2026 Fundamentals of Municipal Finance Credential

As communities continue facing urgent needs ranging from affordable housing to infrastructure investment, their decisions about revenues and expenditures must center on equity, efficiency, and sustainability. Many communities are experiencing severe fiscal challenges—and ongoing stress—to public services caused by the shrinking revenue streams impacting many local governments. Communities must not only devise ways to spend this influx of money equitably, they must also be prepared to adequately and fairly raise revenues amid diminishing federal funding. 

The 2026 Fundamentals of Municipal Finance Credential is a course created by the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy’s Center for Municipal Finance in partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.  The program’s goal is to help professionals who have a basic to intermediate knowledge of public finance in the US improve their understanding of the field; in turn, they will be able to make more informed decisions in their current or future careers in local government or community development 

Applications should be submitted on the University of Chicago website, and will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the cohort is full.