Financial Coach

Why work with YWCA Seattle King Snohomish?   YWCA SKS is the region’s largest non-profit organization with a 120+ year legacy, focused on the needs of women, with programs serving 7,000 people each year. When you work with YWCA, you make a difference.   We’re women and BIPOC-led, family-centered, and supportive of employees. As a full-time YWCA employee (30+ hours), you’ll enjoy a benefits package including medical insurance, generous vacation, holiday, sick leave plans, and an outstanding retirement plan. Put your passion for racial equity and social justice to work – apply today!

What You'll Do

The Economic Resilience Initiative is a dynamic team focused on serving people who are furthest from opportunity by building financial security for women and families. The ERI offers “Hope and Power” and “Money Mechanics” classes, one-on-one financial coaching and customized training to participants, and conducts community workshops in partnership with other service providers. With a spirit of innovation and continuous learning, we strive to provide high-quality services that are culturally appropriate, relevant and valuable to the participants we serve.   The financial coach will provide individualized financial coaching and education classes for community members with the goal of improving money management skills and increasing confidence in meeting financial goals. The coach will provide one-one-one coaching services and administer an incentivized matched savings program, providing financial incentives to participants who accomplish self-identified financial goals. The coach will also connect participants to YWCA employment and economic empowerment resources and to benefits like credit counseling and free tax preparation services. Classes are interactive and customized to meet the needs of each cohort of participants. Topics include improving credit, decreasing debt, increasing savings, improving money management, and avoiding predatory financial services. Our target population varies by class, but typically includes people of color who are low-income, unemployed, and/or homeless, survivors of domestic violence, immigrants or refugees, or other adults or youth who have other barriers to financial stability.   This position requires critical thinking around how external systems impact the work that we are doing through the lens of racism and intersections with poverty. Knowing the core principals of antiracism and grounding those principles in everyday work, as well as working well in non-white environments and championing anti-racism policy, are required job skills and core values. As an equal opportunity employer, we highly encourage people of color to apply.

Expectations of your role:

• Direct Service
• Provide individual financial coaching to class participants to help participants meet self-identified financial goals such as repairing credit, paying off debt, building assets (retirement accounts, emergency funds, investment, education), and planning financial objectives for the future.
• Maintain complete and accurate client files and provide file review for other ERI staff to ensure contract compliance
• Build rapport/long term relationships grounded in community building and transformational change. Remain objective and have unconditional positive regard for participants at all times.
• Administer, track, and evaluate matched savings program tied to the accomplishment of specific financial goals and designed to increase income and wealth
• Work with a diverse population of low-income clients with barriers to employment and financial security, who have experienced lasting unemployment and who have faced systematic oppression resulting in financial distress.
• Maintain relationships with financial institutions that are helpful and empowering and that enable participants to achieve their goals.
• Provide financial education and curriculum development for YWCA participants and King County resident, including but not limited to: class preparation, speaker/partner coordination, class logistics, materials procurement, room set-up, class facilitation, program evaluation, and follow up with participants.
• Partner with other YWCA programs and other social service agencies to provide financial education customized and tailored to the needs of their participants; work with partner programs to adapt current curriculum to meet the needs of participants and to coordinate logistics of classes
• Work with ERI Team to continuously revise and improve curriculum design and delivery utilizing participants’ feedback, self-evaluation, and current best- and promising-practices in the field. Support ERI Instructors in their classes.
• Provide information, referral and advocacy for participants as needed.
• Collect and compile participant data (both quantitative and qualitative) for program assessment and evaluation purposes and provide Program Manager with participant success stories and anecdotal information to incorporate into program reports
• Enter data into various participant data tracking systems, and prepare and review reports for funders and for continuous quality improvement.
• Provide training and support to staff within the team; may provide some recruitment, coordination, supervision and support to program volunteers or interns
• Develop and maintain productive working relationships with local banking/credit union institutions, financial planners, credit counselors, and other financial professionals
• Assist with in-reach & out-reach to institutions and agencies, screening, determining eligibility, enrolling and orienting program participants
• Conduct program presentations to community-based organizations when needed
• Participate in scheduled team case consults, department meetings, grant meetings as needed
• Review credit reports and credit scores with clients
• Social Justice
• Participate in YWCA workshops, caucuses and other social justice initiatives
• Use a social justice lens to reflect on program structure, policies, goals/outcomes, participation, etc. and take action to reduce barriers for people of color and ensure equal access to our programs and equal success for all participants
• Support a team environment with a spirit of continuous learning and a lens of social justice and racial equity in our work; apply critical analysis of race relations to examine how privilege and oppression affect our participants, how systemic racism and oppressions affect our work, how our own agency and program may participate in such systems and perpetuate inequity, and how we can work to dismantle these systems and decrease race-based disparities and increase racial equity in the community
• Implement all work by incorporating the YWCA’s Social Justice Initiative by understanding how racism, sexism, classism and other oppressions intersect and are embedded in all institutions and systems. Recognize that solving racism is the root of how we understand and heal from these oppressions
• Demonstrate ability to interact with people of different cultures
• Continue search for understanding of racial, gender and class equity
• Work alongside intern and volunteers, where applicable. Understand where internalized oppressions (superiority and inferiority) play a role in intern/volunteer and client interaction and know ways to address these oppressions from a solutions-based perspective

Must have's to be successful:

• BA degree in related field and 1 year of professional experience OR 3 year’s professional experience.  Any combination of education and experience will be considered.
• Bilingual in Spanish (preferred)
• Experience providing financial education is highly desirable; although comparable experience in public speaking or group facilitation will also be considered.
• Trained in the coaching methodology or willing to be trained upon employment
• Sensitivity to the needs of YWCA clients, who are homeless, low income, limited English speaking or impacted by domestic violence, substance abuse or other barriers to employment, and experience with individuals and families facing these issues.
• Excellent organizational and record keeping skills
• Demonstrated ability to work independently and function as a part of the larger team
• Commitment to social justice and the mission and vision of the YWCA
• Demonstrated understanding of the intersection of racism and poverty
• Proficient in Windows, Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook
• Successful candidate must be able to travel independently to multiple worksites
• Must have the ability to work flexible hours; may include both daytime and evening hours
• Core competencies include: Adaptability/Flexibility, Collaboration/Partnership and Relationship Building, Communication, Continuous Learning, Decision Making/Problem Solving, Discernment/Judgment, Fostering Diversity, Initiative, Innovation, Planning/Organizing, Reliability, and Social Justice Advocacy

Hours, Rate, and Benefits

• Hourly Rate: $25.00
• Hours: 20 hours per week

Physical Requirements

• Continuously exchanges information through listening and talking with clients, agency staff, employers, representatives of community organizations and other individuals in the community
• Frequently stands, walks, carries laptop and paperwork to perform duties in the office and in traveling to off-site meetings
• Frequently reaches and grasps in using telephones, computers, printer and other office equipment and supplies
• Frequently lifts and carries up to 5 lbs. of paperwork, files and training materials, occasionally up to 40 lbs.
• Frequently to occasionally performs close work while updating files, reading program information and using computers
• Occasionally kneels, bends, pushes and pulls in obtaining files in drawers