It was a big year for NEFE as we said goodbye to Ted Beck, who announced his retirement, and welcomed Billy Hensley, Ph.D., as our new president and CEO. Beginning in December, NEFE embarks on a series of strategic planning initiatives designed to set the course for the next several years. “We will focus our highest level of attention and resources on several priorities, including how best to orchestrate a shift in societal norms toward healthy financial behaviors,” says Hensley. “We look forward to sharing our road map with our colleagues and partners in the year to come.” For now, let’s look back on 2018.
2018 Year in Review
The next few years will bring even more changes to NEFE and to the field of financial education, but the mission behind our work will remain the same: to inspire and empower better financial decision making for all Americans. Highlights from this year include a third-party evaluation of the High School Financial Planning Program® (HSFPP), which found that the HSFPP outperforms other programs in changing student financial behaviors. It also has been another great year for CashCourse, which continues to provide much-needed financial education to college students. Our young adult blog, OnYourOwn.org, got a makeover in 2018 and is surpassing goals for engagement, while Smart About Money continues to provide free self-guided personal finance courses and informational articles for adult consumers.
Financial Workshop Kits reached out to intermediaries such as adult educators and domestic violence counselors in 2018, and a newly redesigned Evaluation Toolkit website now makes it easier for anyone running a financial education program to create, store and save program evaluations. NEFE’s media outreach and personal finance reporting awards continued in the past year, as did a variety of NEFE-funded academic research projects.
With the new CEO in place, NEFE now turns to assessing its opportunities in building financial capability for individuals and families directly, through educators and intermediaries, and more broadly through research and communications. We look forward to our continued collaboration with our colleagues in the field to improve financial well-being for all.
Here were some of the highlights:
- President and CEO Ted Beck Retires
- NEFE Names New CEO — Billy J. Hensley, Ph.D.
- NEFE Welcomes New Senior Director of Education, Research and Strategic Impact — Katherine Sauer, Ph.D.
- High School Financial Planning Program (HSFPP) 2018 Evaluation Results
- OnYourOwn.org’s 2018 Makeover
- CashCourse 2018 Educator of the Year — Ann House, University of Utah
- RTDNA-NEFE Honor 2018 Excellence in Personal Finance Reporting Award Winners
- NEFE Partners with the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) to End Economic Abuse
- Evaluation Toolkit Redesigned
- 2018 NEFE-Funded Research Executive Summaries
- NEFE at the 2018 FinCon Financial Bloggers Conference