Last week, at the MassChallenge Awards ceremony, Chicago-based Moneythink was one of the five winners that took home the top prize of $100,ooo. You can be sure that Moneythink will be putting this cash to good use. After all, financial responsibility is what the non-profit startup is all about.
Moneythink brings together young students from lower-income communities and matches them with college students, who act as mentors and teach the kids fiscal responsibility using Moneythink's 21-week economic opportunity curriculum.
"We cover everything from basic goal setting all the way through how to get a job and how to finance your way through college and beyond," explained Moneythink co-founder and Executive Director Ted Gonder.
Managing personal finance is a skill everyone is expected to have and no one explicitly teaches. Gonder said the Moneythink initiative really resonates with students who never had any resource of the sort. A lot of students write college off as too expensive but, using the Moneythink platform, they learn how to set financial goals that can make a secondary education possible. Along the way, said Gonder, a lot of them end up earning scholarships.
Moneythink is well-established in Chicago and Gonder's native Los Angeles. The company's time at MassChallenge allowed the team to start building a rapport in Boston and all over New England. In particular, Gonder mentioned the Moneythink chapter out of Babson College is particularly strong.
Gonder's belief is that having an established nucleus like Babson creates a rippling effect through the community.
"Now that we have traction locally, it compounds on itself," said Gonder. "Our lofty goal now is to get students that went through the program to become mentors themselves when they go to school."
Gonder hopes to open a local field office in Boston by 2015 to act as an East Coast satellite to Moneythink's Chicago headquarters.
In addition to community connections, MassChallenge opened Moneythink up to the power technology could lend their platform.
"Even though most of our students are from low-income areas, most of them have smart phones," Gonder said. "So we have IDEO building a mobile app for our curriculum to make it portable and more interactive."
"We believe financial education is a human right," concluded Gonder. "By 2030 we want all high school graduates to know how to make real-world financial decisions."
