Wishlist for Advisers Give Back

Advisers Give Back is on a mission to scale pro bono financial planning to ultimately reach millions of low- and moderate-income Americans.

As great as traditional in-person pro bono events are, they don’t work for everyone. Advisers Give Back helps to increase access to pro bono financial planning by making it easier for both advisers and clients, while also making it more impactful.

By advancing pro bono financial planning, we are all advancing the financial planning profession.

To date, Advisers Give Back has achieved the following key milestones:

• January, 2020: Incorporated Advisers Give Back as a non-profit.
• April, 2020: Launched the pilot program.
• January, 2021: Received our 501(c)(3) determination letter from the IRS.
• April, 2021: Launched the public program.
• May-December, 2021: Set up partnerships with YWCA, Dress for Success and KIPP schools.
• August, 2022: The California Teachers Association’s board of trustees approved a partnership with Advisers Give Back.
• October, 2022: The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) partnered with Advisers Give Back to serve their 4,000+ members.
• March, 2023: Dan Ariely’s Common Cents Lab at Duke University and Advisers Give Back agreed to enter into a new product partnership.

Currently, the main source of support for Advisers Give Back is from wealth management firms, small foundations and financial services providers. Advisers Give Back runs a low-overhead operation, which means that we invest donations into features and services that directly add value to our two key stakeholders: pro bono advisers and pro bono clients. By focusing on their experiences and prioritizing their feedback on what we can do even better, we are building the only pro bono platform that provides all low and moderate-income Americans with access to excellent, fiduciary financial advice.

Advisers Give Back’s biggest needs fall into two categories:

1. Improving infrastructure
2. Scaling internal operations

Improving infrastructure

Within improving infrastructure, the following platform improvements are priorities:

• • • Dynamic calendar invites
      🥇 Highest Priority 💯
      In order to avoid having to pay 3rd party calendaring platforms, such as Calendly or AppointmentsPlus, for their scheduling services, Advisers Give Back opted to create our own calendar program. This is a huge cost savings as we continue to scale up.  To improve what we’ve built, we need to create a join calendar invite that will show up on both the adviser’s work calendar, as well as the pro bono client’s personal calendar. Right now, Advisers Give Back creates a calendar event for the pro bono client, but it is write-only, meaning that if the client cancels/reschedules the appointment over text or email, or the adviser cancels/reschedules the appointment, the client’s calendar event does not change. The new join calendar event will show for both the adviser and client (while keeping their contact information private from each other) and will be removed or moved in the event of rescheduling or a cancellation. This will significantly improve both the client and adviser experience, resulting in fewer last-minute cancellations or rescheduling.
      The cost to build this is: $10,000

   

• • • Mapping advisers to non-profit, firm and industry landing pages
      Presently, Advisers Give Back has three types of landing pages:
      • • Partner pages, with other non-profits and fintechs to attract more pro bono clients (example here)
        • Advisory firm pages, to promote in the community and provide to prospects who would make better pro bono clients than firm clients (example here)
        • Industry pages (e.g. NAPFA, FPA of San Francisco chapter), to promote their pro bono service among members (example here)However, Advisers Give Back lacks the capability to map volunteering advisers to these pages. For example, if an advisory firm is a strong supporter of a community non-profit and wants their advisers to provide pro bono support to the non-profit’s constituency, there is no way for Advisers Give Back to map their adviser's availability on our platform to the non-profit, such that people who sign up through the non-profit’s partner page will see the firm’s adviser availability on the scheduling calendar. Similarly, if an advisory firm is promoting their landing page, there is no way to ensure that community members who sign up through it will first be shown the availability of their advisers. Finally, for the industry pages, it makes sense to match their members with the people who sign up through their landing pages. Creating the ability to enable this type of matching would represent a big leap forward for Advisers Give Back.
          The cost to build this is: $20,000

       

    • Allow advisers and clients to communicate directly through a group email
      One of the most requested features by advisers and clients is the ability to email through the platform in a way that protects the identity of each party. Clients often times want to share information with advisers and similarly, advisers want to send worksheets and documents to clients.
      The cost to build this is: $75,000

   

• • • Provide pro bono advisers with personal URLs
      Advisers Give Back has heard from advisers that they’d like to have their own link which they can share in their communities and will only show their availability. This will include the onboarding questions that lead up to their personal calendar showing their pro bono availability.
      The cost to build this is: $15,000 

   

• • • Adviser appointment load balancing
      We have observed that some advisers get more appointments than other advisers, even though they are volunteering at approximately the same time. AGB would like to implement a software solution to more equitably distribute appointments to advisers volunteering on the platform by prioritizing the availability of advisers who have not had a meeting booked in the last three weeks.
      The cost to build this is: $25,000 

   

• • • Ability for advisers to link work calendars
      In addition to the availability that advisers set in their Adviser Interface, AGB wants to allow advisers to share their Outlook or Google calendar so that we can cross reference their work calendar availability to ensure they are free to take a meeting. We’ve seen a number of advisers have to cancel their appointments last-minute, which is disappointing for pro bono clients who have confirmed their appointments and are looking forward to being called. Many of these appointments that are last minute cancellations do not reschedule with a different adviser.
      The cost to build this is: $10,000 

   

• • • Allow clients to return a missed call
      Often times and adviser will call a pro bono client and they will miss their call. Currently, AGB’s calling feature is designed to ensure the privacy of both the advisers and clients, by masking their phone numbers from each other. However, this feature is uni-directional, meaning that only the adviser can make a call. In order to facilitate more successful conversations, we’d like to enable the ability for clients to call AGB’s toll-free number back and be routed to the adviser’s number, without having to share the advisers actual phone number.
      The cost to build this is: $7,500 

   

• • • Ability to connect clients to an "on call" adviser in real time
      We know that many of the pro bono clients who schedule a meeting never complete their first meeting. Their either fail to confirm or life gets in the way. They clearly want help, because they've invested at least five minutes to sign up and answer all the questions, including typing out "I will answer my adviser's phone call." We also know that 72% of advisers who sign up are willing to be on-call during their volunteering time slot if a pro bono client prefers to talk right away. Given this alignment, we should build a service that notifies all the appropriate advisers when there's a request and then facilitates a match once the first adviser responds.
      The cost to build this is: $75,000

   

• Compliance package for large firms
  As Advisers Give Back grows, we’ve encountered larger firms with compliance teams that require detailed resources illustrating how pro bono financial planning is a permissible activity. This would include pulling together existing resources and hiring a securities attorney to review and create any missing documentation.
  The cost to build this is: $15,000

Scaling internal operations

• Hiring a part-time partnerships lead
  🥇 Highest Priority 💯
  Advisers Give Back very much needs a dedicated person to work with existing and prospective partners to:
  • • • Recruit relevant organizations whose membership could benefit from pro bono financial planning and whose demographic aligns with Advisers Give Back’s mission. This work includes:
        • Presenting to organizational leadership
        • Creating and executing partnership agreements, in collaboration with Advisers Give Back’s board of directors
        • Creating promotional materials, such as landing pages, one-pagers and videos
        • Organizing presentations to organizations’ membership with support from Advisers Give Back’s advisers volunteers.
      • Expanding partnerships where there is a chapter/geographical structure (e.g. expanding from YWCA of Berkeley and Oakland to YWCA of Los Angeles)
      • Manage and support existing partnerships, through providing materials and maintaining quarterly check ins to identify new opportunities to reach their members. Currently, this role is very much needed will considerably accelerate Advisers Give Back’s growth and increase the need for more advisers to participate on the platform.
        The annual cost for this part-time role: $40,000

   

• Hiring a part-time development professional
  With the new partnerships with NAPFA, Duke University and the CTA, as well as the ongoing relationships with Dress for Success, YWCA, and KIPP schools, Advisers Give Back would be well-served by hiring a proven, part-time development professional to apply for grants and secure greater funding from foundations.
  The annual cost for this part-time role: $30,000

Support

Assistance with any of these organizational priorities will directly result in Advisers Give Back being able to better serve more people. If you'd like to discuss any of these, please see the Contact Us tab above and schedule a time to chat or reach out to:
[email protected]