Our mission is to expand access to financial services, savings and investment opportunities for low-income and immigrant residents of San Francisco's Mission District so that they can build a more secure economic future for themselves, their families and community.
A Game Changer
MAF launches La RED | Matching People to Resources, an online screening and referral system that is revolutionizing the way community based organizations assess and refer clients to services.
Simply put, La RED works by matching a client’s socio-economic profile against eligibility criteria from an array of different community services, government programs, and financial products. La RED then produces a list of matching services, sorted by a 5-star rating system to signal the best matches for that specific client. At which point, clients can ask for referrals to services that they are most interested in or they can even complete applications for a select number of services online. Cool, right?
Take La RED for a spin. Click here to see a short demo.
Cestas Populares are viable alternatives to high cost, predatory loans
On October 2008, MAF set out to prove the viability of leveraging cultural assets in creating programs that could realistically and quickly move immigrants into the financial mainstream.
And we are doing it with Cestas Populares - a program that helps participants establish or improve their credit scores simply by recognizing, recording and reporting financial activity that occurs in peer lending circles commonly practiced by immigrant communities. Indeed, by formalizing these financial activities, MAF is helping immigrants improve their credit history by valuing their cultural assets; their actual participation in peer lending circles with their family, friends and co-workers.
And in just 12 months, MAF made 87 cesta loans to 79 participants, totaling $105,200 with an average loan amount of $1,209.
Immigrant Financial Integration Initiative (IFII)
The Mission Asset Fund’s Immigrant Financial Integration Initiative (IFII) recently conducted an extensive in-depth survey to analyze the financial attitudes and behaviors of Spanish-speaking Latina/o immigrants who either live or work in San Francisco’s Mission District. The Mission District is a historic gateway for new immigrants and provides a vibrant, living context to understand many of the complex issues that lowincome immigrant families confront across the country.
MAF utilized a participatory action research model to conduct the survey and focus groups. MAF created a survey of 35 questions to gather information about respondents’ personal, household, and financial situation. We also inquired about their views and attitudes about finances and financial institutions. In the course of 6 weeks (May to June 2009), MAF staff and volunteers collected 250 surveys from respondents that represented 10 different countries in Latin America. The survey has a margin of error of plus/minus 6%.