"Me and my husband are saving for a single family home. What was helpful to me, the first thing was the principle and importance of saving, how simple saving can be if you have a goal. And it made me more goal-oriented, because goals are really important to me. It really helps to be more focused and self-disciplines."
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"Having the knowledge and having the support from the (financial education) program, it helps you feel secure. I've got myself into stupid things, like when I financed my car for the first time I got myself in trouble. I don't want to go through that again, ever!"
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"We're all in the same boat... we're walking through this process together. It actually gives a lot of credibility to the program... to sit in a room with people just like you."
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—— Program participants
Financial education is a cornerstone to asset development because of the universal need to analyze financial information, make wise and informed decisions, and respond to opportunities and emerging events. When structured and experience-based, financial education programs can improve financial attitudes, knowledge, skills, and behaviors. To expand and improve financial education programming, IASP collaborates with community-based organizations, government agencies, and financial institutions to conduct research and evaluations, provide technical assistance in program design and implementation, and inform public policy.
IASP and MASSCAP (Massachusetts Association for Community Action) have partnered to expand the capacity of the state's community action agencies (CAAs) to provide asset formation services to more effectively help low-income people attain financial stability and economic well-being. The goal of MASSCAP's Asset Formation Initiative is to build the capacity of CAAs to offer a continuum of asset formation services, with financial education and free tax preparation at its core. As the research partner, IASP designed and implemented the data gathering, analysis, evaluation and training components of the initiative. IASP provided technical assistance for partnering CAAs to understand and improve the impact of their financial education programs.
Staff at community action agencies and other community-based organizations are often in a position - and have the trust - to assist homeless clients and clients at risk of homelessness with budgeting, credit repair, and other critical financial issues. Yet few staff have the training or tools to provide such financial education. Responding to this need, the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development funded a pilot project for IASP and MASSCAP to develop and deliver a Financial Education Toolkit to staff at three partnering community action agencies: Quincy Community Action Programs, Inc., Community Teamwork, Inc., and South Middlesex Opportunity Council, Inc.
The development of the toolkit involved a national literature review and scan of existing financial education programs that target homeless populations, as well as focus groups and interviews with staff and clients at shelters run by partnering agencies. Staff at partnering agencies were trained and began delivering the toolkit in August 2008. The project evaluation found positive increases in credit scores and other measures of financial literacy. Currently, IASP is working with MASSCAP, DHCD, and the Interagency Council on Housing and Homelessness to integrate the toolkit in the Commonwealth's eight Regional Networks for ending homelessness.
IASP is collaborating with Heller's Center for Youth and Communities to evaluate and provide Consumer Action's Money Wi$e Financial Literacy Program. Consumer Action is a national non-profit education and advocacy organization with almost 30 years of experience in financial education and consumer protection, and their MoneyWi$e program develops and distributes free, multilingual financial education materials. The project, which is funded by Capital One, has two main components:
1) an analysis of Consumer Action's different methods for training community-based organization staff to use the Money Wi$e materials with their clients, and
2) an analysis of the MoneyWi$e program's impact on the clients of community-based organizations.
The MoneyWi$e website can be found at http://www.money-wise.org/
For more information about these projects, please contact Jonas Parker at 781-736-8680
© 2009, Institute on Assets and Social Policy, The Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University. All rights are reserved.
