Archive for starting a nonprofit

If you build it…will they come?

April 11, 2011 financial literacy, managing a nonprofit, starting a nonprofit, Uncategorized No comments

This is a question we all ask when planning educational events. Though its common knowledge there is a huge need for financial education usually the people who need the information are not going to seek it out. One of the struggles many of our partners who serve adults face is getting people to attend their events. Financial Beginnings is fortunate we don’t need to recruit our audience because our classes are in the in schools or community groups where are audience is already gathered. They are stuck hearing form us if they want to or not.

Last week was Money Smart Week in Oregon. Financial Beginnings and Operation HOPE decided that we wanted to expend our efforts beyond our youth in school programs during Money Smart Week. I have always wanted to have an open forum for adults to be able to ask their questions regarding personal finance. With laws and industry norms changing so frequently in addition to money always being viewed as a taboo subject I thought people have a forum to where they can ask questions would be wonderful. Money Smart Week gave me the push I needed to finally organize one of these forums and we named it Unraveling the Mysteries of Your Money. You’d be surprised how long it took us to come up with the name.

At Portland State University we brought together experts within the financial industry including; Jim Hunt from OnPoint Community Credit Union, Michael Parker from the Oregon College Saving Plan, Nelson Rutherford from Alten, Sakai & Co, and Diane Childs and Fernando Velez from the Oregon Division of Finance and Corporate Securities. The moderator of the panel was Brent Hunsberger, It’s Only Money columnist for the Oregonian Newspaper. Brent’s diverse knowledge in personal finance combined with his reputation in the community really helped to bring exposure and credibility to this event. You would think that with this great group this would have been the hard part of my task, but this was easy.

The hard part was the promotion and getting people to come to the event. I hear it time and time again from event organizers that it is so hard to get people to come. Having the event be free may even make it more difficult in some respects because of the perceived value. If people pay for attendance to an event they may tie a higher value to it and may be more likely to attend.

As of the three days before the event we had less than 10 people registered to attend. My anxiety level was high and I was so worried I was going to waste the panel’s time because nobody would show up. So we marketed it hard. All of the panel members helped to promote the event. Brent wrote about it in the paper and Nick Allard from KGW brought us on the bricks to promote it. We ramped up our social media and contacted all of the business professors at Portland State.

The registrations started flooding in, we maxed out the registration. We even added more seats because our experience has shown that usually only 2/3 of those that register end up attending free events. Our predictions were correct and we ended up with about 2/3 of those who registered attending.

I was so pleasantly surprised by the diversity of the crowd and their eagerness to hear from the panel. We had several planned questions in case the audience did not have questions right away, but Brent was only able to get one of the planned questions out and the audience took over from there. I saw several individuals in the crowd filling out multiple pages of notes. When time ran out several audience members flocked the panel for additional questions. It was like they were rock stars.

Aspects I see attributing to the success of the event:
• Having Brent Hunsberger of the Oregonian as the moderator added a lot of credibility to the event and his writing about it gave the event more exposure.
• Holding the event at Portland State University also added credibility to the and highlighted the educational component of the event.
• The panel was made up of high level and respected individuals.
• The varied marketing proved to be successful based on a pole of those attending reporting how they heard about the event.

We will definitely hold the event again next year during Money Smart Week. We have created a great foundation for the event and will be able to build upon this more next year.

Panel

Writing my annual report letter

October 3, 2010 financial literacy, managing a nonprofit, starting a nonprofit, Uncategorized No comments

Writing the annual report letter is always such a challenge. Each year I’m given one page to highlight our accomplishments for the year and talk about what’s to come. This year is even harder as I was told by my Development Director that I only get half a page this year. So here’s what I’ve got. Consider it a sneak preview of our annual report.

It’s hard to believe that we just finished our fifth year of bringing financial education to the Northwest. This is a huge milestone for us as it should be for any organization, especially in this economy. Half of new businesses do not survive more than five years, for nonprofits it’s been estimated that figure is even less with only one third hitting the monumental five year mark.

So as Financial Beginnings celebrates five years of service to our community I would like to thank all of you who helped to make this happen. Schools and community groups have welcomed us with open arms. Youth and parents who have utilized the valuable life lesson we provide. Businesses and individuals who have supported our cause by providing their time and resources. All of this support in a time when we have all been struggling.

Even though we have been doing this for five years I still feel like this is just the beginning. How can we maximize our resources and continue to serve the ever increasing demand? I think we’ve figured out the answer… partnerships. We have been working to enter into several strategic partnerships here in the Northwest which will allow us to serve more and provide more, for less.

Thank you all for your continued support. I look forward to discovering with you what the next five years will bring.

So what do you think? Am I on the right track?

A New Team Member!

September 24, 2010 financial literacy, managing a nonprofit, starting a nonprofit, Uncategorized One comment

My name is Josh Gordon, the new Program Coordinator for Financial Beginnings.  I joined the Financial Beginnings team at the end of August.  I came here because our communities desperately need young people to receive a financial education.   I am extremely happy to be here and I want to tell you all a little about myself and my role.

I graduated from Willamette University in 2009 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics. I excelled in finance, accounting, and mathematics and I am confident my academic success will be an asset at Financial Beginnings.

Before starting at Financial Beginnings I worked in financial planning, real estate, law, information technology, and sales.  I plan to draw from my previous experiences to expand the capacity of the Financial Beginnings program.

I bring a fresh perspective to the team and my primary ambition is to identify new opportunities for Financial Beginnings.  Over the next year I will be actively involved in volunteer recruitment, training, and management.  In addition, I aim to increase the number of students educated via the Financial Foundations and Banking on Our Future programs by 20-30%.  To achieve this I will expand our programs into new schools and into new regions.  I will look for opportunities not only in schools but also in community organizations, local businesses, and our existing network.

Throughout the coming months I will develop and launch a series of teacher training workshops.  It is vital teachers are equipped with the correct information and resources in this era of financial uncertainty.  I am tremendously excited to develop new programs for Financial Beginnings. I am also pondering other ideas to continually improve the efficiency and scope of the organization.  You will have to come back to find out the details! 🙂

I will use this blog to inform you of new developments in Financial Beginnings, to present free available resources, and to offer new ideas and analyze existing ones.

My experience so far has been fun and productive.  I welcome ideas, comments, and concerns.   I look forwarding to hearing from you, thanks for reading to the bottom!

“If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars.”

Josh

How Financial Beginning Began

February 12, 2010 financial literacy, starting a nonprofit No comments

I have no idea how the whole blog thing works, but my web guys says to “just write” so I will.  This is strange for me since I pay an amazing person (www.kelleynpc.com ) to do all of my writing for the business because, after all, I am a finance person and we’re not known for our writing skills.  I’m not quite sure what my focus for this blog will be.  I want to share information and stories to further the financial literacy movement, but will this going to interest an online crowd?  I’d also like to inspire people.  I know very cliché, but I love what I do and I’d love to help others do the same.  I created the position I’m in and the organization I work for and it has far exceeded my expectations.  Still, I’ve gone through a lot to get to where I’m at so maybe sharing some of my struggles along the way will help too.  So where to start?  I guess I’ll start from the beginning and how Financial Beginnings (www.financialbeginnings.org ) came to be.

I grew up in this little manufactured home in the middle of the woods the younger of two kids.  When I was young we were poor, though I didn’t realize it at the time.  My mother was going to college and working nights while my dad worked during the day.  It’s funny now looking back on when my family had more money, the only thing that sticks out in mind as changing is the food got a lot better around the house.  Suddenly we had bagels and juice on hand, which we never had before.

It was a combination of have less when we were younger and being fifth generation cheap, which helped my parents to instill some very valuable financial habits into my brother and me.  I knew when it was appropriate to ask my parents for money, such as if my shoes were falling apart or there was a field trip at school I wanted to go on.  I would never go up to my parents and ask for money if I was going out to the movies with friends.  We were given an allowance and expected to work if we wanted money to go out.  Which, I did.  I babysat, house sat, and worked at the local Dairy Queen.

When I turn 16 and got my driver’s license I remember my dad saying that I could use his car whenever I wanted.  Still, that came at a price.  He took the average gas price by the average miles per gallon the car got and charged me for my mileage.  He had a book in the car that I had to write down the mileage on when I entered and left the car.  Then at the end of the week when it came time for allowance he’d give me my $10 and then take it right back to cover my mileage expenses.  Within about two months I bought my own car.

At 16 I reached another financial milestone.  I got my first credit card, now I’ll pause for the gasps.  A credit card company sent out an advertisement to get a credit card before the legal age of 18 by having your parents co-sign.  I convinced my parents this was a good idea and then entered the world of debt.  The credit card came conveniently right before prom; needless to say I ended up looking awesome with a new dress, shoes, hair done, the works.  And needless to say my parents and I had a talk when they opened up the first credit card statement.  That month I also learned about late fees.  I got my bill sent it out a week before it was due and it gets there after the due date and I get a $25 late fee.  I was so mad when I got my next statement; I called my attorney uncle to verify if this injustice was legal.  He assured me it was.

When I was legally able to be held to a contractual obligation at 18 I went out and financed a car with the help of this resources at cartitleloanhub.com. I was very proud that I got out of the dealership thinking I hadn’t been taken.  I went in there telling them I wanted a car under $10,000, he showed me a car, I fell in love when to sign the documents and the price showed as 12,000.  I told them this was unacceptable and they agreed to drop it down to the $10,000 but would only give me $100 for my trade it.  I ended up leaving with both cars, a loan at 13% and a $2000 warranty because “the lender said I had to have one”.  Yah, I wasn’t taken.  It wasn’t until I later worked for that finance company that I learned the dealer forced the warranty on me and that 13% was not a good rate to be paying.

Remember that car I was going to trade in for $100, well I kept it and sold it the next day for $1000.  Yah for me right?  Well, after reading some Farmers insurance reviews, when I called to get my first insurance policy on my own the first six months of insurance conveniently ended up being $1000.  When I called and got my first insurance policy I just called and said I need “full coverage” and they told me how much to pay.  It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I met with a financial advisor and he told me I was crazy for being married with a house and only carrying the state minimums and I immediately bumped up my insurance.  My insurance agent never took the time to explain to me what the limits meant and the importance of them.

It was this same agent who did not tell me about renter’s insurance until I asked about after getting a call from the maintenance man at my apartment asking me if he could enter because they heard water running in my apartment.

From the time I left high school I realized that I could not accept being a poor college student.  So I went to school full time and worked part time.  At first I found that I was not interested in college and my grades suffered because of it.  So I dropped school to part time and increased my work to full time.

My work experience in the finance industry was working for Meier & Frank collecting on their department store credit cards.  Imagine me, not yet legal to have my own credit card, calling people to collect on an outfit they bought last year and now don’t want to wear because it’s out of style.  You can imagine with all of the bills people had, paying their M&F card was not high on the list.  I heard every excuse in the book.

I then upgraded and moved onto collecting on auto loans.  I found this to be much easier as cars are higher on people’s priority list to pay.  I was assigned a group of accounts and found that the same people delinquent time and time again.  The customers came to know me quite well.  I recall getting a call from a customer one time telling me that his Audi A8 was stolen.  I let him know he should call the police.  He said he was worried about the payment though and I told him he would need to file an insurance claim.  I then discovered the reason for his worry…his insurance policy had lapsed and he had no coverage.  A $38,000 vehicle was stolen and he still owned the full amount.

I also recall one customer that had two vehicles financed and both were severely past due.  I had to send both cars out to be repossessed.  The customer called me and worked out a way to keep the vehicles.  He then sent a letter to my manager tell him how great I was to work with.  I think this is what must customers do not realize.  If they just work with the finance company there are ways to make the situation work out for both parties.

I recall my friend and I talking at work about how uneducated the customers were.  How they did not realize how their credit was affected by their slow payments. How we were asked multiple times if they could just give back the car and call it even.  He came up with a wonderful idea…. Finance companies hiring individuals to go into the classroom and teach about credit!  They would be creating good consumers and in turn lowering their exposure to loss.  I loved the idea and told him that I was going to work on how to make it happen.  But, life goes on and so do the bills that go with it so this had to take a back seat to everything else.

Newly married my husband and I went to a financial advisor and learned the amazing concept of compound interest.  This was an eye opening experience.  He informed us that the state insurance requirements were not enough to protect ourselves, our homes and our assets.  Who knew?  When I got my car insurance I told the agent I wanted “full coverage” I didn’t understand that just meant the minimum liability requirements and collision coverage to protect the finance company.  We immediately increased our liability insurance and purchased and umbrella policy.

We also discussed investing with the advisor.  At the time $2000 was the maximum amount one to contribute annually towards an IRA.  The advisor turned to my husband who was seven years old than me and told my husband if he were to put $2000 away each year until he was 60 he would have $800,000.  Wow!  He then turned to me and said with you getting a seven year head start you will end up with over 2 millions.  Wait a minute!  Seven years younger at $2000 a year, that means I only put away $14000 more and I end up with over double.  Compound Interest!

I was so excited by what we had learned from our financial advisor that I decided this was the career for me.  I was focused and needed to return to school to obtain the education I needed.  Obviously, majoring in finance seemed like the natural path.  I went back to school full time and with this new focus I found that I was a model student.  I was driven to become a financial advisor.  I obtained by BS in Business Administration focusing in Finance.  Still I never had to take personal finance as a required course. My finance courses were all focused on being a financial analyst.

While finishing up school I obtained my insurance and securities licenses with ease.  I was ready to go out and help people prepare for retirement.  Still nobody had ever told me this was actually a sales job!  Since I had gone seeking this information when I got married I just assumed everyone else did too.  I did not realize that most people actually have to be sold on the concept of preparing for retirement.  And they definitely did not was to be sold by a 22 year old blond.  I quickly left this field unable to accept the negative salary I was earning as I was looking for a better pay stub.

I entered the job market and found this to be a very hard time to find a job.  The economy was slow and there were not enough jobs to go around.  I found a job as a liability claims adjuster.  It was a great job because of the flexibility that came with it.  It also was similar to the collections industry because I had to deal with people in hard situations.  I excelled at the job and moved up very quickly.  I was repeatedly amazed by how people failed to properly project themselves.  There were multiple times where the people I worked with did not have enough insurance to cover the loss leaving themselves open to large debt obligations. For a detailed financial view, check HowMuchA.net to convert hourly to annual salary.

Throughout each of the different parts of the finance industry I worked in I found a lack of financial literacy among customers and how this lack of knowledge ledge to heartache.  I increased my research in providing finance education to youth.  I originally planned on proposing the idea to a credit card company, but after my experience as a financial advisors and insurance claims adjuster I realized that providing credit education was not enough.  Students needed a comprehensive program to provide them the foundation they need in personal finance.  Students need to know about banking, insurance, credit and savings & investing.  And that is how Financial Beginnings was born.

www.financialbeginnings.org