Keep Your Eye on the Prize… (Linked Savings)
By Kathryn Hazelett Practically everyone knows that we should be saving, and yet we still don’t do it. Or at least we don’t save enough. Add our general lack of savings to the fact that most families will experience a financial shock[i]within a year, and it’s easy to...Building a Housing Trust Fund for Mississippi & Sustaining One in Arkansas
As a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), Southern seeks to support efforts focused on housing availability and accessibility for low- and moderate-income families in both Arkansas and Mississippi. We do so because of our belief that affordable housing...Money Well-Spent: Requiring a Personal Finance Course for High School Graduation
In a national survey, only 33 percent of adults over the age of 50 could correctly answer three questions testing basic knowledge of interest rates, inflation and financial markets. And despite the widespread advertisement and usage of credit cards by young adults,...Tackling our Imagination Challenge: Takeaways from the CFED Assets Learning Conference
Every two years, our partners at CFED (the Corporation for Enterprise Development) host a conference in Washington, D.C. for those who are passionate about expanding economic opportunity in the United States. This conference, the Assets Learning Conference (ALC), took...Fewer Uninsured Adults = Healthier, More Financially Stable Arkansans
Last week, Gallup reported in a survey that not only did the rate of uninsured adult Arkansans decline by nearly half (from 22.5 percent in 2013 to 12.4 percent mid-2014), but that Arkansas now leads the country in decreasing the percentage of uninsured adults and...Economic Development Incentives Target Downtown Helena, Ark.
Southern Bancorp project to provide matching funds for revitalization efforts in historic downtown corridor HELENA, ARK. – Southern Bancorp announced this week the launch of the Riverside Renewal Project, a program to accelerate the revitalization of historic downtown...Introducing a Prize-Linked Savings Program to Arkansas
During the 2013 regular session of the Arkansas General Assembly, Sen. Robert Thompson introduced the “Arkansas Prize-Linked Savings Account Act of 2013” (SB 119) to establish a prize-linked savings (PLS) account program. In PLS programs, financial institutions offer...Measuring our impact – How Southern evaluates community development projects
Measuring a community development project’s performance is critical to its success, and Southern Bancorp Community Partners developed a social metrics program to do just that. Click here to read more about how we are measuring improvements and defining...
Housing Trust Fund
Southern’s policy team helped to enact the shell legislation for the Arkansas Housing Trust Fund in 2009.