Family Economic Success

CSG builds the capacity of practitioners and policymakers to help families on the economic margins earn more, keep more of what they earn, and grow what they keep into assets for themselves and their communities.

Family Economic Success (FES) means that families can meet their immediate needs and are working to achieve a secure financial future for themselves and their children. Focusing on what it really takes for low-income families to succeed economically offers a way for leaders to build and strengthen community strategies and policy to support them.

CSG’s FES effort focuses on two goals: understanding and delivering family-focused results, and readying a community for FES action and collaboration. These echo the oft-cited watchwords of the Annie E. Casey Foundation: Children do well when families do well, and families do better when they live in supportive communities.

What We Do at Aspen CSG

Family Focused Results

Our FES Frameworks detail the set of family-focused results that, taken together, paint the picture of what it looks like when families have all the factors in place that they need to make progress and succeed in the economy. CSG's "Earn It, Keep It, Grow it" frameworks concentrate on increasing three types of stability: the capacity and supports essential to earn an income, making good choices about borrowing and spending, and saving and increasing assets over time. FES is focused not just on the adults in the family, but on how their children are faring, and how their offspring will fare in the generations to come. This has led to an emerging "two-generation" focus in CSG's FES work that seeks to address the challenges and improve results for parents and children in the same family at the same time.
Community Readiness

Community action readiness focuses on a community's capacity for helping low-income families achieve financial security. A community must understand current challenges and conditions of low-income working families in its economy - uncovering the real barriers that keep families from taking the next steps. The community must then commit to closing the gap by designing its infrastructure and capacity to help families address those barriers. CSG develops frameworks, action tools, and peer learning networks to help community leaders understand the challenges that low-income families face and works with leaders to design community- and family-focused strategies that can help families get ahead.

Recent Projects And News

2GenACT

Rural practitioners consistently say that peer-learning and site visits are two of the most effective ways to learn and adopt new practices from the best of the best. Supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the 2GenACT (Accelerating Capacity and Tools) is a national initiative brings together rural, suburban and urban teams to share their own wisdom and learn about the latest innovations in 2Gen work. CSG is the lead partner and facilitator.
Collaboration Institute 3.0: Prosperity Together

Aspen CSG supported The Women's Fund of Greater Birmingham's Collaboration Institute 3.0. The goal of this 16 month peer learning convening was the development of three new 2 Gen hubs in the greater Birmingham region. Over the course of the project, organizations in Shelby County, Walker County, and Northeast Birmingham joined forces and learned how to implement a 2 Gen approach for women, mothers, and families.
Rural Family Economic Success

Rural Family Economic Success (RuFES) Action Network. Since 2004, CSG has managed the RuFES Action Network, an initiative funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The RuFES Network offers innovative ideas, stimulating stories, useful data and rural-focused opportunities to help leaders and practitioners assist hard-working rural families EARN more, KEEP more of what they earn, and GROW it into assets over time
2 Gen Peer Learning Clusters

Since 2013, CSG has managed the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Family Economic Success / Early Childhood Two-Generation Action Learning Network (2G ALN). The Network comprises urban and rural sites from across the country that are learning together how to implement and strengthen a two-generation approach to helping children and families achieve economic stability. We are happy to have Ascend at the Aspen Institute – the national hub for two-generation innovation and collaboration – as a regular contributor to and participant in this learning network.
Immigrant Family Economic Success

Recent data show that 31% of new residents living in rural communities are immigrants and refugees. Understanding these newcomers is critical to addressing poverty in rural America. CSG has worked to advance practices and policies that allow immigrant families to earn more, keep more of what they earn, and grow what they have into assets over time. Click here to watch the Aspen event "Becoming the New Us"