Finally!

After a long and tedious year, we finally got our 501c3 status!  We are officially a charitable organization, which means we can receive donations and apply for grants.  Immediately after getting the 501c3, we started working with a consultant in order to find some grants we can apply to.  With this new means of funding, we hope to be able to grow the organization at a much faster rate than was possible when we were funding everything from our own pocket. We hope to eventually be able to hire people and train them to present our program, so we can expand and reach as many kids as possible.  It seems like we’ve done a lot as it is, but we will do much more in the future with the help of donations and grants.  This is only the beginning for the Wealth Education Foundation!

Bureaucracy In-Action

            Recently I got some valuable insight into how the  government works; not to mention how the state and federal governments work (and sometimes don’t work) together. 

It all started with a simple form called “Articles of Incorporation” that you have to fill out if you want to be a corporation., As a non-profit organization, we had to be a corporation (as opposed to a Sole Proprietorship or Partnership),  so we filled  out the form for the state of Pennsylvania and they sent it back to us stamped and approved.  No problems there.  Then we had to file with the federal government for  our 501c3 designation, which will make us a charitable organization able to get grant money, and they asked us to send in our state approved Articles of Incorporation with the federal 501c3 application.  We sent all these documents in to the federal government and something like 10 days later we got a response saying that they had received our application and they would assign someone to our case when they could.  Every few months we would call and ask what was happening to our application and the only response we ever got was that we had not been assigned a case-worker yet and we just needed to wait.  It was almost a year later that we got a letter saying that they had FINALLY assigned someone to our case and they would be reviewing our application.  Several times they sent a list of questions they wanted answered before they would approve us.  Finally,  they sent a letter saying we had answered all their questions but needed to add a particular statement to our “Articles of Incorporation” saying that if we went out of business we would give our charitable monies to another 501c3 (charitable) corporation rather than keep the money ourselves.  The law makes perfect sense, but seemed impossible to comply with because the “Articles of Incorporation” is a pre-written form which we just sign and plug in our name!  There is no way to “amend” the document.  When we told our federal government case worker this, she said that there is a new form that was updated by Pennsylvania with the required statement on it that we needed to get, fill out, and turn in instead of the old form.  They said that the state of PA has had it for a while but never got around to posting it online so everyone is using the wrong form now.  We needed to find somebody in the Pennsylvania state government that knows this form exists and can get us one so that we can fill it out, pay another $70.00, and turn it in. On top of all this, they informed us that if we did not send it back to them within the next 5 days that they would have to close our case … the one we had just waited for a year to be opened.  So we got the form, filled it out, and sent it in, but it seemed impossible that they could get it back in less than a week.  It was.  They closed our case and a week later our new, amended Articles were approved by the state government.  The federal government said not to worry if they closed our case as it was just a formality and they would resume it once the form was submitted.  Of course, we don’t really know what that means or how long it will take to resume or even if there’s something special we should do to get the case re-opened.  No one gave us that information.  So we turned in the form and we have not heard from them yet.  Currently we have no idea if our case is open or closed and the case worker is no longer returning or answering our calls.  We are left completely in the dark right now. 

From this whole crazy experience I have learned that government bureaucracies are very flawed. And even though they are a vital part of a functioning United States, they need a lot of work done to them to create more efficient and less frustrating processes.

600 Abington Seniors

Great news!! It has been a goal of ours to get our programs into the high schools since the beginning because that is an easy way to access as many kids as we possibly can.   That can be challenging because they are very careful about whom they let in to speak to their students and they already have their own curriculum so it can be hard to convince them to let us use ours.  The other day we got a call from Abington High School.  They had heard about our organization and wanted us to present to their 600 Seniors.  600! We usually present to 20 to 40 kids at a time.  The Freshman, Sophomores, and Juniors were taking some test but they had nothing for the Seniors to do.  That’s where we came in.  They only had a short amount of time for us to talk to all of the Seniors.  They had 3 auditoriums set up with about 200 students each.  We had about 35 minutes to give our presentation which usually takes about 1 hour.  We had to talk REALLY fast!  Part of our presentation is a game we play called “Name That Celebrity”.  We had to cut the whole thing out AND talk fast just to do it in time.  After each presentation, we had 5 minutes to run down the halls and get to the next room of students to do it all again.  In less than two hours we presented our core program three times for about 600 Abington Seniors.  A good day!

Still Pushing

Hey everyone!  It’s been a while since I last posted but we have been keeping busy.  This has been a long and somewhat frustrating year for the Foundation.  It seems like everything is moving very slo-o-o-w.  Nevertheless, we have been making progress.  “Many of the great achievements of the world were accomplished by tired and discouraged men who kept on working”(Unknown Author). 

Early in the year we were excited about several non-profits (including WEF) working together with the City Controller’s Office to put together Financial Literacy month in the schools.  The bad news is that the person running it from the City Controller’s Office left, which halted most of the program.  A new guy (we don’t know who he is yet) recently took over and is in the process of getting it back up to speed. 

The other thing just making us crazy right now is that we filed our 501c3 application (which would make us a charitable organization) with the IRS and it has just disappeared.  The IRS is supposed to come back to us with comments or give us the license and they haven’t done anything yet.  We’re just waiting for whenever they get around to it.  Very frustrating because we need the 501c3 to apply for grants.

Some good news is that Dad and I just got back from the Society for Financial Education and Professional Development’s (SFE&PD) Fourth Annual Financial Literacy Leadership Conference in Washington D.C.  My dad has been to the conference every year and I have been there the last two years.  It was great to see Ted and Una Daniels, the father-daughter team that runs the SFE&PD and puts the conference on every year.  Every year they personally greet us and, to my surprise, remember who we are.  They are always very nice and warm towards us and everyone at the conference.  The conference provides valuable information that can help organizations like ours grow.  Perhaps the most beneficial thing about the conference is the networking.  Everyone there has a unique thing they bring to the table and if you find the right people, the networking alone can extremely benefit your organization.  For example, this year we met several people that could potentially help us.  One person that we met was David Anderson, the Executive Vice President of the non-profit Working in Support of Education (W!SE).  His organization is dedicated to promoting financial literacy, business and social entrepreneurship in secondary schools nationwide to prepare students for college and the workplace.  One cool thing about W!SE is that they have a certificate program where kids can complete a financial literacy course and get a certification By having W!SE’s name behind us, we could potentially teach our financial literacy curriculum in schools which is important to completing our task of reaching as many kids as possible.  These kind of connections are what will help our organization get bigger and more effective.

We also reconnected with Shante’ who is with the Urban Affairs Coalition.  She was excited to hear we are almost ready to send her our full curriculum.  She needs to get it vetted and approved and then the Coalition can start using WEF to fulfill some of their mandates to teach financial literacy through their program.  The great thing about that is we just have to bring our “Rules of Money” curriculum and they handle the funding and put together the groups.   

That just about brings us up to date.  From here we are pushing hard to finish up the expanded curriculum so we can get it out to several partners who are waiting on it, hopefully get our 501c3 and becoming associated with W!SE.

Good for the city! We hope...

Kent here. I'm busting in on Konner's blog to share some interesting news. Shante' at the Urban Affairs Coalition invited us to a meeting at the City Controller's office. Konner couldn't make it because he was in the middle of finals at school, so I went it alone. Several organizations that teach financial literacy were there, all of whom (except us, as we're new) have been part of a program called "Bank on Philadelphia". It turns out that both the Mayor of Philadelphia and the President of the United States have declared April as "Financial Literacy" month (who knew?), so the Bank on Philadelphia coalition is trying to get the public schools to let foundations like WEF go into the schools and teach our programs in April. All of it would be done under the Bank on Philadelphia auspices and organized by the City Controller. First though, there will be a meeting with Dr. Ackerman, the Chairman of the School Board, and someone from the Teacher's Union, to see if they will allow it. How can something so obviously beneficial, and backed by the Mayor and the President, be so hard and maybe not even get done? Cross your fingers!

Kids-4Change

We went to present for the Kids-4Change organization.  Kids-4Change is a very unique organization. It was founded by a 11 year old girl named Shaniah St. Catherine. Her mom, Alice St. Catherine, helps manage and run everything. They recruit kids from their neighborhood and put on various events that improve the world and teach the kids valuable lessons about citizenship and becoming a beneficial member of their community. This was also the first time we brought the newest member of our board Craig Brunner along to watch the presentation. When we got there we met the little girl who founded the organization and I have to admit she was better at running an organization than I am! She is a pro at only 11 years old. I hope to be at the level she is in the next year! The presentation went smoothly just like the last one and on the way home we stopped for Five Guys burgers. SCORE!

Mr. Brunner + Our 1st Board Meeting

Craig Brunner is the father of my friend Chris Brunner and one of my dad’s closest friends. He is an accountant. When dad told him about the foundation we had started he immediately offered to help in any way he could. We had been looking for people to be on the foundation’s Board of Directors and Craig, being a friend and an accountant, was perfect for us. So we asked and he said he would gladly be on our Board. This prompted our first board meeting! The three of us talked about every aspect of the Foundation. What our next steps would be, how we get the word out, jobs for each of us, and more. We are hoping to add more members to the Board soon and I suppose we’ll be having many more Board meetings to come.