Financial Fridays: EVERFI By Blackbaud

For more than 14 years, EVERFI has offered a digital financial literacy curriculum for elementary, middle, and high school students, all at no cost to schools and districts. Millions of students and their teachers have used EVERFI’s digital lessons to develop youth financial literacy. Resources include:

• Access to EVERFI’s ever-growing library of digital curriculum with lessons that can all be delivered remotely

• Real time reporting to see students’ baseline knowledge and growth

• Lesson plans and discussion questions

• Student scholarship opportunities

• Personalized support from a local School Implementation Manager

EVERFI’s High School Financial Wellness Suite offers educators the platform to create a comprehensive, customized digital learning experience, deepening student knowledge around a range of personal finance topics. For those familiar with EVERFI’s foundational high school program, EVERFI – Financial Literacy, we’re thrilled to add two extension programs to round-out your curriculum.

• Build: Credit Fundamentals: is a digital program that helps high school students build knowledge about acquiring credit, growing credit, managing credit and dealing with fraud or inaccuracies with credit in effective ways. Students will learn to make wise decisions that support their current and future financial well-being, with an emphasis on building and maintaining good credit strategies.

• Grow: Financial Planning for Life: is a digital program that helps teach high school students how to make wise financial decisions to promote financial well-being over their lifetime. Immersive digital environments and diverse characters bring modern, relevant financial education objectives to life. Students accelerate their financial understanding through problem-solving, self-reflection and games that provide real-life scenarios for practice.

Along with one new program we’ve added to our middle school curriculum.

• SaveUp: Saving Money for the Future: This course will provide middle schoolers the knowledge and skills they need to become informed consumers on how to save money, thus prompting them to begin saving as early as possible. Students will learn why saving is important, how to budget and spend wisely, why savings can help reach financial goals, and how to open a savings account.

FutureSmart – personal finance educational resources are also available to families and educators through the MassMutual Foundation. Starting on August 29, FutureSmart students are eligible to enter a middle school scholarship contest for an opportunity to be awarded a prize (deadline to apply is January 11, 2023).

In April 2022, EVERFI released the results of a student survey on the financial understanding and preparedness of thousands of high school juniors and seniors nationwide. The survey found that these students — nearing their transition to adulthood — report low levels of readiness to take on potential near-term financial tasks, from evaluating financial products to establishing and maintaining credit to understanding how to pay for college. Read the full article here.

With these recent findings, EVERFI is committed to continuing to bring free financial literacy education to millions of K-12 students across North America.