Today we’d like to introduce you to Ted Gonder.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
In 2008, after seeing the ways the economic recession was affecting the Chicago communities around our University of Chicago campus, a group of friends and I decided to form a student organization that would work to improve the economic health of these areas through near-peer mentorship and financial education. We started by placing college mentors in local high school classrooms to teach basic financial literacy lessons, and by fall 2011, Money think had grown from a simple club into a nationwide student movement. We spread to over two-dozen campus communities nationwide, gained official 501(c)3 status, and became a national nonprofit with a full-time staff. In 2012, we were awarded the White House Champion of Change Award by then President Obama, and with the funding that we received from supporters like the Blackstone Foundation and JPMorgan Chase, we began exploring opportunities to create greater impact through technology. In 2013, through collaborations with the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) and IDEO.org, we released our first mobile application, MoneythinkMobile, which used social media to encourage positive financial behaviors via likes and comments. In early 2016, we built off the success of MoneythinkMobile and created MoneythinkGoals, a savings goal-oriented app geared at encouraging our students to save their paychecks. Additionally, we released our web-based application, the Moneythink College Calculator, that helped students compare and contrast their college options.
However, our experiences in the classroom led us to identify college matriculation as a key inflection point in the development of students’ financial habits, prime for an intervention that could not only improve their financial capability but also their educational and life outcomes. Thus, in order to educate ourselves on the obstacles that often faced our students, we worked with Ideas42 to conduct research with 93 first-generation, low-income college students at 7 campuses across the US. Through this we discovered the strong influence financial insecurity had on a student’s likelihood to persist through college and the clear need for under-resourced youth to receive support and guidance when facing important fiscal decisions; and in fall of 2016, we successfully launched our College Financial Coaching program, designed to specifically addressed these financial stresses that surface during this influential period in a student’s financial capability development.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
We’ve sought out trying to solve a wicked problem (https://www.wickedproblems.com/1_wicked_problems.php), so inherently it has been an incredible challenge. We have always pursued a path with impact as our primary goal, however with an initial focus on strictly financial education, we struggled to challenge those studies that revealed that financial education alone was ineffective at creating lasting impact in students’ lives. We had to ask “how can we make financial education matter?” Turning to technology as a means to help answer this, we ran into new struggles as we tried to build a tech company as a nonprofit working in under-resourced communities. We needed to attract and retain top talent but on nonprofit salaries and convince our donors it would be worth it. We’re lucky to have incredible support from very progressive sponsors, but not every donor is as understanding. Getting general operating capital for innovation is harder to come by than restricted program capital, and we’ve often sacrificed support to free ourselves from commitments that prevent us from adapting and evolving at a fast pace. However, despite some of our struggles, we’ve achieved incredible success in under 10 years! Since we started in 2008, we’ve successfully reached over 15,000 students in 30 communities across the country, achieved several milestones in positively impacting student financial decisions, and created many “firsts” for our field. But we’re still not done reaching higher; it’s always day one and we’re always learning.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Moneythink is a national nonprofit organization that empowers under-resourced youth to achieve college success by supporting college and financial decision-making through coaching and technology. We envision an equitable future in which all students have the opportunity to complete an affordable postsecondary education that puts them on a path to fulfillment and prosperity. We began as a student volunteer initiative on the University of Chicago campus as a response to the 2008 economic recession, but soon grew to become a national student movement on 30 different campuses across the US.
Since them we have been leaders in the financial capability field, known for innovative use of technology in helping create innovative financial education tools. In 2016, we identified college matriculation as a key point of positive intervention in a student’s financial capability development and have designed our College Financial Coaching program to specifically address the problems that arise during this crucial period. As an organization, we pride ourselves in always putting the student first and specifically designing our programs to fit the needs of those that we serve. Through key practices of human-centered design, we continuously challenge our assumptions and are not afraid to change course when we know it’s the right thing to do. Our program model reflects this as well, setting us apart from traditional forms of financial education. Our personalized, text-message based coaching equips students with the proper financial knowledge to increase their likelihood of persisting through college. Our mobile form of communication allows us to meet students whenever and wherever they need us most: outside of the classroom when they are making some of the most important financial decisions of their lives. These are the things set us apart from others in the financial education space. It’s in our DNA.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1452 E 53rd Street, Chicago, IL 60615
- Website: https://moneythink.org
- Email: development@moneythink.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moneythink/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/moneythink/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/moneythink
- Other: https://medium.com/@moneythink
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