Overview

We provide technical assistance to governments, Tribal Nations, foundations, nonprofits, public and private-sector leaders working to solve complex challenges, enhance their public finance systems and create better outcomes for people and places.

Turning Your Priorities Into Action

We work alongside our partners to understand their goals and context, identify opportunities, and develop practical strategies that align public, private, and philanthropic resources. Our technical assistance can include strategy development, capital planning, financing and resource strategies, research and analysis, stakeholder engagement, capacity building, and implementation support. Rather than applying a one-size-fits-all model, we tailor our approach to each partner—bringing an integrated public finance lens to help turn priorities into actionable investments and lasting change:

• Understand the challenge
• Develop the strategy and action plan
• Build the capacity to act
• Prepare you for implementation

Our Process

We begin with the problem you are trying to solve, the outcomes you hope to achieve, and the context in which you are working. We then bring together finance, policy, community development, and capital-market expertise to identify pathways forward and align resources around your goals. We work with you and the leaders and institutions you identify in your ecosystem to strengthen the tools, systems, relationships, and capabilities needed to move from strategy to implementation.

We also provide a menu of capacity building resources that can enable leaders to prepare to act, building strong foundations of knowledge, and supporting them in sustaining change. In our action plans, we build in time to stay alongside our partners as they put strategies into practice, helping navigate challenges, refine approaches, and build momentum toward lasting outcomes. This allows us to monitor outcomes, support you as your impact is realized, and invite you to share your learnings so we can elevate them to others in the field who stand to learn from your efforts.

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Partnerships & Collaboration

We often deliver technical assistance in partnership with other experts, organizations, and practitioners whose knowledge and experience complement our own. By bringing the right expertise to the table, we can help partners address complex challenges from multiple perspectives and develop solutions that are both place-specific and grounded in deep technical knowledge:

We are proud to have partnered in past programs with leading financial advisory firms such as The PFM Group, PFM Consulting, Baker Tilly, and with leading trade organizations like the National League of Cities, The Government Finance Officers Association, the Government Alliance on Race & Equity, and others who have brought deep specialized expertise to help us support governments with incredibly complex and innovative challenges in public finance.

Lourdes German
Chief Executive Officer
The Public Finance Institute

Our Body of Work

The Public Finance Institute (PFI) is a nonprofit organization and the successor to the Public Finance Initiative, founded in 2020. We began providing technical assistance in 2020 anchored by what we call an integrated public finance strategy: the view that government finance, philanthropy, private development, and community development resources can be more effectively mobilized when they are understood and deployed as components of a single system, rather than in separate silos. Our technical assistance work has helped leaders adopt frameworks, practices, and new strategies that align and mobilize resources in service of their desired place-based strategy to achieve greater impact.

Our past technical assistance programs launched under The Public Finance Initiative brought together cohorts of leaders working across similar goals, challenges, or regions, via, for example:

• The Bond Markets & Racial Equity Program
• The Bloomberg Philanthropies City Budgeting for Equity & Recovery Program
• The Rural & Small Cities Program