Scaling financial capability and success, one youth at a time.
For MyPath
MyPath
Sectors Served
Financial Literacy, Youth
Challenge
MyPath Money builds saving muscles, converting non-savers into savers. With two-thirds of youth participants reporting they don’t save at the start of the program, a remarkable 80% are saving after the program. With such great success, the team at MyPath came up against a new challenge: Taking an established program that works at one location and successfully scaling it across the nation.
Solution
CauseLabs and MyPath came together to create a strategy to take what was a high-touch program that involved a lot of paperwork being shuffled across many desks, into a digitally-savvy operation with dramatically increased efficiency for all staff and participants. With the strategy in place, CauseLabs then designed and built a new digital program management platform along with a reimagined and more engaging web app for youth participants. In less than one year, MyPath scaled from 2 cities in close proximity to their office to 12 cities across the nation.
What We Did
Growth Strategy
Responsive Web Design
API Development
Software Design
Software Development
Data Architecture
Results
Over the course of just a few months, CauseLabs designed, built, and launched a digital platform that allowed MyPath to more efficiently administer their program, as well as a redesigned mobile web-app for their youth participants. As part of this pilot launch, CauseLabs equipped MyPath with ability to gain great insights into the effectiveness of their new platform. Throughout the summer 2016 pilot, MyPath and CauseLabs collected and analyzed data from the platform and youth savings app. Together we are now using that data, along with user feedback, to better inform the next set of enhancements to pursue.
Smart program, great data.
The MyPath platform is helping scale the program nationally by providing digital tools that allow MyPath staff members to more easily administer the program. One of those tools is a digital training program for managers and coordinators who implement the program with youth participants, who are taking part in workforce development programs.
Program coordinators at any site can set up youth cohorts, choose start dates, invite youth to the platform and set up direct deposits to youth savings accounts. This new process replaced the old paper based system taking the burden off of MyPath staff and spreading it across many users throughout the system.
A new reporting tool allows staff at all levels to see in real-time how the program at large, or individual sites are performing so that the right people can step in and help ensure that all youth are able to achieve success, learning the key curriculum points that will allow them to be more successful financial stewards both now and in the years to come.
MyPath Money (Youth App)
The new MyPath Money youth savings app helps youth set a savings goal, track their expenses, create a budget, and pinpoint expenses that they can cut back on in order to help meet their savings goals.
CauseLabs took an existing desktop web app built circa 2010, and redesigned it as a mobile-first web app that used a more modern design language that would be more appealing and accessible to the youth that MyPath serves. We rewrote the web-app completely using modern code frameworks, allowing for more scalable modifications and new feature sets.
After analysis of data gathered during the pilot phase, for example, we were able to easily pull out a trend from the data that shows amazing participation at the outset of the program but with participation decreasing as the youth complete each module. Solving this challenge will be the next effort in our build/measure/learn rhythm. With
