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EARN Receives Funding from Silicon Valley Community Foundation

EARN is currently the only non-profit in the U.S. that employs a full-time financial coach directly serving clients, while also training the staff of other non-profits in financial coaching. In 2007, EARN developed a groundbreaking program using financial coaching to focus exclusively on helping low-wage clients improve financial behaviors over time. In March of this year, EARN issued a white paper entitled "Advancing Financial Coaching for Low-Income Populations: Midstream Lessons from EARN," which offers best practices and explores how financial coaching is anchored in behavioral change rather than a simple transfer of information about finances.

"We are very grateful for Silicon Valley Community Foundation's support, which will allow us to continue our important financial coaching work among low-income Californians," said EARN President and CEO Ben Mangan. "As the nation's economic troubles continue unabated, financial coaching has emerged as a tool that holds tremendous promise to help create prosperity for all hard-working Americans."

"EARN's financial coaching model is one-of-a-kind due to the attention placed on research and evaluation to inform program design," said SVCF Program Officer Pat Krackov. "EARN also gets high marks for its high-quality, comprehensive financial coaching curriculum and first-rate 'train the trainer' staff. We believe EARN's model has great potential to help low-income residents of Silicon Valley transform their financial lives because of its client-directed approach and emphasis on behavior change. We are very pleased to support its good work."

This generous grant from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation follows closely upon EARN's announcement earlier this month of $500,000 in funding from the Ford Foundation. The Ford Foundation grant furthers EARN's constituency-building work to create a long-term asset-building policy agenda in California.

About Silicon Valley Community Foundation

Silicon Valley Community Foundation is a catalyst and leader for innovative solutions to our region's most challenging problems. Serving all of San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, the community foundation has $1.7 billion in assets under management and 1,500 philanthropic funds. The community foundation provides grants through donor advised and corporate funds in addition to its own endowment funds. The community foundation serves as a regional center for philanthropy, providing donors simple and effective ways to give locally and around the world. Find out more at www.siliconvalleycf.org.

About EARN

EARN is an award-winning California-based nonprofit that gives low-income workers the power to create economic prosperity for their families for generations to come. Since 2001, EARN has helped tens of thousands of low-wage families through innovative financial products including matched savings accounts, checking accounts for the unbanked, micro-loans, and money management coaching. EARN's powerful combination of lasting assets and financial know-how enables families to build wealth and achieve life-changing goals such as saving for college, purchasing first homes, or starting small businesses. Through its policy and research arm, EARN evaluates its impact and reports on new data regularly, sharing lessons learned and best practices in order to transform the financial services landscape and to champion effective public policies. EARN's ultimate vision is that millions of well-informed, low-income American families will achieve financial success through proven strategies, fair public policy, and their own hard work. Visit www.earn.org or follow us at http://twitter.com/EarnOrg and http://facebook.com/EarnOrg.

EARN
Amanda Byrd, 415-240-4477/714-599-2739
amanda@earn.org
or
Andrew Conn, 646-805-2023/347-835-1912
aconn@rlmnet.com