How to Create a Financial Literacy Training Program in 8 Stages

In the sections that follow, we provide a case study illustration of a determined individual who got the help she needed to succeed at creating and implementing a financial literacy training program.

Irma manages the volunteer training program for a well-known public health nonprofit. When training volunteers, she discovered that many of them lacked even the most fundamental money management skills. That’s when Irma decided a financial literacy class or workshop would not only benefit her volunteer team, but would bring a much-needed service to her entire community. However, she would need some assistance to make it happen.

At their next training, Irma distributed a brief questionnaire to the volunteers, and learned that even a very basic level of education would be advantageous to this group.

Irma had a good idea of her short-term goal, which was to raise fundamental money skills among her volunteer team. Since her audience had widely diverse characteristics and availability, she deduced that their financial education program sessions – limited to one hour a week – would be about the maximum amount of time they would be able to devote to learning about money. For that reason, Irma felt satisfied with presenting a few short seminars that just touched on the basics.

With this objective in mind, Irma set a goal for her volunteers to reach the “understand” tier of comprehension during their training.

Now that Irma had identified sound goals, it was time to select an option for delivering the financial literacy training program. The wide range of the volunteers’ scheduling availabilities led her to the conclusion that online delivery, where they could work at their own time and pace, would be the perfect choice.

Irma next faced the task of choosing the topics to emphasize during the training. Many of her volunteers represented a low-income demographic, so she determined that a focus on budgeting and locating income sources might be beneficial.

“Who would teach the financial literacy training program?” was Irma’s next question. The instructor she chose would need to be a capable presenter who could relate to a diverse audience, in addition to being well-versed in financial literacy subjects. Irma settled on a personal finance educator who had earned the NFEC’s Certified Financial Education Instructor credentials.

Now Irma was charged to choose financial literacy curriculum resources for the training. She needed a package that had an online delivery option and that also could be segmented into workable pieces to meet her group’s needs. She discovered that the NFEC curriculum not only featured eLearning, but also a modular design, so Irma could pick and choose the lessons most beneficial for her volunteers.

Irma’s program had been implemented, and 36 of her 42 volunteers were able to complete at least some of the training. They achieved a mean improvement score of 12%, which Irma considered quite successful. She used the data to put together a state-of-the-art report to highlight their accomplishments and showcase her program results.