Don’t take a summer vacation from financial education

We all anticipate June’s warm and sunny welcome as a signal of summer’s arrival. With most people gearing up for their summer break, it’s important to emphasize that while school may be out, education planning remains more important than ever.

If you’re taking a summer vacation from financial education, you’re missing out on important opportunities to engage members and increase your community development. This summer in particular provides an especially valuable time to make a meaningful impact on the state of financial literacy as a whole. As the 2023 P-Fin Index revealed financial literacy rates are at their lowest point since 2017, this summer is our chance to get a head start on improving how our communities perform in the 2024 study.

Here are 3 ways to use the summer months to your advantage to create the most impactful financial education programs for you and your members to benefit from year-round.

Provide learning on the go

It may feel impossible to reach your community while everyone is doing something different in the summer months. When 49% of Americans plan to travel even more this year than in 2022, it’s no surprise that everyone will be hard to reach while they’re out and about. This poses the question – how can you still effectively reach your community when they’re away from home?

The answer is simple: offering a digital or mobile-first education tool can enable you to reach your members anytime, anywhere. By embracing digital solutions, members can access valuable financial knowledge at their convenience, whether they’re commuting to work or relaxing on a beach. This flexibility caters to the individual learning preferences of your members while connecting credit unions with a larger audience than in-person opportunities would permit. Digital education is a win-win for all!

Analyze your initiatives

When was the last time you did a deep dive into performance data for your education initiatives? Now that we’re 6 months into 2023, now is a great time to review your programs to determine their effectiveness. Are the programs you began at the start of the year performing as you’ve expected? Review factors such as time spent learning, measuring increased accuracy or confidence in financial literacy, and other key performance indicators for your credit union.

Digital education solutions provide a unique opportunity to track user engagement, enabling credit unions to tailor their educational content based on the needs and interests of their members. Using your engagement data, drive new strategies to launch your success for the rest of this year!

Stay on trend

Even the best-drawn plans don’t always stay on course. As the year evolves, new topics or issues are likely to appear in the public discourse that may alter your education or marketing plans. For example, the course of unexpected bank runs earlier this year brought new issues into the mainstream that your education programs may not have previously planned to address, like deposit insurance or institutional stability. As you optimize your education for the remainder of the year, don’t just rely on your own data — reflect on the changes in the world as a whole.

Not only does summer give you time to catch up on addressing changes or trending topics in the world, but it also allows you to anticipate what other topics may become heightened in the public consciousness and proactively determine how to incorporate them into your plans.

Offering this timely financial education is essential to keep your members engaged and informed. It can also demonstrate that your institution is proactive and responsive to the ever-changing financial landscape. In doing so, you can establish your credit union as a trusted and reliable source of financial knowledge!

Want even more ways to maximize your education plans over the summer? Contact the Zogo team through the form below or request a demo to learn how our education tools can work for you.