Plutus Foundation 2018 Year In Review

You already know about our newest grant recipientswhat we did at FinCon18 and our time at the Teenpreneur Conference. Why not find out what else our other grant and sponsorship recipients have been up to this year?

The Financial Capability Conference gives educators resources for teaching money

Founded and organized by Plutus Foundation grant recipient Margaret Brooks, this 4th annual, free, one-day conference took place at Rhode Island College in December 2017. The purpose of the conference is to provide educators, veterans, librarians, social service workers, and others with resources and information to build financial literacy in their schools and communities.

The Foundation was a silver sponsor of the conference and our executive director, Harlan Landes, was able to attend. The Foundation also sponsored the 5th Financial Capability Conference in November 2018.

Please help us reach our goals. There’s still time to contribute to the Plutus Foundation for this tax year.

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Teaching 21st century financial literacy

This for credit, graduate-level class was created by grant recipient Joanne Kuster. The course’s mission is for educators to learn how to teach financial education concepts within their classroom. The two-day course piloted in June 2018 with 9 teachers attending in person.

The course will be moving online, expanding in scope, and has a goal to make it a teacher endorsement or certification.

Post-grad prep

Why not hear all about this directly from the founder, Jennifer Jackson? (You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more updates like this from other grant recipients)

Her first workshop was held on November 9, with 42 students participating. During the catered event, students discussed issues facing them including budgeting and saving, student loans, entrepreneurship, and mental health. They were able to shop for work-ready clothes (for free!) at a pop-up shop and received a bag of ADLT101 swag.

Hear personal money stories on the Road to Financial Wellness

The Foundation was thrilled to be a platinum sponsor for this annual, epic financial literacy road trip organized by Jason Vitug. This summer, the road trip boasted xx events, with summit events in cities like Denver, Fort Campbell, KY, and Detroit. Jason also organized a Facebook Live marathon on April 25, 2018 for Financial Health Matters Day.

Both our executive director and director of grants and programs attended the NYC kick-off event, hosted by the Financial Gym.

Heroes at Home bring financial skills to the military.

We were a proud sponsor of this event, geared towards members of the military. Here’s the full recap, written by one of the hosts (and Plutus Awards emcee), Bethany Bayless.

The Plutus Awards ceremony was a blast, and Crystal Hammond receives the Foundation Service Award

The 9th Annual Plutus Awards was an amazing event! Every year, an increasing number of people from throughout the financial media — and their audiences — participate by nominating their favorite blogs, podcasts, personalities, video channels, books, and more to receive recognition from the community. A panel of around sixty members of the community work together to select the finalists and winners.

The winners were announced at FinCon in September, during an awards ceremony hosted by second-year emcee Bethany Bayless. This year’s ceremony was the biggest in terms of attendance — and it was a lot of fun! In addition to the recognition of the awards recipients, Jordon Cox surprised everyone by challenging Bethany to a lip-sync contest.

The Foundation also announced the recipient of this year’s Service Award, Crystal Hammond, who provided needed relief for victims of recent hurricanes through her project Sip and Sew Old Town.

Did you collect all seventeen trading cards?

The Plutus Awards thanks its numerous partners, including its media partner, Fidelity, for helping make the awards season a success. You can feel the excitement of the night of the ceremony in the video Fidelity helped put together.

Plutus Voices series launched with preview in New York

On November 14, we hosted a preview of our Plutus Voices tour in 2019. This series of events is designed to bring together bloggers, podcasters, and other members of the personal finance media to discuss how to most effectively reach and impact our audience as well as to highlight some voices we think should be heard.

Featured speakers at this event in New York City, hosted by Bobbi Rebell and sponsored by Aragon Advertising, included Sandy Smith of Yes, I Am Cheap and David Bach, author of The Automatic Millionaire. Other activities included networking and group discussions, and the information collected will be published in early 2019.

Below is a recap of this special event. You can also watch the entire event (or any part of the evening you wish to see) here.

#GivingTuesday helped raise awareness and funds for 2019

One of the Foundation’s biggest goals this year was to raise more money to apply towards grants and programs. To accomplish this, we participated in Giving Tuesday, a national day of giving in the U.S. We aimed to raise $10,000 through personal donations from the personal finance media and their friends. To help meet our goal, we ran a Facebook Live marathon, hosted by our Director of Development, Sarah Bettencourt.

Participants in the marathon included past grant winner Eva Baker, Plutus Foundation Service Award recipient Crystal Hammond, Plutus Awards nominee and Plutus Voices speaker Sandy Smith, Plutus Foundation board member J.D. Roth, and Plutus Foundation Director of Grants and Programs Jana Lynch. Our founder and CEO Harlan Landes also joined in.

Over 1,400 people watched as they all discussed the importance of and the impact the Plutus Foundation has on the personal finance media and financial education and literacy.

As of this writing, we’ve raised over $5,000 as the result of our Giving Tuesday campaign. If you’d like to donate to the Foundation, there’s still time to do that.

You can watch a lightly-edited video of the marathon below.

We are so proud of what we’ve done this year. With the continued support of brand sponsors like Aragon Advertising and Fidelity, along with the personal finance media community, we’re looking forward to all we can accomplish in 2019.

Please help us reach our goals. There’s still time to contribute to the Plutus Foundation for this tax year.

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