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Supporting Students Through COVID-19 Towards College and Career

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Things are changing in real time as colleges decide whether they will serve students on campus or virtually this coming fall. Likewise, students are considering a range of issues such as how far from home they can realistically go, if they need to work sooner than later, and if college expenses are even wise right now. As allies and college financial advisors, our intention is to ensure that all students have the tools and resources they need to make informed and affordable college decisions - ultimately helping them reach their college and career goals. As such, it’s important we know the circumstances students face if we are to strike the balance between giving expert guidance and affirmation as they make this important decision in their young lives.

According to the 2020 Indicators of Higher Education Equity in the United States report, for every 100 low-income and first-generation dependent students entering college, only 26 will have earned a bachelor’s degree six years later compared with 69 of students who are not low-income and first-generation. While more low-income students are attending college, fewer students are graduating on time. 

Enrolling in a college with sustainable financial planning is critical for student success — both in college and beyond. Deciding what college to attend, however, is rife with financial risk. Colleges may offer a student dramatically different financial packages, but full cost information can be difficult to obtain, hard to compare, and challenging to interpret. 

Why is financial aid so difficult?

frustrated student covering face with book

In our Financial Need and Ownership Report, we reveal two driving factors of students’ financial vulnerability based on our interviews:

  1. Unmet Need – the amount that is left to be paid after financial aid is awarded (not including loans). 
  2. A Sense of Ownership – students who view themselves as responsible for their financial situation have an internal sense of ownership over their financial situation.

Unmet need is rarely clear. Award letters are difficult for students, families, and academic counselors to interpret. Because of this: 

  • The nation’s $1.6 trillion in student debt is fueled by opaque pricing in higher education.
  • Only 1-5% of 4-year colleges are considered affordable for first-generation and low-income freshmen, each year.
  • 70% of college dropouts leave school due to pressing financial concerns.
  • Pell grant recipients, most of whom have family incomes under $40,000, are 5x more likely to end up in default as their higher income peers.
  • First-generation students are more likely to end up in default than students whose parents had attended college. 
  • African-American students are more likely to default on their loans than students of other races and ethnicities. 
  • And, while 60% of white students borrow money, 87% of minorities borrow to attend college.

This issue is not a partisan one. According to Senator Lamar Alexander on NPR, “We consistently hear from students, parents, and administrators that students looking for federal financial aid to go to college need a much simpler system for the $30 billion in grants, roughly $100 billion in new loans, and the repayment plans for those loans.”

Unfortunately, it’s widely acknowledged that award letters are a major source of the inequity, confusion, and misinterpretation. Here are the Seven Financial Aid Award Letter “Don’t’s” that we’ve identified since 2008:

  1. Include confusing jargon and terminology.
  2. Omit the complete cost of attendance.
  3. Fail to differentiate types of aid.
  4. Mislead packaging of parent plus loans.
  5. Provide vague definitions of work study.
  6. Show inconsistent bottom line calculations.
  7. Do not provide clear next steps. 

In the article The Financial Aid Conundrum, we see that this issue affects all students, but disproportionately for low-income students of color who tend to have a lower sense of ownership. When students lack basic financial literacy skills, they make decisions that are based more on the influences of others than their own needs, and more fueled by opinions rather than critical information.

silhouette of a woman with her fist in the air

Moneythink is on the case

Since our inception in 2008, Moneythink has been a leader in financial capability for traditionally under-served youth. From 2008-2016, we mentored 30,000 HS students nationwide using our proprietary financial capability curricula — garnering accolades along the way, such as the White House Champions of Change Award.

Beginning in 2016, after years of work in financial literacy mentorship, we honed in on one of the most decisive moments in a young person’s life: enrolling and graduating from college with minimal financial burden. With an acute understanding of the obstacles, it was clear that a successful Moneythink program could support the development of youth-focused financial empowerment habits through virtual college financial advising, while also impacting long-term behavioral change and economic status. Between 2017-2019, we provided financial college coaching to over 2,500 students in Illinois and California.

Along the way, it became clear that we could  support the field as content experts focused on providing objective financial aid coaching. We convene advisors and organizations already doing great work and optimize their financial aid coaching with our tools, content, and training. 

In my interview with Next Gen Personal Finance Co-Founder Tim Ranzetta of the “Tim Talks To…” Podcast, I remind the field:

“It’s not because there isn’t a standard format. The Department of Education has suggested a financial aid award template to help clarify and systematize the information across different colleges. But it’s really up to colleges to decide how to format the information, the language they use. And we’re really seeing a lot of variance between college financial aid award letters.”

We know that students, families, and educators need to have tools at their fingertips to make sense of the information they can get, in whatever format it’s in, to make a truly informed choice that keeps student goals at the center.

This is where Moneythink’s new affordability tool, DecidED, comes in. 

Student with backpack and headphones smiling on a busy street

What Moneythink’s DecidED can do for YOU and Your Students

Our tool, DecidED, completely removes the guesswork out of college affordability for students and their families, as well as empowers counselors and advisors in the space. Moneythink’s tool, DecidED, scheduled for full release in the fall, 2020: .

  • Helps students make a holistic college enrollment decision informed by an accurate understanding of the cost of their college options.  
  • Provides focused, action-oriented, personalized content that helps students, families, and advisors make well informed enrollment decisions based on clear guidelines and methodology.
  • Helps schools, districts, and college access organizations extend the reach and impact of services by scaling financial aid literacy and action-enabling tools with technology and reporting.

DecidED can support educators and institutions during, throughout, and after the financial aid application process for students.

  • Educators and Institutions will be able to use DecidED for relevant, accurate financial aid guidance, advising, and tools so that they can navigate the “next normal” as education systems re-invent themselves. 
  • Administrators and Advocates can use DecidED for training, research, stories, and data that can inform reform as educators reconsider education priorities in light of lessons learned this year. We also share relevant, timely information and resources such as the NACAC Enrollment Deposit Fee Waiver and SwiftStudent for appeals.

DecidED helps students complete financial aid transactional steps and make a holistic college enrollment decision. 

  • Students use DecidED during the financial aid application process to:
    • Receive FAFSA/CA Dream Act submission reminders and instructions;
    • Make highly informed enrollment decisions grounded in an accurate and complete understanding of college costs; 
    • Compare true apples-to-apples affordability levels, quality, and fit across multiple college options; 
    • Consider how graduation rate and future salaries outcomes might influence their enrollment decision; 
    • Have productive conversations about the tradeoffs of college options with advisors and family; and 
    • Create a data-driven financial plan to responsibly pay for their college years. 
  • Students use DecidED once in college to:
    • Receive FAFSA/CA Dream Act renewal reminders and instructions for 2nd+ year of college; and
    • Continue to make highly informed decisions related to their financial plan to responsibly pay for their remaining college years.

Using our cutting edge-technology, DecidED clarifies the difference between gift aid (what students don’t have to pay back such as grants and scholarships) and self-help (what students have to pay back or earn such as loans and work study), and makes clear what the costs of attendance are. Only with all of these pieces can students and families fully understand 1) what college will cost, 2) how much outside aid they will get to go there, and 3) what is left for the family to cover.  By helping students make affordability-informed enrollment decisions, we expect that will increase the chance of students obtaining a bachelor’s degree, within their expected time to completion, with a sustainable amount of debt.

college advisor works with student in front of a blackboard on a laptop

Partner with Moneythink to scale success

Whether you are a high school counselor, a school administrator, a district director, an education advocate, or a college access program lead, we want to help you scale your success. 

Here are the different ways you can engage with Moneythink to enhance your services and extend your impact.

  • Sign up for a DecidED Demo this summer and learn how the tool can be used by you and your partners.
  • Sign up for a Moneythink Partnership Info Session this summer and find out how partnership with Moneythink can improve your student outcomes and increase your team’s capacity to advise and affirm.
  • Sign up for a Moneythink Financial Aid Training for the fall and let our content experts update your staff on financial aid policy, financial aid applications, and best practices in the field.
  • Sign up for the DecidED Pilot for the fall so that we can offer your organization the collaboration, data, tools, and resources to help your students succeed.
  • Sign up for a Moneythink API Info Session if you’d like to learn more about how our data, reporting, and API resources can compliment and improve your existing tools and reports.

DecidED comes at a critical time when K-12 systems are still waiting to understand how the coronavirus will impact school plans for the 2020-2021 Academic Year. Moneythink can support education leaders in designing a new normal for graduating high school seniors, incoming college freshmen and incoming college transfers that learns from old lessons and prevents more students from making ill-informed and unaffordable college decisions. 

Together, we can help our students not just survive, but thrive. Not just complete, but succeed. Our students can achieve #lessdebtmoredegrees, and at the same time, design a pathway towards an economically sustainable future for themselves, and their families.

About the authors:

Joshua Lachs serves as the CEO at Moneythink, a national ed-tech nonprofit that aims to bring college cost transparency to scale while helping all students have the opportunity to earn a college degree with little to no debt. 

Meredith Curry is a Senior Advisor at Moneythink. Meredith has served as the Founding Director of Operations at California College Guidance Initiative and the Executive Director at South Central Scholars.

As former first-gen college students, Josh and Meredith each know firsthand that the financial side of college can be daunting and are both inspired to ensure that students have access to the opportunities they deserve.

Our Next Phase of Growth

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Moneythink announced today that Joshua Lachs has been named the new Chief Executive Officer of the organization.

Josh brings extensive experience in the nonprofit, social enterprise, and higher education sectors to Moneythink. His history of leading comprehensive strategic development as well as revenue, program, and external relations growth will be instrumental in guiding Moneythink through its next phase of development and scale.

“Since our founding in 2008, Moneythink has pioneered award-winning technology solutions to bring financial guidance to its students, and today the organization is perfectly poised to scale its impact,” said Board Chairman, Greg Nance. “Josh’s catalytic leadership as CEO will enable millions of young people to overcome financial barriers to college success. We are confident Josh has the creative insight, operational acumen, executive experience, and core values to lead our pioneering, mission-driven organization into a defining new era.”

About Josh

Josh comes to Moneythink from the internationally-reaching organization, Net Impact, where he served as Chief Business Development Officer. Previous to that, he was the CEO at Breakthrough Collaborative, an award-winning, national college access organization with the country’s largest pre-residency program for aspiring educators. While at Breakthrough, his team lead the development of a new organization-wide strategy and brand refresh, secured the organization’s largest multi-year grant, and increased its service outreach by 60%. Josh also previously served as Chief Officer of Workforce Development & Community Engagement for Goodwill Industries of San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin, a nationally reputed $42M regional job training enterprise. At Goodwill, he led a robust portfolio of publicly and privately funded teen- and adult-centered job-readiness programs, including San Francisco City’s One Stop Center. Prior to that, Josh enjoyed a lengthy career as a university dean and executive director scaling programs, diversifying revenue streams, and growing partnerships for globally-facing campuses.

Among Josh’s proudest accomplishments was the creation of the Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership at JFKU, which has since helped establish hundreds of enterprises generate more than $1B in total revenue while creating more than 4,000 jobs.

“I am absolutely humbled, honored, and energized to join Moneythink and to build on the organization’s bold vision.” said Josh. “The entire organization is so impressive — the Board and the team — underscored by their shared values, commitment to Moneythink’s mission and its students, and entrepreneurial zeal. As a first-generation college student, myself, Moneythink deeply resonates with me. With this team in place, we are well positioned to dramatically increase the number of students it serves and the communities it empowers, along with being a trusted partner in the broader college success ecosystem. It’s a privilege to be chosen to succeed Ted and lead Moneythink into its second decade. We are excited to build on our track record and create even greater reach and impact!”

A Career of Service

Josh has been active in his community throughout his entire career. 

He has served on a multitude of nonprofit boards and institutional committees, as well as frequently consulted for social impact organizations in the areas of strategic planning, resource development, program scale, and operations. Josh earned his B.A. from UC Berkeley and holds two masters degrees from Columbia University. He and his wife, Samantha, live in Berkeley, CA raising their two young sons, both of whom attend the local public schools.

Josh succeeds founding CEO, Ted Gonder, who led the organization from its establishment in 2008 at the University of Chicago as a student volunteer initiative to its growth as a nationally recognized college access nonprofit organization.

Under Ted’s leadership, Moneythink was awarded the White House Champions of Change award by President Obama, and since its founding has brought free financial education to over 15,000 young people in 30 cities across the country. Along the way, Moneythink has been recognized as a pioneer in the development of technology solutions, and today, the organization is primed to scale its impact.

Of the transition, Ted said, “It has been an honor and privilege to serve as Moneythink’s founding CEO for the last 10 years. I have been able to watch it change and develop into something so much more than we ever imagined when we dreamt up this vision in our college dorm. We’ve reached a stage of development that is well-suited for a seasoned nonprofit executive, and I couldn’t think of anyone better suited for this task than our new CEO, Josh Lachs. I’m excited to use my role on the board of directors to support Josh’s leadership and continue guiding the organization toward its vision of an equitable future for all students.”

Josh’s appointment is a reflection of Moneythink’s incredible growth over the last two years and its current state of innovation. Moneythink is extremely grateful for Ted’s leadership and are excited for him to continue to serve as an advisor on the Board of Directors.

Read Ted’s farewell letter on his personal Medium page here. And read and share our Newswire press release here.

Be a part of the solution by making a donation, referring a partner, or becoming a corporate contributor.

Employee Voices Series: Liz Pattermann on Equitable Education

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By Liz Pattermann

When I was a teenager, I learned that equitable education access was one of the hallmarks of living in a just world.

In the years since then, I’ve realized that I really do want to live in a just world; and, as some of the veils of my naivety have fallen away, I’ve decided I’ll settle for as close to a just world as we can intentionally create. So while I’m not sure that we’ll ever achieve world peace, or climate stability, or completely equitable access to education, I do believe that these are goals worth actionably moving toward. Luckily, right now I have the immense privilege of working at Moneythink in the space of creating more equitable access to postsecondary education for young Americans as they come of age.

Making Equitable Education Access a Reality

A decade ago, as the threshold of my own high school graduation was approaching, I didn’t know a thing about how you decide what to do with the rest of your life.

Although I don’t believe there is a single, ultimate way to approach this question, I had the fortune of having my values, aptitudes, and interests analyzed by professionals who guided me into a major of Computer Science, which wound up fitting me very well. These experts told me that a C.S. career might not be able to fulfill all the values I held, however; and so I may need to seek out volunteer opportunities to satisfy those cravings.

Before Moneythink, that was true: I’d had to go out of my way to find places and spaces to volunteer, and to try and create a workplace culture where the setting aside of concerns for self-interest was a normal, if irregular, act.

Nowadays, at Moneythink, even though a lot of my daily Engineering tasks may sound quite far removed from the work of creating a more just world, I am able to get that internal yearning to “help others” fed continuously.

Liz

I’m still able to exercise my aptitudes and explore my interests; and, with this wonderful team, these desiderata happen within the context of our shared, common values.

Moneythink’s Work

The work that we at Moneythink do is in service of our mission: the projects we pour resources into are for our students, and so we find no value in clinging to any ego-laden detritus which our students find no value in. We believe in high standards, all-encompassing diversity, positivity, creativity, and an evidence-based approach to transformation. Only in this way can we promote equitable education access for all.

Our work, along with our approach to it, is premised on the notion that transformation is possible: that we can engage in acts that alter the composition and the norms of our shared, common world; that together, we can create the more just world we want to live in.

I am still quite young, and perhaps that is why I am hopeful yet. I see us all as brimming with irrepressible human potential. I see all the ways in which we can pour our time, energy, and attention into “better”, rather than merely allowing our life force to trickle towards a self-interested “more”. I see how, through a shared, common devotion to the greater good of this next generation, we can swell the rising tide to lift more ships. And so for now, I am glad to be working with the people that I am, in the way that I am, in the space that I am, working to create a world more just than it was the day before.

Be a part of the solution by making a donation, referring a partner, or becoming a corporate contributor.

Employee Voice Series: Elizabeth’s Success Story

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By Elizabeth

As a first-generation college graduate, I feel a deep connection to the work we do at Moneythink. The students we help are smart, hard-working, responsible, and strongly committed to getting a solid education despite their odds. I love that our work helps to address the problem of unequal access to education in our country by providing personal support to students. I believe in using my experiences to help guide students’ success stories.

My Beginning

I grew up in a small town in Oregon with limited educational opportunities. I was raised by an incredibly resourceful single mother who worked and saved to provide for her four children.

With the support of my older brother, I moved to a bigger city where I attended community college while working two part-time jobs. When I see our students managing work and school — as well as family responsibilities — I empathize with the everyday stress they experience and the strain this can have on their academic success stories.

I understand first-hand the challenges that face our students, many of whom don’t have the same financial and social advantages as their well-resourced peers.

Elizabeth

My College Experiences

With support and encouragement from my community college professors, I transferred to Amherst College in Massachusetts in just a few years. I was very lucky that Amherst has numerous resources for first-generation and transfer students.

However, I was far from home. It was my job to make financial and academic decisions largely on my own. When I see the confusion my students have about how to talk to their professors or how to make sense of their financial aid awards, I understand all too well. By providing guidance when they experience similar confusion, Moneythink is filling a huge gap in our students’ lives and guiding them on the path to success.

Working with Moneythink

Before becoming a part of this amazing team, I had worked for several years in different areas of education. Throughout my professional life, I’ve always been excited about supporting youth and improving education.

What drew me specifically to Moneythink is the opportunity to work in a small but powerful organization that is focused on well-developed, creative solutions to removing barriers to higher education.

I carry such a strong connection to our mission, and I love our approach. We work with students who already have the will to go to college, but who just need that extra help with designing the way.

As far as I’m concerned, there is no good reason why students should ever drop out of college due to a lack of access to sufficient information or support networks.

Elizabeth

Moneythink is addressing this issue by providing exactly the kind of timely, highly-focused support that students need when navigating their journeys to and through college.

Be a part of the solution by making a donation, referring a partner, or becoming a corporate contributor.

Designing Conversations that Lead to Action

A series of text messages.
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At Moneythink, we empower under-resourced students by supporting financial decision-making through coaching and technology. Our coaches message students over text — giving rapid access to quality support. We have spent years working with students and we have learned about the art of designing conversations with them that lead to positive, empowered action on their college journey.

Why Designing Conversations is Important

These are the kinds of text messages we get daily.

Only 9% of low-income students receive their college degree within four to six years. The main barrier to a degree is money. Low-income students are left on their own to navigate complex financial aid systems and make some of the biggest financial decisions of their lives.

Because of warm-fuzzy texts like this (and the results of qualitative and quantitative data analysis), we are gaining confidence in our hypotheses about the best ways to give students more confidence, more financial security, and less stress. Over the past year of texting, we have honed in on a set of principles that guide the experience and voice of our coaching.

Our Guiding Principles

In this share-out, you will find just a few of some of our most powerful and, sometimes, non-obvious principles for designing conversations. You might find these particularly interesting if your team is designing…

  • For a chatbot, human-powered messaging service, or a hybrid,
  • A coaching service (especially in health or finances),
  • For under-resourced populations that face scarcity,
  • Interventions for behaviors that have low desirability (getting people to do something they don’t want to do).

Under-resourced students already experience scarcity of time, money, calories, sleep, and sometimes even shelter. Their cognitive bandwidth is spent mentally managing these resources.

We identify the most critical financial barriers on the pathway to college and do everything we can to minimize those barriers for the student.

The problem is not in cultivating an intention to be financially responsible, it is in the intention-action gap. Designing interactions that de-bias the student’s context (rather than focusing on persuading the student to push through the barriers) recognizes and respects the real scarcity that the student faces and meets them where they are at.

Don’t wait for a student to guide the interaction, share goals, or suggest deadlines.

Recommend to the student the goal they should be working on next and default them into a deadline.

Thinking about what to ask a coach or when to get something done requires a lot of cognitive load that can quickly exhaust an over-burdened student. By using defaults, we minimize the friction to setting goals.

Make it just as easy for a student to communicate wins.

Never ask a student to answer a question where their answer makes them reflect negatively on their self-identity.

Making responses like “trying to find time to do it” as equally valid as “completed it,” recognizes the real struggle of navigating and completing these complex financial processes. Just allocating time and attention is progress.

Nudge the student to complete a reasonable, small task and provide the support and information they need to complete the task.

Providing information alone (even if well-organized) is often intimidating and only empowers the students with the bandwidth resources to self-navigate the information.

Use behavioral science levers to instill a sense of urgency. For example:

  • Defaulting students into deadlines that are three to five days away as opposed to weeks away (limited attention)
  • Suggesting that recommended behaviors are a norm of their peers (social proof)
  • Making long-term negative consequences tangible in the immediate to trigger FOMO (loss aversion).
With preventative interventions, students are not facing painful consequences in the immediate and may not feel urgency to engage. Leaning on subtle behavioral levers spurs students to take the desired action early and leaves them feeling more confident about their financial health.

Designing Conversations: Principles

Good principles are ones that the team uses actively.

  • Principles feel the most helpful when they are specific and speak to how to handle trade-offs. Jared M. Spool wrote a great article on “Creating Great Design Principles.”
  • Leverage behavioral science — especially if you are designing for behavior change. Check out ideas42’s list of behavioral principles to get started.
  • Just start! Let your principles mature as you regularly use them and iterate. The list of principles we have now are non-obvious — they have come from tons of exposure hours texting and talking with our students.
  • Remember that the goal of developing principles is not to have a perfect, finished artifact.
  • The goal is to enable the team to have a common language for weighing design possibilities in a way that stays grounded in our user’s reality.
  • Good design principles enable healthy discourse and are owned and contributed to by everyone who has a hand in building the user experience.

Working on something similar? Reach out and tell us about it. We love to learn with others.

Learn more about Moneythink’s approach to design and reach out to say hello! Transformative progress requires leaders in technology, data, and design to work together. We work out of San Francisco & Oakland and we love making friends with other humans who believe in the power of design and are obsessed with building a more equitable future.

Employee Voice Series: Juan Cortes

Juan in a halloween costume.
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By Juan Cortes

Growing up, my parents always told me that I had to go to college, but they never said how I was going to pay for it. By the time I reached my senior year of high school, my sister was already in college, so I was lucky to have her to guide me through the FAFSA process. But grants and federal aid could only cover so much; in order to avoid taking on any debt, I had to take the community college route instead.

Even though I did not have to take out loans, my community college’s remedial courses were always overfilled and hard to get into due to the limited spots available.

Juan

The limited space in classes prolonged my time in college, and I had to go through junior college for three and a half years, instead of the two years people expect you to do before you transfer to a four-year university. During this time, I worked as a busser and a waiter, saving my money for when I transferred to a four-year school. Since I didn’t know how to find scholarships, I paid my tuition and school costs out of my own pocket with the money I earned from working.

However, whenever my friends and I got together during school breaks, their incredible stories and experiences about college life made me feel like a disappointment who was left behind.

As they were working towards their future careers, I was cleaning dishes and taking remedial courses. These feelings of insecurity pushed me to work hard on transferring to my dream school that nobody thought I could get into: UC Berkeley.

The Next Step

When I transferred to Cal in the Spring of 2013, I felt so out of place. Everyone in the dorm was significantly younger than me, and I had to take out loans for the first time. While other students knew how to find grants and scholarships to fund their study-abroad programs and unpaid internships, I continued working in restaurants and focused on studying. I budgeted my earnings and saved as much as I could so I didn’t have to worry about dropping out.

My hard work paid off, and I got to walk in the Winter graduation of 2014: I was a college graduate!

Juan

However, due to one of my credits not transferring from junior college — a fact that my counselor failed to point out to me until three days before the Spring semester began — I had to come back for another semester I had never planned for. For just this one credit, I ended up having to take out the most debt I had ever had.

This left me crestfallen, but — like I have done my entire life — I persevered and pushed myself to work harder.

This experience made me realize that colleges and universities, despite providing numerous resources and support systems, do not effectively advertise to students the resources that are available. This is especially problematic when it comes to students who are first-generation and have no example in their life of someone who has gone through college and can explain how to navigate its bureaucracies.

Moneythink and Me

A few years later, when I found Moneythink, I saw how their coaching team reaches out to students who went through the same experiences that I had. 

Moneythink connects students to resources on their campuses, helps create financial plans so students can manage their finances in college, and provides a support system to check in on students who may be too afraid to ask for help for fear of being chastised for not knowing something they would have no experience of. Moneythink’s mission to help first-generation, low-income students obtain an education is why I decided to join their coaching team and dedicate myself to helping students achieve their dreams and make an equitable future for America through education.

An Open Letter to Platforms that Use Emojis

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To those who provision emojis,

Thank you for the work you are doing. You have provided many people with a fun and convenient way to express themselves in digital conversation. With so many users flocking to your platform at an ever-increasing rate, you’ve made it easy for individuals and brands to convey ideas to their family and friends, clients and colleagues.

To provide such a simple yet powerful means for people to express themselves is quite a privilege.

And because you provide for so many people — a delightfully heterogeneous medley of humankind — you have taken on a responsibility to furnish emojis representative of all the identities and experiences of such a gloriously vast array of humanity.

Are you doing enough with using emojis responsibly?

Here’s our assessment: You’re pretty well-established at this point, at least in terms of brand recognition and daily active users. Your business is doing quite well, fending off competitors while maintaining a solid foothold in your realm of the marketplace. And thus, with such a magnitude of power and influence, you have this tremendous opportunity to improve the inclusivity of your emoji selection.

In your current emoji selection, there is a patent lack of representation for so many folks: for the people of color whose hair colors and skin tones are not yellow-white, for those who cannot conform to the gender binaries of cis-male and cis-female, for those whose partners and families are not mono-ethnicities or do not look like hetero-norms.

For this exquisite assortment of users, your current emoji selection can feel quite exclusionary.

And so you have before you this magnificent opportunity to improve it.

Now, it’s possible that you don’t yet have a design team dedicated to the care-taking of your emojis.

Let’s talk about that.

When it comes to the question of whether to outsource emoji creation or to manage your emojis in-house, you of course must take business concerns into account. And although your initial thought might be “Emojis are not our business,” let’s challenge that reaction by expanding on a conviction you hold most dear: is it not your business to change the world?

As a corporation, is it not your mission — your business — to change the world? As an individual, is it not your ambition — your business — to change the world?

So if your business is indeed to change the world, then begin here: wield your influence in the realm of emojis. Change the world by changing the emoji selection that you provision.

You have an enormous power to impact the lives of so many people in such profound ways, as this impact is compounded and magnified by your platform’s daily use. So it would be revolutionary for you to manage your own emoji offerings, to make small, deliberate changes to your emoji selection, and to see that change resonate, like ripples of influence ever-expanding across our globalized world.

So here is our invitation to you, the people who provision emojis.

Take responsibility for the emoji selection that you provision: acknowledge your power and seek to make your selection more inclusive.

Seize this opportunity to change the world. Make decisions and prioritize work that you can be proud of. Embrace critique and leverage it to become better. Set aside perfection in favor of effective, intentional action.

Move with courage, even if — and especially when — you’re the first to move in that direction.

Let’s take radical ownership of our power, and co-create the world in which we want to live.

Onward!

The Moneythink Team

Today’s DACA Decision is Unconscionable

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As college-planning and financial experts, we at Moneythink have worked with students from all backgrounds and of all citizenships statuses. We believe that children who grow up in America, who are educated in America, are fully and irrevocably Americans. A student’s immigration status or lack thereof should in no way affect their admission into institutions of higher education or their access to the resources needed to achieve college success.

Moneythink’s Public Statement

As college-planning and financial experts, we at Moneythink have worked with students from all backgrounds and of all citizenships statuses. We believe that children who grow up in America, who are educated in America, are fully and irrevocably Americans. A student’s immigration status or lack thereof should in no way affect their admission into institutions of higher education or their access to the resources needed to achieve college success.

We urge every member of Congress who values the future of American children, who values hard work and education, to act immediately in bipartisan support of preserving DACA (the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program) and to pass legislation providing a pathway for these children to secure citizenship.

Rescinding DACA does not make America safe — instead, it punishes American children who were born somewhere else, children who dare to aspire to the dreams of education and prosperity that we have raised them to believe in.

Defending DACA, moreover, rewards the hard work of young Americans who are pursuing an education to become self-sufficient, who are persisting in spite of their circumstances in the only country they know as home.

We encourage all American institutions of higher education to join the University of California in providing their undocumented students with services such as:

  • Continuing to allow California residents who are Dreamers to pay in-state tuition;
  • Maintaining the DREAM loan program for financial aid;
  • Offering legal services to our undocumented students;
  • Supporting campus-based student service centers; and
  • Directing campus police not to contact, detain, question or arrest individuals based on suspected undocumented status, or to enter agreements to undertake joint efforts to make arrests for federal immigration law violations.

We at Moneythink will continue to provide unwavering support to all our American students, who are learning, working, and serving in their communities today, who will ultimately make great contributions to the prosperity and advancement of their country.

This article originally was published on September 7th, 2017 on Moneythink’s previous blog site. Read more here.

Student Success Series: Bartee Taylor

Bartee smiles at the camera in a red shirt.
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Bartee enrolled in Moneythink’s coaching program during January 2017 as a senior from Perspectives High School of Technology. He joined the first cohort of students in Moneythink’s College Financial Coaching program. In September 2017, Bartee sat down with Moneythink staff to discuss his experiences with the program over the last few months, and his journey to college. This is how Moneythink guided Bartee’s student success story.

Raising the Bar

As the first of his siblings to graduate high school, Bartee “wanted to raise the bar even higher for my younger siblings from graduating high school to graduating college.”

His mom received her Bachelor’s degree in psychology; with an extended family of nurses, he knew he wanted to pursue a similar career path and could turn to them for support. As Bartee was exploring his options for college during his senior year of high school, Chicago was barely on his radar. “I didn’t want to stay in Chicago. I’ve been here all my life and… I was trying to experience something different.” He ended up applying to schools in the South and in the West and ultimately chose to attend a university in Texas.

Bartee worked with his Moneythink coach to create a comprehensive financial plan for his school in Texas. During his time working with his coach, he discovered a first-year financial gap of nearly $8,000 that he and his family would have to come up with to pay for his tuition. Although the cost of attendance was higher than Bartee and his coach had hoped, he was determined to get out of Chicago and was excited to move in the fall.

Bartee’s situation is actually quite common. Many students believe that working more hours or taking on more loans will be enough to see them through these large financial gaps, forgetting to consider the consequences.

Change of Course

With his paperwork submitted, orientation complete, and just a few weeks to go until his move-in date, Bartee was ready to begin his college journey. However, at the beginning of August, Bartee’s mother came to him with a major surprise: she had found his acceptance and award letters to the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). With a tuition that was significantly less than his school in Texas, Bartee’s mom urged him to attend UIC instead. But Bartee was stubbornly set on going to Texas, which led them to frequently butt heads.

“It was hard for me to accept that I couldn’t actually go anywhere I wanted… [and] how expensive it was to go out of state.”

Bartee Taylor

Bartee’s Moneythink coach worked with him to ensure he understood the full extent of his decision to attend school in Texas. His coach warned him of the potential financial risks it could pose. “My coach wouldn’t let the problem escalate,” Bartee said. “They were like ‘if you want to do that [go to school in Texas], then do that,’ but they were very helpful in guiding me on what I should do.”

Eventually, after some long and often frustrating talks with his parents and Moneythink coach, Bartee decided to go to UIC. “I realized my parents would struggle to pay for my education if I went out of state. I have five younger siblings. I just thought it was too selfish of me to make my parents pay so much for me knowing that they have other kids to take care of.”

These sentiments of ownership and guilt about the potential financial burdens of higher education are all too often felt by students across the country. In fact, 40% of students who choose not to go to their first-choice school do so because of cost related reasons.

Back on Track Toward Student Success

When Bartee let his Moneythink coach know he was switching schools, he was surprised not only by how much his coach knew about the variety of his financial options, but also how quickly they were able to come up with a new financial plan. In fact, his Moneythink coach discovered that because he was commuting to school instead of living on campus, Bartee would actually receive a refund on his financial aid. By choosing to go to UIC instead of Texas, Bartee had effectively closed his potential financial gap from $8,000 to $0. Realizing he wouldn’t be in debt for school was a positive step forward in his student success story.

Although Bartee was initially uncertain about how he was going to pay tuition, by working with his Moneythink coach, his fears soon disappeared. “I didn’t have a plan. I was just like ‘Mama, can you pay this?’ That’s all I knew! But [my coach] helped me build a [financial plan] and it really helped, because I was stressing out about nothing! I was thinking, ‘how can I pay this?’ not knowing that I was actually getting money back from UIC. My coach helped me get to that.”

When Bartee was planning to go to Texas, he’d thought he was making the best decision available to him, but by working with his Moneythink coach, he was able to discover new pathways to college that he had never considered before. Bartee realized that his student success story could take different forms that were ultimately more beneficial to him and his family.

“My Moneythink coach knows what they’re talking about… It was like they could tell me what was going to happen before it actually happened.”

Bartee Taylor

Bartee is currently in his second semester at UIC studying nursing, and he is continuing to work with his Moneythink coach to ensure he is prepared for his coming second year.

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Same Drive, New Directions

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Dear Moneythinker,

We founded Moneythink in 2008 to bring personal financial skills to under-resourced teens a few blocks away from our college campus.

Since then, we have helped over 14,000 students in 30 communities nationwide track their spending, open bank accounts, achieve savings goals, budget for college, and believe in themselves.

Two years ago, we decided we wanted to take our impact a step further to drive life-changing outcomes for our students. So, we interviewed 93 first-generation college students to learn how financial stress was endangering their dreams. And what they told us inspired us to think about our impact in an entirely new way.

See, one of the biggest financial decisions a student will ever make is where to attend — and how to afford — college. But for students in the communities we serve, guidance on the most critical and financially complex aspects of these decisions is often lacking. As a result, millions of students stop out of their postsecondary journey every year for financial reasons and all too often, end up with debt but no degree.

We’ve met the students. We’ve seen their challenges. We know their potential.

And we believe that the higher education system is failing them.

But we also believe that many of the financial challenges students face in college can be prevented upstream. So we are setting out to eradicate financial stress as the leading cause of college attrition.

As the first step toward that better future, we’re bring financial coaching to students’ fingertips over SMS — for free. Check out our new website to learn more, and follow us on social to grow with us.

It’s going to be an exciting next few years.

Onward!

Ted Gonder
Co-founder and CEO, Moneythink