Financial Inclusion

This year the U.S. Department of Education's Gaining Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, commonly known by the acronym GEAR UP, encouraged grantees to include children's savings programs in their applications. The Department of Education's decision to make children's savings programs a funding priority is based on research that tests the relationship between children's savings and their educational outcomes. This research, much of which is published by William Elliott (Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas and Senior Research Fellow here at NAF) and is publically available on the Center for Social Development's website under asset building, consistently finds significant, positive relationships between children's savings accounts and their educational outcomes including academic achievement, high school graduation, and college attendance and completion.

As part of building the stock of knowledge for the Savings for the Poor Innovation and Knowledge Network (SPINNAKER), the Global Assets Project partnered with MicroSave to conduct the first exploratory savings landscape country study. The goal of the study was to not only capture the range of savings products for the poor and identify opportunities for further innovative development, but also to help develop data gathering instruments and approaches and identify gaps for future research.

This post originally appeared on the SPINNAKER Network

While the Savings for the Poor Innovation and Knowledge Network (SPINNAKER) lives and breathes data, collaboration is its heartbeat. While a “community-driven data platform” may sound like an oxymoron to some, we see it as a fresh approach to facilitating new ideas among a growing yet disparate and uncoordinated field.

Here is how we see the problem: though innovations in savings products for the poor and their distribution channels have been tremendous over the five or so years, the field continues to face challenges in designing, marketing and delivering savings products that reach their market potential. Even in the many cases where financial institutions offer unique, innovative and successful savings products, the particulars of the products are very often unknown outside of -- and even sometimes within -- their own market.

Here is our theory of change: through collaborative sharing on a common platform that improves the way we produce, store, discuss and share information and data, everyone in the savings for the poor field gets more access to better data more quickly, which in turns results in a field that operates more efficiently and innovates more quickly. We’re testing this theory through SPINNAKER by:

• Aggregating and cataloguing information and data that can be used to inform policies, programs and products

• Making analysis, tools, and guides on best practices and other research easily accessible

• Providing a space for experts, donors, financial institutions, practitioners and other stakeholders to engage in dialogue with one another and explore possible collaboration and ideas to overcome challenges in mobilizing savings

Our Collaborative Model so Far

During SPINNAKER’s exploratory phase, we’ve engaged frequently with experts, practitioners and researchers in the field discuss the field’s data and information needs, as well as brainstorm new and interesting ways to collectively piece together the savings landscape puzzle. One particular exercise took place in June of this year: we convened a roundtable of 10 savings for the poor experts to present a demo site and discuss our approach to and priorities for collecting and visualizing data. Unsurprisingly, their preferences for the type of product information they thought should be collected by SPINNAKER reflected the type of work their institution leads. The technical assistance providers seem to be interested in promotion and marketing methods while researchers and consulting firms were interested in product fees. Financial institutions showed interest in operational information such as costing, technology and target populations. Clearly, lots of different data are needed and useful to the various stakeholders in the field, so SPINNAKER’s aim has so far been to aggregate and standardize as many of these variables as possible.

Thanks to everyone’s contributions, the site and its functions have since been revamped. Indeed, the current alpha version of the site would not be possible without the participation and support of various partners. For example, the framework of the resource section builds on the online savings resource guide for financial institutions developed by Women's World Banking and CGAP. Many of the institutional profiles you see in the database contain information provided by the MIX Market. The pilot “deep dive” study in the Philippines, and the corresponding institution and product data, was conducted jointly with MicroSave to survey the country’s savings product landscape. While we feel like the site is off to a good start, it is far from complete. Our hope is that with everyone’s involvement, SPINNAKER will develop into a high quality, super functional data platform that encourages and nurtures collaboration, inquiry and debate and ultimately, makes us all more effective researchers, advocates, developers or providers of savings for poor populations.

Ways to Get Involved Today

• Include your (or your affiliates’) product data in our global savings mapping exercise by completing the data entry form (all sources of information and data are attributed prominently on the site)

• Share your videos, blogs, questions and research with the larger field

• Explore our product comparison and graphing tools

• Sign up to join the network and receive updates

• Participate in our current discussion forum on innovation

• Get in touch to explore how SPINNAKER can be of service to you

• Answer our brief survey to help shape SPINNAKER’s design and offerings

This post originally appeared on the SPINNAKER Network

Mark your calendars! Suffolk University’s Law School and the National Consumer Law Center are convening a Research Symposium on Credit Scoring and Credit Reporting in Boston, MA on June 6-7, 2012. The symposium will be invite-only and authors are invited to submit papers for consideration until November 15, 2011. See the attached pdf on the right under "Related Files" for more details about the submission process, possible topics, and formatting.

Fred Ssewamala, Associate Professor at Columbia University, YouthSave member, and Global Assets Project Senior Fellow, has received a $3.34M grant for a family-based economic empowerment program for AIDS-orphaned and vulnerable youth (11-14) called, Bridges to the Future.

This post originally appeared on the SPINNAKER Network

A growing number of research studies investigate the association between children's savings and their educational outcomes, findings which suggest providing children with savings accounts at an early age may be a way to improve their educational outcomes. A recent press release summarizes these research studies, many of which have been conducted by researchers at the University of Kansas and the Center for Social Development. Research also suggests children’s college-bound identities—whether or not they expect to graduate from college—are also associated with children’s educational outcomes. Along these lines, it may be useful to know whether interventions that combine savings plus college-bound identity are best for improving college attendance. A new study has recently been released on the Center for Social Development's website that addresses this very question. This post summarizes findings from William Elliott and colleagues’ paper, Toward a Children's Savings and College-Bound Identity Intervention for Raising College Attendance Rates. Results are forthcoming in the journal Sociology Mind. 

This post is adapted from "Playing with Product Data on SPINNAKER: The Philippines as the Prototype" on the SPINNAKER Network

“We need data. We need to have a way to know what is working and what is not. There are no common indicators. There are no benchmarks for success.