For the executive who owns a board-approved financial wellness outcome and now has to measure it: how to measure member financial health in a way that stands up to scrutiny, and how to show what your programs changed.
A measure it can trust, a baseline taken before the work started, and a result that compares the people your programs reached with similar people they didn't reach. Session counts and satisfaction scores show that a program ran. They don't show that anyone's financial health changed.
Not as proof. The whole membership moves for reasons that have nothing to do with your programs: the economy, interest rates, who joined and who left. To show what a program changed, measure the same people before and after, and compare them with a look-alike group that didn't take part. That supports a claim of association, not cause. See how to prove a financial wellness program works.
Usually not. The Financial Health Network's FinHealth Score® is validated and benchmarked nationally, so you don't have to defend a method your team invented. If you've already sketched a score, map its parts to the FinHealth Score pillars and keep anything specific to your members as extra questions. See build or buy.
Pick one group you can measure consistently and act on, take a baseline before anything changes, and set the date for the re-measure. Several credit unions have started with employees, where participation is easier to get, then extended the same measure to members. Whichever group goes first, use the same questions and scoring you plan to use for everyone else.
After the first re-measure of the same people. The baseline alone gives you a starting picture and a benchmark comparison. Change, and what your programs had to do with it, needs a second reading taken the same way.
Working out how to measure financial health for your board? Book a call with Andy.