LISC: Opening Up Dialogue with Financial Coaches, Clients & Funders

As Program Manager with Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) in Toledo, Ohio, Valerie Moffitt was seeking to create a productive connection between financial coaches and coaching clients. Moffitt’s organization supports Financial Opportunity Centers (FOCs), which are designed to offer integrated services in an asset building context: financial counseling and coaching, employment coaching and income support counseling. Demonstrating the intricacies of a financial coaching program to funders was another major goal.

Outcomes

Using Money Habitudes as part of its financial coaching model has enabled LISC to:

• Help clients discover their and attitudes about money and how those are – or are not – matching up with their intentions.
• Create an atmosphere of trust and facilitate an honest conversation between the client and coach, often a difficult challenge during initial visits.
• “Break the ice” with clients and help show clients where they are when it comes to finances.
• Helps FOC partners convey to funders how simply teaching skills or prescribing a financial to-do list may be easier and cheaper but end up being less effective. Using Money Habitudes is concrete and allows for better understanding of the challenging aspects of behavior change.

How They Use Money Habitudes

• Instead of prescriptive financial counseling, LISC’s model relies on coaches to ask questions and help clients come up with their own solutions, then hold them accountable to the plan or goals set.
• In addition to other hands-on coaching tools, including life wheels, priority charts and visualization techniques, coaches use Money Habitudes cards to initiate conversation with clients and help them self-assess their financial habits and attitudes.
• LISC also uses the cards to convey why supporting this coaching model is both worthwhile and more effective than other less intensive services.