The Plutus Foundation Attends FinCon18

This year, Orlando, Florida provided the backdrop for FinCon, a huge conference for the personal finance media. All the members of our executive team attended and we had an absolutely amazing time! Travelling to Orlando allowed us to connect with old and new friends, increase the awareness of the Foundation, and set new goals for the future.

Here are a few of the highlights:

FinLit FinCon, Jr Meet-Up

Meet-ups provide a way for those working in a particular specialty or niche to get together on a small scale and talk shop. It’s a great way to connect with those you might not have been able to meet.

Sarah Bettencourt, our Director of Development, attended a meet-up hosted by Paul Vassey of Cash Crunch Games. Also in attendance were Matt Schulz, a well-known financial literacy advocate from Creditcards.com, Lotasha Thomas of My Finances Matter, Jeannine Glista from Biz Kid$, and more. The amount of people creating financial literacy programs for kids is inspiring.

During the meet-up, these finlit advocates discussed potential partnerships, sponsorships, and ways to implement financial literacy programs worldwide. Most attendees wanted to know how to better reach people in their communities, particularly offline. Since this is a goal of the Plutus Foundation, Sarah offered some insight, shared our mission, and made the attendees aware of our grants and other resources.

If you have a finlit program for kids, and didn’t get to attend the meet-up, reach out to us! We want to know about you!

The Plutus Awards

Each year, the Plutus Awards celebrates bloggers, podcasters, authors, and other content creators in personal finance media. As our flagship fundraiser, the awards committee works all year to put on a great show. We are honored with all the support and attendance shown during the ceremony. And we thank the awards committee for all of their hard work.

In between the awards and entertainment, we announced the winners of our newest rounds of grants, Econ Beats and Closing the Racial Wealth Gap. (You can read more about both winners here.) We also announced the winner of the Plutus Foundation Service Award. This prestigious award is given to someone making a difference through community service, advocacy, or charity work. Past winners include Kylie Travers and Melanie Lockert.

This year’s winner, Crystal Hammond of Sophisticated Spender and Sip and Sew Old Town, won for her efforts to help survivors of Hurricanes Harvey and Maria. Through her business, Crystal created, stuffed, and shipped over 100 bags filled with supplies to those in need.

New Relationships

FinCon is known as a great place for developing new relationships, and we definitely took advantage of that. As a result, some new people decided to support the Foundation and our mission. While we love our current supporters, and couldn’t have gotten to where we are without them, we are thrilled to have our new connections.

For instance, Jordon Cox, Britain’s Coupon Kid, expressed interest in joining us. This officially makes the Plutus Foundation international! We also have some exciting partnerships we can’t quite discuss yet but stay tuned for those.

The coming year looks busy for us but we can’t wait to get to work. If you’d like to get involved or learn more about what we do, please get in touch with one of us.