Financial Education in the Community: Highly Effective Programs & Partnerships Tuesday, May 10, :15 pm - 5:30 pm

Highly Effective Financial Education  What are the characteristics of highly effective financial education?

Session Agenda 1.Models of financial education: leveraging multiple strategies to ensure effectiveness 2.Using social marketing or client-centered design 3.Using the hierarchy of evaluation to collect meaningful results—demonstrate effectiveness 4.Understanding the role of partners and making these partnerships work

What is Financial Education?  Information and skills building opportunities that build individual and family capacity to get, manage, and use their resources to maintain a healthy existence and achieve their goals—survive and thrive. (1) Many terms Many approaches Many topics

Many Terms  Consumer education  Economic literacy  Financial literacy  Financial education  Financial fitness  Financial empowerment  Financial capability  Financial capacity  Financial wellness  Financial well being  Financial health

Models of Financial Education Classroom/Group Approaches Non-Classroom/Group Approaches

Organization Type

Summary of Strategies Used

Higher Level Outcomes Achieved

The Most Effective Models  Use more than one approach to achieve outcomes  Link to actions including appropriate products and services  Often integrate financial education into other systems  Focus first on target audience NOT on approach  All decisions about what should be covered in financial education and how it should be covered flow from the what participants bring to financial education that can be built upon, what participants need from financial education and the aspirations of the participants (target audience).

The Most Effective Models  Multi-Strategy Models—they combined more than one financial education approach to reinforce learning and allow time for application of knowledge and changes in behavior.  Bundling Services—they integrated other services or products that incentivized progress and offered opportunities to act on knowledge and skills gained through training or coaching.

FINANCIAL SUCCESS PROGRAM Multi-strategy Bundling Target Audience: Single mothers

The Most Effective Strategies  Financial Education Embedded into Existing Programs and Services—they embedded the financial education into another program or service with a committed client base.  Financial Education Integrated into Other Nonprofit Organizations—they trained other case managers or frontline nonprofit staff to provide financial education services to their respective client bases in the context of their services.

UNITED WAY OF CENTRAL IOWA Embedded Target Audience: Under Court Correctional Supervision

The Most Effective Strategies  Financial Education in the Workplace—they provided a wide range of services and linkages to resources and financial products in partnership with employers in the workplace.

UNITED WAY Of CHITTENDEN COUNTY Workplace Target Audience: Employees of small – midsized companies

What is Marketing  Marketing DOES NOT equal advertising only.  Marketing is... planning to have the RIGHT PRODUCT in the RIGHT PLACE at the RIGHT TIME at the RIGHT PRICE for the RIGHT PEOPLE.

Social Marketing  Social marketing uses the principles of marketing and applies these to a social problem.  The end goal is the not sale of product or service for profit but instead the “selling” of an idea that leads to attitude change and behavior change that benefits the target audience and generally society as whole.

Social Marketing

Target Audience Needs, Wants, and Aspirations

Using Social Marketing for Design  Identify your target audience  Understand the most pressing needs or wants for target audience  Align outcomes—of your financial education initiative or your target audience  Learn about potential barriers to outcomes  Determine financial education content and approach  Identify the right strategy to achieve the outcomes as well as possible partners or systems to serve your target audience

Budgeting for housing (Financial Counseling) Rights and responsibilities as a renter (Financial Education) Qualities of safe, secure and stable housing (Financial Education) and how to find it (Financial Counseling) Safe, secure and stable housing (Outcome ) Financial Education for Young People in Transition from Foster Care

Financial Education for Senior Citizens Raising Grandchildren Budgeting for children on a fixed income; saving for education (again) (Financial Education) Benefits screening (Service linkage) Peer sharing with other senior citizens in the same situation (Financial Support Groups) Making ends meet with new responsibilities (Outcome)

Social Marketing Marketing is not an event, but a process... It has a beginning, a middle, but never an end, for it is a process. You improve it, perfect it, change it, even pause it. But you never stop it completely.” Jay Conrad Levinson on the Never Ending Life Cycle of Marketing

Additional Key Principles  Keep messages short and tasks simple—this does not mean make it easy, it means deconstruct the complex into manageable steps.  Link completion of small steps (and larger milestones) with incentives.  Learning occurs when affective, cognitive and psychomotor domains are engaged.

Additional Key Principles  Focus on what to do; avoid focus on what NOT to do.  Ensure the learning builds on itself.  Provide time.  Use visual images and words to remember key concepts.  Use stories and examples to enhance meaning.

Increasing level of impact Hierarchy of Evaluation Satisfaction Knowledge and Skills Attitudes and Beliefs Behaviors Economic Condition

Roles of Partners in Projects

ResourcesTrust Communication Accountability Effective Partnerships

31  Staff that has: The experience, expertise, or right relationships The time to commit to the partnership The authority to act and make decisions Organizational (executive-level) support to be involved in the partnership  Time to dedicate to the care and nurturing of the partnership  Money  Materials What Makes Partnerships Work Resources

32  Partners are accountable to: One another Funders Clients Their own boards of directors  The partnership includes structures that a support accountability: Memorandum of understanding (MOU) or agreement Timelines/task lines Policies and processes for managing nonperformance Clear decision making processes and authorities What Makes Partnerships Work Accountability

33  Foundation of all partnerships  Pre-exists  Wanes with experiences related to lack of communication (or miscommunication) and nonperformance  Once eroded, difficult to rebuild Take time to get to know partners at the beginning of the relationship What Makes Partnerships Work Trust

34  Regular communication  Communication that is clear and honest  Open agenda (no hidden agenda)  Focused on task/timeline, deliverables, outputs, and outcomes  Clear and predefined decision-making structures and conflict resolution procedures  Documentation  Difficult conversations What Makes Partnerships Work Communication

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Presenters  Inger Giuffrida, Consultant for United Way Worldwide   Susan Sarver, Associate Director of the FINRA Foundation   Laura Scherler, Director of Financial Stability & Success at United Way Worldwide 

#AllIn4CLC