures. CFED identifies promising ideas, tests and refines them in communities to find out what works, crafts policies and products to help good ideas reach scale, and develops partnerships to promote lasting change. CFED brings together community practice, public policy and private markets in new and effective ways to achieve greater economic impact. Southern and CFED collaborated on the SEED practice component and continue to partner on the policy aspect of the initiative as well as on the Assets and Opportunity Scorecard. Southern now serves as the Lead State Organization for CFED’s Assets and Opportunity Network for Arkansas. To learn more about CFED, click here.

Housing Arkansas
Housing Arkansas is a coalition of affordable housing advocates in the private, government and nonprofit sectors that established a statewide housing trust fund for Arkansas in 2009. The coalition seeks to fully fund the Housing Trust Fund so it may allow access to quality housing for a broad range of Arkansans.

Rural People, Rural Policy (RPRP)
Rural People, Rural Policy, a previous initiative of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, energizes and equips organizations and networks to shape policy that improves the lives of rural people and the vitality of rural communities. RPRP, a multi-year national initiative, is based on the premise that rural America has abundant assets and that the brightest potential for rural America emerges when a critical mass of rural people are stronger and more organized. See the Grassroots Efforts page for more information about Southern’s involvement with RPRP.