Living paycheck to paycheck, single mother MaCara Santiago didn’t think saving money was possible, much less owning a home. “I grew up in public housing, what was called ‘the projects,’” she recalls. “I thought people who owned homes were rich.”
While Santiago was receiving government assistance, the Dallas Housing Authority referred her to the YWCA, which is now called Ascend Dallas. In 2014 she began taking its class in personal economics, plus working with one of its financial coaches. Santiago learned about budgeting and how to avoid wasting money on things like eating out and shopping at convenience stores, and the next year she enrolled in a YWCA savings program called Individual Development s (IDA).
By 2016 she had saved $1,000, which IDA matched with $3,000. When Santiago bought a home in southern Dallas’ Redbird area through a first-time buyer program, those savings allowed her to put more toward the principal and avoid paying private mortgage insurance.
“[IDA] changed my life in so many positive ways,” Santiago says. “It allowed me to bless my children with assets that I can down to them, and it helped me to be sustainable.”
Federal funding for the IDA program ended in 2017, so the initiative was suspended — until now.
Fortified with $750,000 in funding obtained from Vanguard and an anonymous donor, Ascend Dallas is launching a similar savings plan called Bright Beginnings Fund. It will provide a 4-to-1 savings match for career advancement or buying a home and an 8-to-1 match for education.
Initially, Bright Beginnings will be offered to women who are in or have recently completed the nonprofit’s Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP), which provides counseling to at-risk new mothers during pregnancy and provides and resources to help them nurture their newborn through age two.
Most NFP participants earn less than $31,000 a year, according to the nonprofit. Bright Beginnings can help them improve their incomes and lives by saving for specific goals. “We want to create a bridge between the Nurse-Family Partnership and economic advancement to really maximize the impact,” says Ascend Dallas CEO Kate Rose Marquez. “These savings s, plus Vanguard’s generous match, will set recipients on the path to financial resiliency. We know it is transformative.”
Once Bright Beginnings launches this fall, Ascend Dallas aims to enroll 150 women over three years. The nonprofit plans to open the savings program to clients in its other educational programs if funding allows.
Marquez is fundraising and hopes to increase the program’s resources to at least $1 million this year. “We have a lot more asks out to foundations and corporations to supplement the pot of money that we have,” she says. “Our hope is to more MaCaras.”
Santiago, who works full time for a payroll company, operates her own tax consultancy for expatriates and has even started a nonprofit to help underserved girls become leaders. She credits her notable success to Ascend Dallas.
“It broke the cycle of generational poverty,” she says. “I was the first entrepreneur, first college graduate and first homeowner in my family, and my family looks to me to help them through life.”
One of her children holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Texas Tech University, and the other is studying finance at the University of Texas at Arlington, she notes.
“I hope [my story] will touch someone else so they can pour into Ascend, especially financially, because if it weren’t for the dollars, these programs wouldn’t exist,” Santiago says. “Community organizations like this are so helpful. I don’t know if people always realize the benefits of the work they do and how it changes people’s lives.”
To Bright Beginnings and other programs that empower women, fight poverty and impact generations, visit Ascend Dallas’ website.