My Money & Me

I first learned about the Financial Empowerment Challenge on the OpenIDEO platform when I returned to the United States after living in Italy for six years.

In Italy, we were all struggling with the down economy—whether you were an expat, student or a local. Often, we lacked access to banking, many of us would stash our hard-earned stipendi (pay) around our homes rather than lay trust in the banking system. Some were carrying huge financial burdens—like student loans—and many felt shame in their debt.

Upon graduation with my design degree, I was also strapped with unmanageable loan payments. Even with years of previous working experience, banking experience and 2 college degrees, the system still took me by surprise. My heart went out to others who faced similar circumstances.

This, coupled with other factors, inspired my return to the U.S. So when I saw the OpenIDEO challenge on financial empowerment, I was inspired to participate in some way and work toward fulfilling my mission to contribute solutions to a problem that was so deeply personal to me and many others.

Every process to create solutions should start with research. I was personally inspired by an OpenIDEO contributor’s research on the Awesomeness of Credit Unions because it reminded me of a story I heard of a credit union in my hometown. Chaco Credit Union, a bright spot in Ohio, is an example of a credit union that puts its mission of “people helping people” into action through education programs and community-oriented services.

I wondered: How could their success be distilled, expanded or channeled to inform a global solution?

With their generous cooperation, I conducted a design research project and interviewed four Chaco leaders. Over the course of these interviews, four main themes began to surface:

Empowerment — How Chaco empowers the community through investments and a member-run business model.

Programs & Services—They launched two education initiatives for teens and adults, a new budgeting app and second chance checking.

Collaboration—They partner with community organizations such as schools, churches and shelters.

Challenges—Their obstacles include engagement with the community due to lack of motivation to change, volunteer needs and apathy.

During the research, Mitch Vocke from Chaco Credit Union mentioned “Rock the Vote” as an example of a successful movement that got young people motivated and interested in the elections.

That thought inspired me to come up with idea around launching a grassroots campaign that engages students in open discussions about money. The project’s goal is to break down social taboos and change the way we think and communicate about money and financial stability. I eventually submitted that idea onto the OpenIDEO platform, and over the course of the first month, 11 other people from the OpenIDEO community joined my virtual team to collaborate.

One of those contributors was Ryan Zimmerman, a teacher from a K-12 school in Atlanta, GA. He decided to shape his design thinking curriculum around my idea. His 76 students provided feedback to my idea, and their insights were important since they were going to test the Money Talk prototype.

As momentum built, the concept grew and expanded rapidly thanks to the global, collaborative effort of dozens of people from around the world. They contributed their ideas, provocations, questions and feedback to help build on the idea.

Next, I took all of the feedback on the platform to construct a prototype that would act as a conversation starter kit—it was called “Money Talk.” The kit was designed to initiate conversations in a supervised classroom setting, collect information about youth psychographics, and test student willingness to participate outside the classroom with online and take-home activities.

The downloadable kit can be used in high school and university classrooms, clubs, churches, and community groups to spark conversations about money.

The kit includes:

— Conversation starter questions to raise personal awareness of participants.

— A slogan contest to encourage students to directly contribute to campaign messaging.

— An audio interview activity that keeps the conversation going amongst family members.

Conclusion:

At the end of the challenge, I and my team of global design volunteers created a service prototype that credit unions and social impact groups could pick up and adapt to their own needs. The concept was one of five winners of the THINK! Prize 2015 sponsored by Mastercard and the Co-Op of Credit Unions.