“The kids all saw on the fridge how much we were
saving each month, slowly but surely getting there. If one of them would
start asking for toys or something, the others would start yelling, ‘No,
we’re saving for a house.’ It was nice to seem them all excited and working
toward the same dream.”
Amy Robinson, saved $4000
toward first-time home.
Overview
As an early stage nonprofit organization, Compass
takes seriously the importance of developing a rigorous evaluation strategy.
Compass benchmarks data from national studies that document the economic,
human capital, and psychological impact of asset accumulation on low-income
individuals and families. Our model software program enables us to track
quantitative outcome measures, such as total participant savings, investments
by asset category, reduced public housing expenditures, and average changes
in credit score, debt burden, and income. In addition, pre- and post-program
surveys enable us to evaluate and describe what some researchers describe
as the “wealth effect”: key changes in financial knowledge, behavior,
and confidence that arise when a family begins to build assets.
