City, Goodwill Industries of Tulsa Unveil City of Tulsa’s Blueprint for Economic Prosperity

1/17/2020

Today, Goodwill Industries of Tulsa and City leaders unveiled the City of Tulsa’s Blueprint for Economic Prosperity.

The Blueprint, prepared by the Mayor’s Office of Resilience and Equity, the Mayor’s Office of Community Development and Policy, and the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development, details how the City can best financially empower all of its residents. Residents who feel financially empowered are those who have stabilized individual financial health, know about education and counseling through municipal services and systems, are connected to better paying jobs and are supported in their entrepreneurship and local business growth efforts.

The approaches in the Blueprint were outlined based on data from the Gallup-Tulsa CitiVoice survey and the Tulsa Equality Indicators. These approaches include policies and programs the City has in place and future planned opportunities.

Friday’s announcement featured speakers and City leaders who educated community members and stakeholders on areas in Tulsa that have financial disparities, detailing opportunities for community involvement and sharing ways for stakeholders to get involved. 

In addition to the Blueprint, the City of Tulsa and Goodwill Industries of Tulsa will open a Financial Empowerment Center in late 2020. The center will offer free, professional one-one-one counseling to the public. For those looking to help design what the center will look like, the City is forming a Financial Empowerment Center Advisory Board.

Funding for the Blueprint for Economic Prosperity, as well as funding for the Financial Empowerment Center comes from a CityStart Grant from the Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund.

Read City of Tulsa’s Blueprint for Economic Success and find the application for the advisory board at www.cityoftulsa.org//blueprint.

Background:
In 2018, the City of Tulsa received a $20,000 CityStart Grant from the Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund (CFE Fund), a fund that supports municipal efforts to improve the financial stability of households by leveraging opportunities unique to local government. The grant helped begin work on Action 23 from the Resilient Tulsa Strategy. It also gave the City of Tulsa a way to build a structured approach to identify financial empowerment goals and convene stakeholders for sustainable and strategic economic success.