NOLA 360

NOLA 360 is a forum hosted by the Greater New Orleans Foundation that provides all stakeholders in our region a space to be educated and discuss the biggest challenges facing our community, while learning ways that each person can contribute to solutions needed.

NOLA 360 brings together local and national experts, philanthropists, nonprofits, and community leaders who believe that our region can be greater than any challenge we face.

Past Forums

Nola 360: The Cost of Being Poor

In 2015, Prosperity NOW (formerly The Corporation for Enterprise Development) developed an Asset and Opportunity profile, commissioned by the Greater New Orleans Foundation and the Ford Foundation, which concluded that 71 percent of New Orleans consumers have a subprime credit score which is a disadvantage in the financial marketplace. Without good credit, consumers pay higher interest rates than other consumers on everything from credit cards to car loans to mortgages.

Nola360: When Child Support Becomes A Debtor’s Prison

In 2015, the Greater New Orleans Foundation hosted a forum at Dillard University that examined state-ordered child support, which is intended to help children and families but is actually having the reverse effect in some instances. The forum explored how Child Support could be plunging the most economically fragile families further into debt, and its aggressive collection procedures are doing the most harm of all: sending fathers to jail.  The conversation centered on how we can improve a system that may be undermining the ability of families to work and care for their children? The forum challenged us to ask how we rethink our support of families in light of what other states have learned.