Producer Khao Cates helps Blake McGuire of Boys & Girls Clubs of Indianapolis record his winning rap song. (Photo courtesy of Boys & Girls Clubs of America and the Charles Schwab Foundation)
Brad Bartick stood in front of a room full of teens sprawled on couches and chairs, tired after a day at school. The Charles Schwab Corp. branch manager was at a Boys & Girls Club in Vancouver, Wash., to coach kids on finances. Unlike most of Bartick’s clients, who are employed and financially successful, many of these students came from families where there was barely enough money to save. He invited the kids to the front of the room to write down the jobs they hoped to hold. Teacher, engineer, police officer appeared on the white board. “OK, assuming you get to one of these positions,” Bartick told the kids, “money is going to come into your life and you’re going to have to make decisions about your money.”
Bartick applies lively teen-friendly tips using a financial education curriculum created by the Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) and the Charles Schwab Foundation. He teaches his students about budgeting, interest, and debt by using examples they could easily relate to, such as spending $500 to buy a Sony PlayStation. “How much would that PlayStation be worth three years from now?” he asked. “What would happen if you’d saved that money instead and earned 7 percent interest?”
Bartick finds the experience rewarding. It’s not fair, he says, that some people are never taught these basic financial concepts, including the notion that your money should work for you. “How would you benefit from something that you had no idea existed?” he asks. “I can spend a little bit of time with these kids and, not everyone of course, but some of them will get it.”
The financial education curriculum, Money Matters: Make It Count, was developed in 2002. The after-school program instills the basics of budgeting, borrowing, investing, entrepreneurship, and saving for education after high school in a way that’s relevant to teens. “We decided that because we were such a small organization, we had to be extremely focused,” says Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz, president of the Charles Schwab Foundation. “We thought that by focusing on youth, we could make generational changes.”
The after-school program runs about one hour a week for six to 10 weeks and is taught by Boys & Girls Club staff as well as by Schwab Corp. volunteers. The program rolled out nationally in 2004. Today, Money Matters is the most widely adopted BGCA teen program, taught at more than 1,700 clubs. A half million Boys & Girls Club teens have completed the program since inception, and almost 84,000 teens now go through the program each year.
Launching Money Matters
When Schwab-Pomerantz became president of the foundation in 2002, she and her team scoured the country for a partner who could bring resources and knowledge that the foundation lacked and complement the expertise Schwab d id have. The now decade-long affiliation with BGCA—the largest youth agency in the United States, serving some 4 million kids in about 4,000 clubs—is a testament to the partnership’s strength.
Schwab-Pomerantz says the organizations share a similar mission and culture. “It’s a true partnership where we could give each other feedback that we would hear and we would implement based on the feedback.” BGCA President Jim Clark agrees that the financial literacy program aligns the missions of both organizations. “In our case, when kids and teens become more financially literate in society, they become successful adults and citizens in our country.”
The close connection between the Money Matters mission and the Charles Schwab Corp.’s mission has also fueled the partnership’s sustainability. The company was built around the idea of helping people help themselves with their finances so that more people can participate in the financial markets. “Without that tie to the mission, which you’ll see in a lot of corporate giving, you really just don’t see longevity,” says Karen Aidem, founder of the consulting firm Sage Partners and advisor on the development of the relationship with BGCA and the Money Matters program.
Corporations often choose a cause of the moment or a CEO’s pet project, says Aidem. Rather than focusing on a cause she was passionate about at the time, women’s economic parity, Schwab-Pomerantz instead focused on financial literacy, a cause all of her colleagues could identify with. “Schwab has been able to broaden the mission behind what they’re doing, and that’s helped sustain the partnership,” says Aidem.
Impact of Financial Literacy
Before Colorado high school senior Aisha Barrows took the Money Matters program in 2011, she was a little leery about applying and paying for college. She has since started a 529 college savings plan where she puts 50 percent of her paycheck, and she shares money-saving tips on her local radio show, “The Melting Pot,” on KYGT-FM in Idaho Springs, Col. Now, when kids tell her they can’t afford college, she tells them otherwise. “Everybody can afford college, you just have to apply yourself,” says Barrows. “There are so many opportunities out there that Money Matters showed me that I want to show other people.”
In 2014, Barrows was one of 15 Boys & Girls Club teens to receive college scholarships ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 from the Charles Schwab Foundation. The foundation has given a total of $485,000 in scholarships to 237 teens who have completed the Money Matters program and shown leadership in personal finance. The benefits from the program reach far beyond college scholarships. Some teens have gone on to careers in the financial industry, and others have gone home and helped their families create a budget.
To measure the impact of Money Matters, the Schwab and BGCA team have conducted three program evaluations. The evaluations found that the teens are not only learning about savings, for example, but they’re actually opening up savings accounts. Results from a 2012 yearlong national evaluation found that teens who took the class had increased 45 percent in understanding the problems of check cashing stores; 29 percent in their ability to budget monthly expenses; and 50 percent in knowing to set aside 10 percent of their income toward savings. In total, 33 variables showed improvement as a result of the Money Matters program.
“Schwab has been patient in saying we’re going to partner with an organization [BGCA] that sees youth every day and has their finger on the pulse of what these kids want, need, the style of communication that will work,” says Aidem. “And they’re patient enough to test some things to make sure they work, and course correct when needed.”
Improving the Program
Despite their success, neither the Charles Schwab Foundation nor BGCA has put the program on cruise control. “Both organizations feel that this is an organic, living thing and that you can always educate more teens and you can offer a deeper education to really turn these youths’ lives around as it involves money,” says Aidem. Clark says that the Schwab and BGCA team meets regularly to talk about the program and refine it so that it remains contemporary and relevant, “because it’s a hard population to keep their attention.”
The team continues to create new ways to attract and engage teens. In 2011, hip-hop mogul Kevin “Khao” Cates helped develop Money Matters Music Mogul, a rap contest for kids taking Money Matters. Kids submitted rap song lyrics that reflected the themes they’d learned from the Money Matters curriculum and set their songs to background beats created by the Grammy Award-nominated producer. “It’s one case where they brought curriculum to life in a way that an instructor sitting in the front of a classroom could never do,” Aidem says.
The five song-writing finalists each earn $500 scholarships. The winner is flown to Atlanta where Khao produces their music video. One of the contest winners now works for Khao writing educational songs while attending college in Atlanta.
The Charles Schwab Foundation and BGCA are currently researching and planning to create a financial education program for the BGCA staff itself. They hope to help all 55,000 employees around the country, many of whom were BGCA kids, work part time, and have college debt. The program should be available for employees at each club within the next year.
Schwab-Pomerantz hopes this latest venture can help BGCA employees not only have financial security in their own lives but also be better teachers. “Ultimately, when you have better programs and you have employees who are focused on being good teachers and who aren’t worried about their finances, you make a stronger nonprofit,” says Schwab-Pomerantz.
This year, Money Matters will add an online simulation game where groups of kids can play and envision the life they want to have, explore occupations, earn a virtual month’s salary, create a budget, and plan for life’s events. The goal, as always, is to keep the teens interested in the program. “The biggest risk is that this financial literacy program would sit on the shelf and wouldn’t be used by Boys and Girls Club staff. But kids vote with their feet,” says Schwab-Pomerantz. “We are going to continue to make sure that we are relevant to kids and that we will always be the fastest growing program.”
Read more stories by Corey Binns.