5 Tips for Running a Successful Financial Literacy Program as a Bank or Credit Union

Does your bank or credit union want to start a financial literacy program? Or maybe you’ve already started a program but haven’t quite seen the success you want. Whether you’re new to the financial literacy scene or a seasoned pro, it’s important to understand what it takes to run a successful financial literacy program.

There are many ways to start and run a financial literacy program. You can hold in-person classes, online workshops, online courses like Banzai, or even host various webinars and social media campaigns. There’s no one right way to run a financial literacy program, but no matter what you do, there are some things you should keep in mind if you want to be successful.

Here are five tips for running a successful financial literacy program as a bank or credit union.

1) Decide how you’ll measure success

It’s a good idea to decide how you’re going to measure success before your program begins. But if you’ve already started a financial literacy program, it isn’t too late to set some clear goals. Otherwise, you won’t know if what you’re doing is working or having an impact.

To decide how you’re going to measure success, you should set some SMART goals. These are goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Your SMART goal might look something like this: “Within one year, we will have impacted 2,000 LMI individuals with our online financial literacy course.” Or “In 6 months we’ll have an average class attendance that is 5X higher than it is right now.”

See? These goals don’t have to be super difficult; they should be achievable and yet hard enough that you have to stretch yourself to achieve them. If the goal doesn’t stretch you, there’s really no point. Your goals also need to be relevant. It doesn’t matter how many goals you make, if they aren’t related to your financial literacy program, they won’t help your program grow.

When you set specific goals, you’ll be able to look back in eight weeks, six months, or a year, and see whether or not you’ve achieved your goal. Then you can share your accomplishments with others at your bank or credit union and set some new goals. If you didn’t accomplish your goal, it’s time to take a close look at your program and see where you can improve. Adjust your goals accordingly.

2) Spread the word (like, a lot)

Your financial literacy program can’t grow unless people know about it, so make sure people know about it!

Post about your program on social media. Send an email to your customers or members. Encourage employees to share the news with their own networks. Hang flyers in your branches, at the local library, and other public places. Tell everyone at your family party. You get the idea. Spread the word!

The SMART goals you build will likely rely heavily on growing your financial literacy program and helping as many people as possible. The best way to do this is by making sure people hear about your program and have the chance to participate. If your goal is to target a very niche audience, like LMI business owners in a certain area, then your program’s growth may be limited to the size of this audience. And that’s okay! If this is your goal, make sure to spread the word to a targeted audience.

3) Partner with community organizations

You probably know how important it is for banks and credit unions to be involved in the community and partner with other organizations. Your financial literacy program is no exception.

If possible, you should partner with other community organizations when offering your financial literacy classes or online training. Some partnership ideas include holding your classes at a community center, hosting nonprofit guest speakers, and teaming up with a nonprofit or community organization to sponsor an online course.

There are lots of ways to partner with others in your community. Partnerships often bring more support, more funding, a larger audience, and CRA credit. Figure out what works best for your financial institution.

4) Keep CRA in mind

Running a financial literacy program is a great way to earn credit under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). If you work at a credit union, this may not apply to you. But if you work at a bank, this is likely something you’ll want to pursue. If you don’t work directly with the bank’s CRA department, you should reach out to the CRA Officer and ask them what you need to do to get credit for your financial literacy program.

Financial literacy programs may count as both a service and an investment under the CRA depending on how your program is structured, who benefits from your program, and how involved your bank is. You’ll need to carefully track the investments and donations your financial institution makes, since these will be reviewed during your CRA exam. If bank employees spend time giving presentations or volunteering, it’s important to track those hours as well, since they may also qualify for CRA credit.

5) Use Kadince to track volunteer hours, donations, and investments

Whether you’re tracking data for the CRA or not, you should always track the donations and investments your institution makes to the financial literacy program, as well as the hours you or your team members spend volunteering.

Tracking this information will help you see the big picture of your program and give you some data when presenting your program to a bank or credit union board or making important decisions. It will help you run a smarter, more successful financial literacy program because you’ll have access to all the data you need. And for banks, tracking this data is crucial for getting credit under the CRA.

One of the best ways to track this data is with Kadince. Kadince is community involvement software for financial institutions. Kadince makes it easy to track, manage, and report all donations, investments, and volunteer hours.

Even if your financial literacy course is in-person, you can use Kadince to track who registered, how many people attended, who volunteered, and more. This makes it easy to run your program and keep track of all the data you need in one place.

So what are you waiting for? Schedule a personalized demo today.

If you want to run a successful financial literacy program, follow the tips above. And if you want to host a fun, educational financial literacy course for the schools in your community, check out Banzai!