How Pro Bono Financial Planning Can Serve Your Needs

You know the needs of your constituents all too well. In many cases, the needs are many but the resources are few. One area of unmet need for your clients may be money management and education. One of the main purposes of the National Pro Bono Financial Planning Program is to link qualified financial planners with organizations whose constituents may need expert financial assistance—at no cost—for their clients.

Examples of Pro Bono Financial Planning

What kinds of help do these planners provide? Pro bono planners can offer assistance with basic budgeting skills, including how to write checks and balance a checkbook. Clients who are deeply in debt may need help in prioritizing debt repayments and managing their cash flows. You may have military personnel (or their spouses) as clients and discover that they constantly fall prey to questionable loan practices. Pro bono planners can offer assistance to clients in these and many other areas.

People of Different Means Face Common Financial Problems

Believe it or not, your constituents probably have several financial traits in common with a financial planner's typical paying clients. Stories of medical professionals who are making six-figure incomes but are close to bankruptcy are all too common—because they can't control their spending habits. You hear about families with two working professionals who own three or four late-model cars, live in a home in an upscale neighborhood, send their kids to private schools, and have 15 credit cards all maxed to the limit-because they don't know how to manage their credit.

Whether a family earns a lot of money or just a little, whether it has gathered a lot of wealth or has nothing at all, individuals need help making informed decisions about money. Those individuals include clients of financial planners and clients of nonprofit organizations like yours. While there may be a dollar difference between the two types of clients, the underlying behavior problems are often the same.

How Financial Planning Can Help Your Clients

Almost everyone makes financial mistakes at one time or another. Some mistakes are made from ignorance, some are made from habit. But all of them can be corrected with time and guidance.

So just what is financial planning? It's the process of meeting a person's life goals through proper and smart management of their finances. Life goals can include buying a home, getting out of debt, saving for a child's education, or planning for retirement.

The entire financial planning process normally consists of steps that help clients take a big-picture look their financial situations. The process itself involves:

Gathering relevant financial information.
Setting key goals.
Examining clients' current financial status.
Coming up with strategies and plans for how they can meet their goals given their current situation and future plans.

Using these steps, pro bono planners can work out where your clients are now, what they may need in the future, and what they must do in the meantime to reach their goals. Your clients may not need to go through all of the steps, and that's OK. The financial planning process is flexible and can be adjusted to meet your clients' unique needs and situations.

Common Money Management Issues in Pro Bono Financial Planning

Pro bono planners can guide your clients to making wise decisions in all different types of financial areas, such as:

Budgeting
Cash and debt management
Credit use
Eldercare issues
Employee benefits
General financial planning
Insurance (including insurance settlements)
Investing
Medical and health issues (health-care costs, Medicare/Medicaid, long-term or terminal illness, living with disabilities)
Retirement planning
Tax planning
Women's issues (widowhood, single motherhood)

Common Types of Pro Bono Financial Planning Clients

Pro bono financial planning isn't for everyone. Many individuals can find the means to pay for the financial advice they need. But certain sections of the population cannot, and they are the intended beneficiaries of pro bono financial advice. These groups may include:

Low-income individuals
Individuals who are facing an immediate financial crisis (for example, personal or widespread disaster, long-term illness, death of a family member, eldercare crisis, etc.)
Individuals who are recovering from significant indebtedness or bankruptcy
Enlisted military personnel

If you're not sure whether or not your constituents would qualify for pro bono financial planning, see Charitable Organizations: Help for the People You Serve.

Meeting Your Expectations: What Pro Bono Planners Can and Cannot Do

We'll say it right up front: pro bono financial planning will not solve every client's personal finance problems. As you well know from your own experiences with your constituents, people make their own choices—sometimes poor ones, as heartbreaking as that can be. But we still try to bring about change for the better.

Pro bono financial planning can offer your clients basic money management skills, knowledge, and education. The pro bono planners will offer the best advice they can, uniquely customized to fit each client's individual situation. But just as planners experience with their paying clientele, the final decision to act on their advice (or not) will be up to your client.

Perhaps it may help to think of pro bono planners as coaches or counselors who just happen to specialize in handling money. They can offer direction, advice, war stories, support, and encouragement. But they can't take over your clients' financial lives. But working in partnership with your organization, they can certainly increase the odds that your clients will learn to handle their financial resources more successfully.

Background Information on Pro Bono Financial Planners

All of the planners in this program have agreed to operate according to the code of ethics of the various financial organizations to which they belong. Many of these volunteers have years of experience in the financial planning community as well as college degrees and/or advanced credentials within the financial services industry.

Pro bono planners in this program have committed to offering objective advice to your clients. They will not sell any financial products, nor will they prospect for new customers from your organization's clients. In addition to providing pro bono financial planning, many of these advisors are already engaged in pro bono work in your community (teaching, counseling, serving on nonprofit boards, volunteering in local community organizations such as yours, etc.).

How to Partner With Us

Now that you have a better idea of the type and level of assistance we can provide to your constituents, you may want to meet and talk further with a pro bono financial planner. If so, we'd love to hear from you. Start by reading Charitable Organizations: Help for the People You Serve.

Or perhaps you still have some unanswered questions. Our FAQs should help answer any questions you have about the Pro Bono Financial Planning Program.