By Dave Gatton
November 8, 2010

The Bank of America Charitable Foundation has announced a two-year $450,000 grant to The United States Conference of Mayors as founding sponsor of its Mayors National DollarWise Campaign. The grant will provide the Campaign with additional resources for its DollarWise Innovations and its Summer Youth Campaign grant programs, in addition to developing creative local partnerships in the promotion of financial education within cities.

"We are excited and deeply grateful to the Bank of America Charitable Foundation for their continued support of the Mayors National DollarWise Campaign," said Conference of Mayors CEO and Executive Director Tom Cochran. "Financial education has never been more important than it is today. Mayors and cities can help lead a national movement to teach kids about how to be DollarWise."

One of the major new themes of the DollarWise Campaign is its Summer Youth program, with the goal of building a financial education component into every summer youth jobs program in the nation. "Kids often receive their first paycheck during their participation in summer youth jobs programs," said Conference of Mayors President Burnsville Mayor Elizabeth B. Kautz. "We need to make sure that we turn this opportunity into a teachable moment and help youth learn the responsible management of money from the very beginning," she said.

This year, the DollarWise Campaign provided grants to five cities for their Summer Youth programs. The Bank of America announcement will allow the Campaign to more than double the size of the awards in 2011 and 2012.

Since its inception, the DollarWise grant has also provided over 16 Innovation grants to cities across the country, including Bowling Green (KY), San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Providence, Omaha, and many others. Through the program, cities have launched "Bank On" initiatives to bank the "unbanked," developed Children's Trust Funds that establish individual development accounts for newborns, and financial education programs for small businesses.

For more information online about the Mayors National DollarWise Campaign, go to the website www.usmayors.org/dollarwise.