FROM THE PRESIDENT AND CEO
OCTOBER 2025

The Asset Funders Network exists to engage philanthropy in creating, testing, replicating, and advocating for systemic economic change—so every low- and medium-income household has a series of meaningful, life-long “shots” at economic security, modest wealth, and support to the next generations.

Our members recognize that wealth is agency in this economy and that it is time to dismantle the systems of scarcity that sustain advantage and deprive working people the opportunity to build wealth. An inclusive, abundant economy that provides pathways to lifelong prosperity for all does not squander talent. It invests in it. And builds from it. Today’s unpredictability and growing concentration of wealth enabled by government support or acquiescence to unrestrained capitalism echoes a past Gilded Age.

AFN’s vision offers an essential counterpoint: a future where a strong and growing middle class exists in every community.

That future is supported by:

  • Government that restricts predatory schemes and provides an accessible, economically meaningful safety net; and
  • Private and philanthropic sectors that catalyze broader ownership, thriving families, widespread affordable health, housing security, and intergenerational wealth transfer— regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender.

Achieving this vision won’t be quick or easy. Instead, we must navigate the complexity of the issues, the dismantling of fundamental protections, and increased ambiguity about roles, solutions, and partners. At the end of this process, we will need to assess the damage, acknowledge the harms, document what has been undone, and assess what is newly possible.

In that moment, it will be up to philanthropy and our partners to act— to create and realize the economic vision that embraces all of us.

That’s why AFN continues to focus on ideas that philanthropy, grantees, and local, flexible financial institutions can implement now or in the next year in a local context:

  • Expanding Baby Bonds to open doors to wealth building
  • Increasing hope and aspiration for post-secondary education through Children’s Savings Accounts (CSAs)
  • Fostering post-secondary education, including vocational training and apprenticeships, without debt
  • Growing the supply of affordable homes and homeownership among historically disadvantaged and excluded Black, immigrant, Latine, Asian and Native American households
  • Fostering ways for more community members to have a share in an ownership stake in our economy
  • Improving health outcomes, not only by expanding affordable insurance, but by reducing the harms of poverty, stress, depression, and uncertainty

These and many other solutions that increase the ability to build assets will continue to guide us as we identify and name the non-negotiables we must advance together.

Fostering alignment among the roles of philanthropy and financial institutions, both large and small, will continue to matter, as we learn from each other’s limits and stretch our individual and the network’s capabilities.

Believing in the future and persevering until we achieve the vision is the driving force. Only with this approach can we begin to move the levers of the system to deliver different outcomes to inform plans for the inclusive, abundant future.

This is not naive optimism. More Americans believe in an inclusive, healthy economy that works for all of us than in one that serves only the narrowest margins of elites. We cannot give up in the face of pressure. Instead, we must continue to document truth, support those striving for financial security, and foster their thriving.

AFN members, thank you for your partnership in believing that economic inclusion is possible and achievable. And to funders not yet part of AFN, consider joining us in building the inclusive economy our future demands.