Rarely has one individual had more impact on the fortunes of one program than David Bradley has on the nation’s 1100 community action agencies. For nearly three decades David Bradley has been recognized as one of Washington’s leading advocates for low-income programs. David has worked with federal government representatives, members of Congress, congressional staff and key White House personnel to develop national policies dealing with low-income needs and related regulations and guidelines. David has served as a member on a number of advisory boards and commissions.

Since 1981, David has served as Executive Director of the National Community Action Foundation (NCAF) which he helped found in 1981. NCAF is a private, non-profit advocacy organization that interacts with Congress, the Executive Branch, state and local governments and local agencies on behalf of a variety of low-income programs.

David is the principle author of the Community Services Block Grant (CSBG). This three quarter of a billion dollar program provides the core funding to the nation’s community action agency (CAA) network. It is the essential funding which enables CAAs to leverage almost nine billion dollars in other federal, state, local and private resources. He wrote a major portion of the McKinney Act, which provides homelessness assistance to a wide variety of social service agencies.

He helped found and fund CAP LAW which provides a legal support system to this anti-poverty network and is widely credited with increasing the effectiveness of all partners, federal, state and local in the Community Services Block Grant network. David established CAP-PAC, the Community Action Program Political Action Committee. This allows community action programs to participate in a sophisticated manner in the political process. Recently David helped create CAP Fund which is the first venture capital fund to be established to assist CAAs in their economic development activities.

David’s most recent activities have been to meet with members of Congress and representatives of other countries who are interested in establishing a community action program in their countries. Libya, Russia and a number of Eastern Europeans countries have all expressed interest in having David help design a social service system that will empower low-income individuals seeking a way out of poverty.

David has a Bachelors and Masters degree from George Washington University. In 1987 he was a Senior Executive Fellow at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government. He served in President Carter’s Administration as Congressional Liaison at the Small Business Administration. In his spare time, David is a part owner of the Florida Marlins AAA baseball affiliate the Albuquerque Isotopes.

As a partner in the government relations firm of Moss McGee Bradley, David is intimately involved with the legislative affairs of federal programs totaling almost thirteen billion dollars and he is a frequent witness before the Congress.

David Bradley continues to demonstrate an unusual ability to make issues affecting the poor of interest to both political parties. This was clearly demonstrated in 1995 and 1996 when the House Republican Contract with America agenda called for the elimination of funding for the CSBG. David was able to turn that challenge into an opportunity to fully discuss the community action network. The result: Congress in 1996 gave the largest domestic increase in funding, some 100 million dollars to CSBG, a program that in 1995 was slated for elimination.

Although David has been widely praised by leaders of both political parties, perhaps Sargent Shriver, the first leader in the War on Poverty said it best, “No one has done more to keep the War on Poverty alive and fresh in the minds of individuals.”