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Tag: Edtech

A Remote Design Sprint Breakthrough

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Recently, Moneythink Product Designer Jeanmarie Levy spearheaded a virtual design sprint – a feat which included organizing colleagues in three different time zones and several countries. The goal of the sprint was to improve the DecidED Advisor Dashboard and promote a more collaborative creative design space. 

Design sprints help make DecidED more user-friendly. Traditionally, these events take place in person; however, to increase accessibility, Jeanmarie organized this virtual version to ensure everyone had a seat at the table.

We are excited to share Jeanmarie’s story and process with you, and highlight how we’re already improving DecidED. As a nimble fintech non-profit, we believe in empowering our team to explore cutting-edge approaches to improve the lives of everyone who uses DecidED. 

(Jeanmarie was interviewed by our Communications and Marketing Consultant, Melissa Ramos. Our interview has been edited for clarity.)

Our Q&A With Jeanmarie

Melissa Ramos: Thanks for meeting to talk about your most recent design sprint! Tell us about your background and how you found yourself at Moneythink.

Jeanmarie Levy: My name is Jeanmarie and I serve as the Product Designer here at Moneythink. I am most excited about this work because the organization’s mission directly aligns with my core values of promoting access, retention and advocacy for first generation students. I myself identify as first-gen. Also, I am a former educator. I saw oftentimes where students would fall through the cracks of the college application process. Moneythink’s overall goal of reducing student debt is truly exciting for me. I have always been passionate about service and nonprofit organizations and how technology can improve people’s lives.

Melissa: It seems like your career and life experiences have helped you create a better informed product with DecidED, because you have a holistic understanding of the type of person this product serves.

Jeanmarie: Absolutely.

Melissa: Switching gears, can you explain the idea behind a design sprint? 

Jeanmarie: The idea for design sprints is a forward-thinking concept, where essentially, a team has a certain number of days to meet specific goals. These days are fully devoted to improving a product or design. Sprints bring teams together for cross collaboration, since it is beneficial for organizations to collectively come up with ideas together, instead of putting all the pressure on individuals to make big decisions. Design sprints allow us to do deep creative work around a specific problem, using our brains fully for this purpose.

Moneythink: How do you feel design sprints help Moneythink improve DecidED?

Jeanmarie: Design sprints help inform our product because we make time to take a step back and view the problems we are tackling more holistically. Design sprints give us the opportunity to empathize with users. We pride ourselves on being an equity centered organization, and we are constantly thinking about our users as a result. In this recent design sprint, we wanted to take things to the next level, so we brought in all of our teams – engineers, the development team, the partnership team, everyone. Design sprints help our product, our organization and employees better understand why we do what we do.

Melissa: Can you talk about human centered design factors into design sprints at Moneythink?

Jeanmarie: We strive to do human centered design and more so, equity centered design. Human centered design means the user is at the center of all decisions, but equity centered design invites users directly into the conversation. Equity centered design gives users the agency to make these bigger decisions with our product improvements. This is how we ended up on this particular design sprint topic: trying to improve our Advisor Dashboard. We made improvements based on real time advisor feedback.

Melissa: How did this fully remote design sprint differ from a traditional design sprint? 

Jeanmarie: Improving the Advisor Dashboard was a big challenge. We knew we needed a diverse team in order to make this happen – and I want to shout out Ben May (our API Product Manager) for helping me think outside of the box with this design sprint.

We involved our engineers because they are our product experts. They help to build this product every day. They’re all located in different countries. Our engineers are contractors, and we as an organization strive for them to have full ownership of this product. We are cognizant of the fact that we are an American organization working with contractors outside of the US. My biggest goal was to make sure our engineers felt included and that their expertise was highlighted. It was very impactful to have all of our engineers there, some of whom have been working on DecidED from the beginning.

Our goals going into the design sprint were composed of two parts. We wanted a solution for Advisor Dashboard improvement, but we also wanted to build this inspiring and collaborative team where everyone felt they had a voice. As a result of this design sprint, we have seen an increase in morale and trust, and overall positivity among all of us. The feedback was that it was awesome to have all teams cross collaborate and learn more about what our users go through.

Melissa: As the architect of this design sprint, what do you feel were the key takeaways?

Jeanmarie: Our advisors and educators have such a challenging and overwhelming role since they are trying to advocate against so much bureaucracy. Currently, our tool does a lot but not in a simple way. With new improvements, we are scaling everything back to make our advisors’ lives easier. 

Another big takeaway is the idea that cross collaboration among diverse thinkers and people is truly the way to solve big problems. When we work in silos, it’s an echo chamber. When you hear from another person, in another country, or with a different experience, it brings up a lot that hasn’t come up before. Giving people ownership helped reinvigorate a sense that there is a lot of power and capacity in the human brain – especially when we provide safe spaces. Now I have a solution for this design, but that’s because of our collaboration. I wouldn’t have been able to do this alone. It’s a big reminder that community always needs to be at the center of our work. 

Communal work is of critical importance to so many things. I think that we hit the biggest goal which was to make sure that the design sprint team felt heard, empowered, and seen. I wanted the team to feel this was a good use of their time. Some feedback I got from folks was that this space equalized all of us and our voices.

Melissa: What improvements will come to DecidED now that you have completed this particular sprint?

Jeanmarie: Lots! We already built a prototype and tested it with a long-time DecidED user. This particular educator commented that the improvements are lightyears ahead of our current dashboard. As a former educator, I keep in mind that when we design products we also need to teach users how to use this new product. I was happy to hear that this educator felt the improvements aligned seamlessly into his current work flow; it didn’t create extra steps, and it improved his work experience.

Our improvements will lead to clear, actionable steps that educators can take with students. We know the new way the tool will look will make this seamless and will help advisors in the long run.

Melissa: Very exciting that the improvements are already well received. We look forward to launching the new and improved dashboard soon! 

Interested in learning more about design sprints? Check out our resources below.

What’s a design sprint and why is it important?

The Design Sprint

And learn more about Jeanmarie and the rest of our team by visiting our Team & Board page. 

The DecidED API: Learn About the Newest Way to Bring DecidED into Your Work

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DecidED, the free college cost comparison tool developed by Moneythink, empowers students, advisors, and college access partners. We designed DecidED as a resource to translate complex financial aid award letters, provide guidance with comparing college costs and other fit factors, and much more. 

With our tool, students make sense of financial aid award results, and compare their college options based on personalized fit factors such as graduation rates and campus diversity. Advisors use DecidED in multiple ways to elevate their work; for instance, they can access the DecidED dashboard with real time student updates, students’ financial aid results and help students compare options for the best enrollment decision. Our partners gain crucial insights into student progress on the path to college, as well as financial aid data to inform their impactful programs and services. 

With DecidED, we are leveling the playing field for students, advisors and college access partners. That’s why we are excited to announce the crucial upgrade in our offerings. In addition to our free student and advisor-facing web tools, Moneythink is expanding DecidED’s reach and impact to strategic partners through our DecidED API.

What’s an API?

APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, are a software middle ground that helps two different programs talk to each other. Think of APIs like a messenger: delivering your request to a provider and then bringing a response back. 

The DecidED API leverages our unique financial aid award letter scanning technology to ease the caseload burden of advising organizations. Our API provides more holistic, engaging student support in real time along with customized data, all integrated into any organization’s applications and services. 

The DecidED API has been an invaluable resource for us. Jin Choi, Director of Scholarships Programs at 10,000 Degrees

Who is the DecidED API for?

Two African American students with backpacks standing next to each other talking outside of a college campus building.

Our API is designed with two users in mind:

  1. College access organizations and scholarship providers that need to interpret and/or analyze a collection of student financial aid results, and
  2. Organizations that want to view, track and compare award results across schools, cities or states and against other key student profile identifiers.

Our partner organizations put an overwhelming amount of work into supporting as many students as possible. We created our API to automate the complex but easily repeatable task of financial aid award letter translation and unlock more high-touch support from student-facing organizations. Our API takes in complex award letters and sends data back in ways that can be used to benefit students and organizations the most.

How does the API work?

Two men. One is seated and wears white rimmed glasses. The other is standing next to him. He is wearing a blue shirt. Both are looking at a laptop.

Understanding the actual costs of attendance for each institution no longer requires an advisor to review and analyze every individual letter. The DecidED API seamlessly translates award information so an organization’s staff can avoid manually inputting data and performing other time-consuming tasks. Our API takes financial aid award letters and other data and quickly extracts important information that organizations need to do their work. Then, our API relays that data into an organization’s existing programs and systems.

Our API can also:

  • Receive an award letter and respond with instantaneous clean and structured data
  • Easily share data with students and/or integrate data into proprietary applications and services
  • Provide more holistic, engaging student support in real time with customized data at hand
  • Clarify college finances by receiving personalized cost estimates before students enroll in a school to help inform their decisions. 

For more information on how we’ve architected the DecidED API backend, read our article on helping students find affordable colleges on the AWS Public Sector blog.

The DecidED API in Action

A group of people talking around a table, with a woman with short curly hair and black glasses highlighted on the righthand side. She faces the camera with arms crossed and smiles.

We’ve already piloted our API with scholarship providers and college access organizations looking to save time on administrative tasks so they can better support students.

Jin Choi, the Director of Scholarships Programs at 10,000 Degrees says, “The DecidED API has been an invaluable resource for us in the collection and analysis of over 1,700 financial aid award letters. The API took what used to be a very manual process and changed it into an automated system that has saved us hundreds of hours.”

With our API, 10,000 Degrees saved an estimated 3.5 minutes per award letter. This meant their advisors saved over 100 hours of manual input time, freeing up precious hours to focus on their students. 61% of award letters were translated in less than half an hour. These translated results allowed 10,000 Degrees to better hone in financial aid gaps of direct college costs and scholarships, create lists of students to follow up with on the financial aid process, and review data to identify different types of award letters, all within one tool.

Organizations save time on administrative tasks, like manually reviewing financial aid award data. They can make data-driven decisions and most importantly, can scale impact across current programs and systems. 

How can you bring the DecidED API to your organization? 

Connect with us to learn how the DecidED API could help your organization. Are you interested in trying our API for yourself? Send us an inquiry at info@moneythink.org and we’ll get back to you within two business days. 

And if you haven’t already done so, be sure to sign up for a free DecidED account today.

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.

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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Student Success Series: Gabby Davis

Gabby sits outside of her school. She wears a black shirt.
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Gabby joined Moneythink in January 2017 as a high school senior from Perspectives Leadership Academy in Chicago. She was part of the first cohort of students in Moneythink’s College Financial Coaching program. In early September, Gabby sat down with Moneythink staff to discuss her experiences with her Moneythink coach over the last few months. Her warm personality and diligent attitude were immediately apparent and amplified when you meet her in person.

The Beginning of Gabby’s Student Success Story

Ever since Gabby was little, she knew she wanted to attend college.

“I was always telling my mom, ‘I wanna be a dentist, I wanna be a dentist!’” Both her parents were college graduates. Gabby knew college would not only help her get a good job, but also was a way to “do good for [herself] and her future.” However, she also knew that paying for college was going to be a large obstacle. “It was hard finding a good college because you need money to go out of state, and I didn’t have scholarships at the time, so I knew I was going to go to a community college first no matter what.”

Gabby began looking at community colleges in Chicago and was drawn to a college because of its dentistry program. With help from her school counselors and mother, Gabby applied and was accepted. However, it was her Moneythink coach that kept her on track throughout the summer, a time when many students run into problems that can derail their college plans.

Up to 40% of students who intend to go to college never show up on the first day. The causes are often small and avoidable.

Over the summer before college, students are asked to complete a number of complicated tasks. This is a time when they have very little access to support from a high school counselor. Researchers call this phenomena “summer melt.” Unfortunately, the complications Gabby ran into are incredibly typical.

Running into Complications

Gabby is a recipient of the Star Scholarship, a scholarship offered to high-achieving Chicago Public School graduates that allows them to pursue an Associate’s Degree completely free of cost. However, Gabby had trouble receiving her scholarship on time. She worked with her Moneythink coach, Miesha, to figure out what was wrong. Miesha helped guide her through each of the steps she needed to take to get the issue resolved.

“Miesha was telling me where to go and… basically guiding me to ask my advisor questions I never thought to ask. She gave me things to think about that I needed to know in order to be successful.”

Gabby Davis

Orientation dates were passing by and classes were beginning to fill up quickly; but without her scholarship, Gabby was unable to complete any of her summer tasks.

After checking to make sure her FAFSA documents were accurate, Miesha encouraged Gabby to call the college’s financial aid office. It took five attempts to get somebody to answer the phone. Even then, the financial aid officer couldn’t provide an answer to why her scholarship was not going through.

Determined to figure out the issue, Gabby went down to the campus’ financial aid office herself. She learned that because she had taken a class at a different city college in the spring, the system still had her enrolled there. This meant she couldn’t receive her scholarship or even enroll in her classes until the issue was fixed. Because of Gabby’s Moneythink coach pushing her toward student success, Gabby was able to fix the situation.

Gabby was proactive in arranging a meeting. As a result, the school was able to correct the mistake within the week, process her scholarship, and register her for orientation.

One small glitch in the college’s system required multiple phone calls, emails, and an in-person visit to resolve — this is the kind of seemingly small detail that could result in a student never making it to the first day of college.

By nudging Gabby to stay on top of her summer tasks, her Moneythink coach was able to not only help her navigate the complicated process of receiving her financial aid, but guide her on the path to student success. Moneythink’s coaching program also gave Gabby the confidence to be proactive about finding the right campus resources that could provide support.

“We don’t know each other personally, so for [Miesha] to tell me ‘you can do it’ and believing in me… it just really gave me a feeling like ‘they believe in me, so I should believe in myself and that I know I can do it and I can get far.”

Gabby Davis

After receiving her Associate’s Degree in Dentistry, Gabby plans to transfer to University of Illinois at Chicago to pursue her Bachelor’s, and is continuing to work with her Moneythink coach to ensure she stays on track.

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

Our History: How We Use Education-Technology to Inspire Change

Student holds mobile device with Moneythink app on the screen.
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In the midst of the 2008 economic collapse, a group of University of Chicago undergraduates saw the opportunity to improve the economic state of their community by providing basic personal finance lessons to students from surrounding Chicago high schools. The undergrads started a club to recruit, train, and place college mentors in local high schools to teach about saving, budgeting, and the importance of financial planning for college and beyond. As students reported back incredible stories about how their newfound understanding of money was helping them in their first jobs and freshman year of college, college volunteers at other universities began using the model to found identical clubs on their campuses. By the fall of 2011, Moneythink had grown organically from a University of Chicago student organization into a 501(c)3 nonprofit volunteer movement on two dozen campuses across the country with a focus on using education-technology to help students make informed financial decisions, especially around college enrollment.

In 2012, Moneythink was awarded the White House Champions of Change award from then President Barack Obama, and raised initial seed funding from the Blackstone Foundation, Ariel Investments, the Lefkofsky Foundation, the Hughes Foundation, Nielsen, and others, to form a central headquarters that could provide strategic direction for the grassroots movement.

Since then, Moneythink has become a leading organization in the financial capability field. In 2013, collaborations with the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) and IDEO.org brought financial education out of the classroom and into the real world via our mobile application, MoneythinkMobile. This pioneering education technology application used social media to flip the typical financial behaviors of teens by “instantly gratifying delayed gratification decisions” through likes and comments.

MoneythinkMobile was the first of several education technology iterative experiments on our relentless ambition to discover and prove effective and meaningful applications of financial education. Blended learning technologies, behavioral science, and human-centered design have fueled Moneythink’s innovation engine and helped us achieve meaningful results repeatedly in the classroom, workforce, and college matriculation settings.

MoneythinkGoals: a mobile saving goals application coupled with our Youth Employment Curriculum to help students save their paychecks for the future.
Moneythink College Calculator: web-based application used in conjunction with our college persistence curriculum to help students compare and contrast their college options.

The power of human-centered design — a concept we absorbed from our friends at IDEO.org — is that you learn to listen to your beneficiaries and design your solution for what they need.

As we listened to our students from 2012 to 2016, we realized that the transition to postsecondary life — specifically getting a job and affording college — was the greatest area of stress and concern for students.

Thus, in 2016, we launched a research study to educate ourselves on the financial obstacles that first-generation, under-resourced college students face. We interviewed 93 students at 7 different university campuses across the US. They showed us the strong influence financial (in)security has on a student’s likelihood to successfully persist through college and the clear need for under-resourced youth to receive support and guidance when facing important fiscal decisions. Since then we have sought out to design a program that specifically addresses the financial stresses that surface during this influential period in a student’s financial capability development.

Moneythink’s College Financial Success program uses the most effective aspects of our programming — high-touch mentorship, technology, and curriculum — and brings it directly to the student’s fingertips. Our Moneythink Coaches utilize a web-based text-messaging platform to assist under-resourced, college-bound young adults navigate the financial decisions that occur between the beginning of their senior year of high school and the end of their freshman year of college.

We’re able to be there for students whenever and wherever they need us most: outside of the classroom at the exact moments when they’re making some of their most important life decisions.

Since launching our College Financial Success program in the fall of 2016, we have reached 1,080 students in Chicago, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area, and our coaches have sent and received over 51,000 text messages. Our students come to us with questions that range from something as simple as “how do I get to campus?” to as complicated as “how do I know if I’ve been chosen for FAFSA verification?”

More often than not, a student’s Moneythink coach is the only person they have available to discuss their college and financial issues, thus it is imperative that we are so easily accessible whenever these questions arise.

With an unprecedented model, Moneythink is able to meet students where they are to provide the most effective resources and guidance with the highest potential for impact. When students are navigating the FAFSA process, choosing between scholarship opportunities, or even just organizing required health forms to send to the school, a student’s coach is available right at their fingertips to answer questions and demystify the college process.

We walk alongside students in high school, leading up to college, and throughout their freshman year, helping to connect them to the best support and local resources available to keep them on the path to graduation.

And the journey is just beginning.

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