Chairman,  Board of Trustees for Financial Planning

Helping people take control of their lives

Q: Briefly describe the Foundation for Financial Planning and its impact in the community.

A: The Foundation for Financial Planning (FFP) is a 501(c) 3 charitable organization. Our mission is to help people take control of their financial lives, by connecting the financial planning community with people in need. This is achieved through grant support of pro bono advice and outreach activities.

The Foundation is an endowment fund which gives grants to achieve our mission. To date we have raised $14 million from 14,000 financial planners and 50 corporations. We have made 66 grants—for a total of almost $4 million. We fund projects that can be duplicated nationally. We try to spend as little money as we can to reach as many people as we can.

Q: Briefly describe how FFP is working towards its long-term goals?

Through its grants, the FFP has been able to help provide pro bono financial planning advice and financial life skills education and training to a variety of underserved audiences. We have done this by putting people in need together with individual financial planners across the country.

Some of these grants have been given to FPA® chapter pro bono programs:

• New York City—to help families of 9/11victims
• Massachusetts—working with families of National Guard members serving overseas
• New Mexico—educating Indians on the reservations
• Minnesota—teaching financial life skills to high school students.
70 FPA® chapters have pro bono programs with over 1,200 financial planner volunteers.

One of our major emphases has been working with the military personnel and their families, stationed in the U.S. and deployed overseas. Financial life skills education programs and one-on-one financial planning have been presented on more than 50 military bases and at Yellow Ribbon events, reaching over 50,000 individuals. 

Budgeting, planning and credit management information is provided to military personnel in booklet from the FFP. Accomplishing Your Financialbooklet has been distributed to pro bono financial plan-
ners and through Moneywise in the Military programs at military bases in the U.S. and abroad, including the Middle-East. It has also been provided to other organzations such as the Navy and Marine Corps Relief Society, Fleet and Family Service and local Wounded Warrior programs.
 
Our grants have also funded PBS programs such as The Color of Money and Making Sense New England, carried on more than 80 stations. Shows are combining expert advice with storiresourceful ways to weather the economic downturn.

We also helped fund the PBS series Moneywise with Kelvin Boston which is carried on the Armed Forces Television Network that reaches 800,000 service men and women in 176 countries throughout the world.

We are very excited about a new grant we have made to the US Conference of Mayors to bring financial skills programs to underserved individuals across the country.
 
Q. How efficient are FFP operations?

A. As stated previously the FFP does not conduct programs but gives grants to other non-profit organizations nationwide that are serving underserved poputions. This allows funding to be invested in supporting needs rather than building infrastructure.
 
Beyond its grant program, less than 3 percent of its assets are budgeted for general operating expenses. The FFP board members pay all their own expenses and we have one full time and one part time staff members. The office space based in Atlanta suburbs is shared with CFP® sole practitioner at a very inexpensive rate.
 

Q. How can members help individually?

A. I have found that financial planners are generous people or otherwise they wouldn’t be financial planners! They give to their college, their church or synagogue, and to cure cancer and other fatal diseases. But if you think about it, financial illiteracy can be a fatal disease, but one that could be cured with information. The more money we can raise, the more people we can reach.

If you have already given, consider giving more. If you haven’t, now is a good time to start.

Please consider donating to the FFP an individual pledge of $1,000 or more, payable over five years. While immediate gifts are helpful and appreciated, pledges to the FFP’s endowment may be paid on an annual, semiannual, quarterly or even monthly basis.

For example, if you make a $5,000 pledge payable over 5 years, it works out to $20 week – about cost of a good lunch. And, with Fidelity’s matching grant, the FFP will receive $10,000 and you will get credit for $10,000.

For more information about the Foundation for Financial Planning, to download a pledge form or make a contribution online go to www.foundation-finplan.org.

As one of the FFP board members commented at a recent board meeting: “You give to the FFP because it is the right thing to do.”

Please join us and give to the FFP – your Foundation which puts together people in need with financial planners on a pro bono basis.

Foundation for Financial Planning
2191 Northlake Parkway, Ste G
Tucker, GA 30084
www.foundation-finplan.org