This is the beginning of what I hope will be a monthly post about the financial education community. 

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While leading a FinCamp in Tucson earlier this year, this question came from the audience. I had never been asked it before. Non-profits operate in this interesting space of doing social good in what is often a crowded field. Yet, seldom do you hear the words "competition" come forth from the mouth of non-profiteers. It almost seems anathema to the movement. Shouldn't a spirit of cooperation guide all of our actions? Wouldn't we accomplish so much more if we found ways to band together and partner? 

Fact: There are over 800 resource providers on a popular clearinghouse for financial education materials at JumpStart. 

Unpopular fact: Teachers would be better off if there were a lot fewer of them. 

Why? How many times have you heard this from a personal finance educator? 

"I wish there were more resources for me to comb through because I love using hours and hours of my free time to search for the perfect resources for my students." 

So, how did I answer the question posed by the educator in Tucson? To paraphrase (it sounds a lot better here):

Any organization that produces personal finance curriculum and provides professional development workshops competes for teacher mindshare. With only so many hours in a day, with an email and social media stream that grows longer by the minute, with hundreds of FREE resources to choose from, with teaching habits and practices developed over the years....You get the picture. Unlike many markets, price doesn't play here given all the FREE stuff available.

It's a Darwinian world. Break through and offer teachers (and their students) something of value and invest in their development, you win. Offer something that is hard to distinguish from the hundreds of other providers and you're stuck on page 23 of an increasingly long list. Yet, once you have produced it, it can stay on that list....FOREVER. New entrants produce more content and resources, the list gets longer and it gets even harder to separate the wheat from the chaff. 

So, back to the original question, the hundreds of personal finance education companies are not our competition. What we are really competing for is teacher time. We have to create a product (curriculum) and a service (teacher professional development) that raises the bar enough for a teacher to invest their most precious commodity, TIME. Saving them time (no more Google searches!), developing engaging and effective curriculum that their students love and investing in professional development that surpasses their high expectations is what we focus on every day! 

Thank you to the 13,000+ passionate educators in the NGPF community who have entrusted their time and their students to us. We wake up every day thinking about ways to better serve you. 

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.

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