Funds Give Back to Overwhelmed Americans

By Dan Sondhelm

Americans, overwhelmed by circumstances beyond their control such as hurricane Katrina and September 11th terrorist attacks, are being helped through grants provided by some of the financial firms reading this article. You can watch the video to learn more.

The Foundation for Financial Planning is supporting non-profit organizations who are using financial planners to help people in need take financial control by donating their time and outreach activities to help adult Americans in financial quandaries, as in:

• First Responders from 9/11, now dying, needing help planning for their family's life without them.


• Survivors of devastating hurricanes on the Gulf Coast – needing financial guidance to put their lives and businesses back together.


• Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the widows and widowers of Iraq and Afghanistan combatants who have left grieving families with little but government life insurance, helped by financial planners.


• Battered women fleeing from abusive spouses, intellectually incapable of managing their own affairs, being helped by financial planners.

Some other individual successes include:

• A low-income participant from a financial literacy/management course reported she was able to identify a predatory lending "flipping" scheme and avoid a possible foreclosure.


• A single mother persuaded her children to make use of the free school lunch program (which they were eligible, but preferred not to take) and gave up her own weekly "night out" in order to afford a monthly IDA deposit.


• The director of the National Financial Planning Support Center said, “Thanks to the Foundation’s support, we are able to present a series of workshops and one-on-one counseling to wounded service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and participate in the "Wounded Warrior Program".


• The Executive Director of the American Red Cross 9-11 Recovery Program said in a study of the program's effectiveness, "The fact that more than half of the clients responding said that they had sought goal-setting advice from a volunteer financial planner is a solid indicator that they had started to become actively engaged in healing, following the extreme emotional distress that they suffered".

The largest contributors include Allianz Group, Allianz Global Investors, Allianz Life Insurance of North America, Ameriprise Financial, Inc., Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., AIG Advisor Group, American Funds Distributors, Inc., AIM Investments, American Skandia Life Assurance Corporation, Franklin Templeton Investments, ING Advisors Network, Lincoln Financial Group, DWS Scudder Distributors, SEI Investments, Van Kampen Funds, Journal of Financial Planning, Pershing, Raymond James Financial Services, and T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc.

SunStar is also a corporate contributor. We are providing a probono public relations program to help the Foundation promote its mission.

If you are a journalist, contact my colleague Seuk Kim at 703-894-1058 to schedule an interview with the Foundation and any of its supporters.