College Money Matters Inc
Get smarter about paying for college
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
College Money Matters' mission is to help students and families learn to pay for college without excessive debt.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
www.collegemoneymatters.org
This website was designed by College Money Matters, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that high school students and their parents have the information they need to make informed decisions about applying, choosing and paying for college. It has been tested on high school students and counselors and is currently attracting about 1700 views a week.
The site features videos, articles, and even games to help college-bound students learn what they need to know about keeping college affordable.
Unlike many other financially-oriented sites, collegemoneymatters.org has no advertisements and does not harvest data for mailing lists. And while the emphasis is on paying for college, our site also covers other important topics that matter greatly to today’s students and their families.
Where we work
Affiliations & memberships
JumpStart Financial Literacy 2021
Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of press articles published
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Adults, Ethnic and racial groups, Parents, Non-adult children, Religious groups
Related Program
www.collegemoneymatters.org
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
CNBC, ABC news, NY Times,
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
College Money Matters is a 501 (c ) 3 nonprofit which was started with the goal of interrupting the cycle of student debt by helping high school students and their parents understand that decisions about choosing a college need to be integrated with decisions about paying for college.
Our goal is to reach all college-bound high school students who will need to borrow for college (about half) with the information they need to about paying for college so they can reach their goals without excessive levels of debt.
Recognizing that not every student has access to financial aid counseling, the College Money Matters team decided to produce a website and YouTube channel to enable students to learn this valuable information on their own. After several years of research with high school students to understand what they needed to know and their learning preferences, collegemoneymatters.org was launched. It presents over 40 topics, using short articles, videos, games, and engaging graphics. We are reaching over 2,000 people a week as of July 2022.
Our dream is to make sure that no student borrows for college without a complete understanding of the financial implications of their choice.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
We have spent the last 10 months adding engaging content and measuring analytics. We are confident that our website and Timely Topics bulletins are meeting the needs of our audience. Our goal now is to build awareness and visibility. We will achieve this by:
o Networking to form alliances with mentoring and youth nonprofits
o Working with major financial literacy organizations so they can share our content
o Improving public relations and press
o Continuing to work with school counselors and school districts
o Google adwords support
o Social Media
o Newsletters
o Conferences
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
We have an excellent group of talented volunteers and vendors who share our enthusiasm in achieving our goals. Our board consists of active and retired business owners and executives and parents. We have received systems and technical support from volunteers.
We hope to raise money to build awareness; and we have the funds on board to maintain and keep our site up to date. We have added board members with specialties in the areas where we need support.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Recently (2023) we embarked on new user research about search engine optimization and site usability. The culmination of this was a report by Austin Texas community college students with recommendations about how to reach more students effectively. The big learning from this was that while we thought we were talking about loans; our students said we should be talking about paying for college, of which loans is a subset. As a result, we are re-doing our website with better UX design and more effective SEO.
We continue to reach 1500-1800 users a week of which 54% actively engage with the information on the site.
We have offered a mailing list option which now has 500 names on it and we have been quoted in major news publications.
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
College Money Matters Inc
Board of directorsas of 06/14/2024
Mrs. Sharon Des Jarlais
Retired American Express
Term: 2021 - 2024
Rodd Berro
Pegasus Asset Management
Nancy Goodman
retired Citibank
Lois Ingram
Ingram Boccellari and Co.
Sharon Des Jarlais
retired Amex
Karen carlson
In charge
natasha Anderson
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Transgender Identity
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data