By Dustin Tyler Joyce
September 25, 2006

This week, over 100 Dollar Wi$e cities and other municipalities from San Francisco to Miami are recognizing Dollar Wi$e Week in their communities. Dollar Wi$e Week is an occasion to emphasize the need for greater financial literacy in America and to recognize the financial education programs underway in many towns and cities. The week is marked by mayoral proclamations, press conferences, media coverage, breakfasts, community forums and events, classes, seminars, workshops, and a host of other activities.

Yet those communities involved in financial education will suggest that raising awareness and literacy is not just a once-a-year event. It is an active, continual effort supported by The United States Conference of Mayors’ National Dollar Wi$e Campaign. Dollar Wi$e provides curriculum and other resources to communities seeking to increase their residents’ financial skills.

The Dollar Wi$e program is flexible and adaptable to each city’s needs and the staff and resources each community can invest in an ongoing local campaign. In fact, many communities already have financial education programs in place and find that Dollar Wi$e is a perfect fit to supplement existing efforts.

“The mayor was so excited about it; and when I looked at it, I was excited about it, too,” said Ethel Washington, director of the Housing Authority in Waterloo (IA), one of the newest Dollar Wi$e local campaigns. “We already had so many programs that fit in perfectly with Dollar Wi$e. It’s amazing. Before Dollar Wi$e, we had all of these programs, but we’d never put them all together. Dollar Wi$e made us look at them and realize what we have.”

In establishing and expanding a local campaign, Dollar Wi$e recommends that cities follow these steps.

Under the direction of the mayor, cities register for the Dollar Wi$e Campaign. In registering, cities provide a contact person for communications with the national campaign. This person typically also oversees the local program.

Mayoral staff members can register their cities at www.dollarwiseonline.org.

Educational forums are the core of the Dollar Wi$e Campaign. To begin the process of setting up a local Dollar Wi$e Campaign, the U.S. Conference of Mayors urges mayors to contact local business leaders, financial institutions, schools, parent groups, senior citizens associations, and faith-based groups to form community partnerships. With their partners, city governments discuss the financial education needs of their communities, identify existing financial education programs, and determine the focus of their local campaigns.

The Conference of Mayors recommends that mayors focus their educational efforts on one or more core groups, or choose to expand an existing financial education program in their community.

At the local level, Dollar Wi$e Campaign members are free to set their own priorities and courses of action to educate their citizens about personal finance. At the Conference of Mayors Annual Meeting in Las Vegas in June, the Dollar Wi$e Campaign released a yearbook entitled Partnerships 2005. This book describes established financial education campaigns throughout the United States, and many city staff members may find it helpful in planning their own local campaigns and activities.

Local activities take various forms throughout the nation. However, each focuses on the selected core groups in unique ways. Further, Dollar Wi$e programs and seminars general focus on one of the campaign’s core components, which are education, savings, credit card management, and homeownership.

Dollar Wi$e Week 2006 will run through September 30. The U.S. Conference of Mayors and the Council for the New American City urge all participating mayors to hold a financial education forum in their city, plan media activities, and hold special classes during this week.

Applications for Round III of the Dollar Wi$e Capacity Grants will be available to registered Dollar Wi$e local campaigns in November. The Capacity Grants are made possible by the Dollar Wi$e Campaign’s sponsor, Countrywide Financial Corporation, and range from $15,000 to $25,000 each. Three recipients will be announced during the U.S. Conference of Mayors winter meeting in Washington (DC) in January.

Further information about Dollar Wi$e, Dollar Wi$e Week, and the Capacity Grants program is available at www.dollarwiseonline.org. To register their local campaigns, mayors or city staff members should click on “Join the Campaign” in the menu on the left side of the homepage. City officials can also contact Dustin Tyler Joyce at 202-861-6759 or send e-mail to djoyce@usmayors.org for additional information.