$1 Million+ Financial Literacy Funding From Lincoln Financial Powers Innovative Financial Education

Lincoln Financial announced this week over $1 million in funding to support financial literacy, education and related programs focused on empowering individuals to make better informed financial, occupational and related decisions that impact them and their families.   The grants are part of Lincoln Financial Foundation’s focus on the funding of agencies already providing important programs and services aimed at improving education, human services and worforce development.

This latest round of funding from Lincoln Financial was concentrated in North Carolina.  In the last seven years, the company’s Foundation has provided more than $13 million in funding to non-profit organizations in Greensboro, including nearly $2 million in the last year.  The Foundation’s affiliate, Lincoln Financial Group, which boasts approximately $197 billion in assets under management, has set aside nearly $10 million for philanthropic and charitable causes in the communities in which the company’s employees work.

One interesting aspect of the Lincoln Financial funding is the range of organizations that were selected to receive financial support.  One example is the Family Service of the Piedmont for Consumer Credit Counseling and Foreclosure Prevention Services, which will benefit from Lincoln’s $25,000 to offer families critical resources and tools that will empower them to make better financial decisions, while helping to reduce the likelihood that they will lose their homes to foreclosure.  Another $25,000 was earmarked to the North Carolina Back to Work program of the Guilford Technical Community College Foundation, which will include a financial education program and training for displaced workers.

Lincoln Financial’s funding of financial education initiatives represents just the last of many similar efforts by financial institutions, as well as other major corporations in other industries as well.  This movement towards greater support of financial literacy among corporate foundations comes on the heels of efforts at all levels of government, both in the United States and abroad, to provide better information, training and resources to individuals and families so that they are best positioned to effectively manage their financial affairs.  As more companies dedicate financial and other resources to financial education programs and services, financial literacy enthusiasts contend that this will continue to drive the growth and impact of the financial education community in the years to come.