Aligning Programming with Organizational Objectives

There are many tangible and intangible organizational benefits offered through financial literacy programming. Besides empowering the people you serve with information they need, you also should consider how programming can align with your business objectives.

This article explores how programs are designed around organizational objectives and the most common business goals associated with financial literacy programming.

Discover, Define, & Design: Organizational Goals

One-size-fits-all financial wellness programs do not work for most organizations. Each group has unique educational, organizational, and philanthropic objectives that require experienced professionals to deploy specialized solutions.

Our team uncovers your unique goals during the ‘discovery’ phase. Increase your chances of success by enlisting the support of qualified experts to:

Discover

Understand the needs, constraints, and goals of your organization. The discovery phase lays the foundation for clearly-defined programming objectives and custom program design.

Define

The define phase provides the measures that will draw the overall blueprints for the campaign and offer barometers of the program’s impact. The empirical data gathered through these measurements provide a gauge by which program success can be judged.

Design

Create a blueprint that illustrates how all the campaign components work together to promote financial literacy and further your business objectives. In well-designed programs, the flow of information and built-in promotional components lead to greater overall campaign results.

Common Organizational Objectives

When aligning programming with organizational objectives, there are many considerations.  With  different types of organizations that participate in financial education programming, many share some similar organizational goals. Yet although organizational objectives may be similar, each industry’s goals have their own nuances – for example, banking and financial service sectors often are trying to acquire clients, while colleges and private schools seek to acquire students.

Organizational Objective Details

Revenue & ROI

Direct Revenue

Direct revenue can include grants, sponsorships, participant-paid, online fundraisers, provider fees. Revenue tracking systems are used to determine programming ROI.

Client Acquisition

Client acquisition can include measuring assets under management, account sign-ups, student acquisition. Tracking scripts, source leads training, CRM updates, and tracking phone line numbers are some of the methods used to measure ROI.

Awareness

Impressions

Tracking reach and frequency of message can be done in many ways: website analytics, PR analytics, and usage data, for example.

Interactions

Identifying and quantifying interactions helps identify usage across the various programming assets.

Knowledge

Program Measures

Content knowledge, financial behaviors, financial sentiment, willingness to adopt, system measures, and outcome measure are considered. These measures are collected through testing, surveys, and assignments.

Participant Insight

Gaining insight into the participants’ interests, attitudes, socioeconomic conditions, and more variables are important ways to better understand the individuals you serve.

Standards & Compliance

Standard Alignment

Ensure that materials meet standards required for the programming.

Regulatory Requirements

Measuring whether the program meets various regulatory requirements. Examples: DoL, ERISA.

Relationships

Consumer

Measures that qualify new and deepening relationships with customers.

Partner

Measures that qualify new and deepening relationships with partners and business contacts.

Social Good

Philanthropic Alignment

Aligning financial literacy initiatives with your broader organizational and philanthropic goals.

Community Goodwill

Measures to clarify the program’s impact on how the community views your brand.