FAQs
+ What do Financial Fellows Do?
+ How do Financial Fellows Prepare for a Year of Service?
+ Where do Financial Fellows Serve?
Prospective Financial Fellows are civic-minded and recent or soon-to-be graduates of leading colleges and universities with degrees in finance, business, or economics. Candidates must:
- Have excellent analytic, writing and communications skills
- Envision themselves as a future finance or business leader
- Be able to handle and manipulate large amounts of data
- Be prepared to travel to work with diverse, low-income communities
Over the course of their year of service, Financial Fellows must complete two key, macro-level deliverables:
Financial Coaching: Financial Fellows will serve as Financial Coaches, working one-on-one with Financial Clinic customers, providing them a range of financial development services to help them develop skills in asset-building, improving banking, repairing or establishing credit, managing debt, and tax planning.
To date, the Clinic has assisted nearly 6,000 families at 24 sites across the New York City metropolitan area and helped working poor New Yorkers secure over $10 million in tax refunds, savings and alleviated debt.
Social Innovation: The social-innovation aspect aims at innovating a new generation of products, technologies, processes and services provided to working poor Americans, with the goal of stemming America’s growing income gap. Social Innovation is achieved via three vehicles:
- Periodic Symposia where Fellows from diverse placements meet to discuss best practices and lessons learned;
- Monthly White Papers on topics such as health care, the EITC, social security reform, etc.;
- A social innovation plan—an income gap-stemming business plan or research proposal that addresses a financial security issue—that will be presented at the Clinic’s year-end Social Innovation Contest.
How do Financial Fellows Prepare for a Year of Service?
In order to prepare for a year of service, Financial Fellows receive the following:
Leadership Training: A month long orientation, leadership and social innovation training aims to prepare Financial Fellows to provide excellent financial services to working poor, to understand the conditions and drivers in low-income communities, and to instill a sense of cultural awareness and sensitivity.
Throughout their year of service, Financial Fellows will also participate in professional development workshops, as well as trainings that will build their acumen of the financial development field.
Symposia: Bi-weekly convening of Financial Fellows and their managers to discuss best practices, promote lessons learned, address issues and concerns, and innovate solutions to pressing socio-economic problems they encounter while serving.
Mentoring: All Financial Fellows will be paired with a Mentor from The Financial Clinic Advisory Group made up of professionals from the private, nonprofit, and public sectors. Mentors will help ensure Financial Fellows are on track for leadership positions by providing them information, guidance and connections, as well as advising them on their social innovations.
Financial Fellows will also be provided opportunities for private meetings with panels of executives from various prestigious private, public, and nonprofit institutions.
Where do Financial Fellows Serve?
Financial Fellows serve at a variety of nonprofits and public-sector service entities. Financial Fellows’ placement sites have included:
- Neighborhood Housing Services of New York
- Catholic Charities
- The Partnership for the Homeless
- East Side Settlement House
- Volunteers of America Greater New York
- Ironbound Community Corporation (Newark, NJ)
- Urban League of Essex County (Newark, NJ)
(This is not a full or final list of past or potential placement sites. Placement sites vary from year to year.)
