Cooperative Ties

FoolProof: Tough Consumer Messages for
Young People and Adults

By Rick Stanton, VP Business Development, WesCorp

What do the 28 news outlets listed below have in common? All of these organizations, and more, have recognized the need for more education and consumer advocacy in the area of financial literacy. All have also recognized that there is a company that has been around for five years now that delivers solutions to meet this need.

Welcome to FoolProof, a true consumer advocacy initiative!
As part of the greater cooperative movement credit unions have a higher calling and responsibility to their member-owners. The fifth and seventh principles for cooperatives call out: “Education, Training and Information” and “Concern for Community.” It is not enough to provide service that stands above the competition. We still fall short if our only goal is to provide rates and yields that beat the banks. To truly stand above we must continue to dedicate ourselves to all of the higher principles upon which our movement was founded.

FoolProof is totally dedicated to these two fundamental principles with a goal of using consumer advocacy as a base for educating credit unions’ members and increasing financial literacy. This focus offers a path to long-term sustainability of our movement through honesty and truth, and opens doors to the youth market and SEG opportunities.

The FoolProof Initiative provides consumers tough, unique, interactive financial literacy and consumer information programs.

The power of those programs comes from the independent nature of FoolProof itself: Foolproof is composed of consumer advocates. Their job is to provide straightforward, no-nonsense information.

FoolProof is the only consumer advocacy program for credit unions that is endorsed by both the Consumer Federation of America and the National Association of Consumer Advocates.

FoolProof's relationship with credit unions
FoolProof provides its programs for free to all consumers, credit union members or not, through credit union websites. They believe good credit unions offer consumers a unique and ethical banking environment.

Credit unions provide FoolProof an outlet for programs. They do not contribute to or influence FoolProof's messages.

FoolProof tells potential sponsoring credit unions that FoolProof's job isn't to push product or service. The job is to advocate for credit union members. FoolProof does not write stories or change stories to "fit" any particular credit union need or objective.

At times, FoolProof advocacy means FoolProof takes stances against the practices of virtually all financial institutions (including credit unions). Take BMA, for instance. FoolProof strongly opposes Binding Mandatory Arbitration (BMA) clauses. Virtually all banks and some credit unions (those that have sold their credit card portfolios to banks) have these clauses in their credit cards. Or credit cards: FoolProof teaches young people to never finance with a credit card, and to resist credit card advertisements, which encourage impulse buying.

FoolProof: Tough consumer messages for young people and adults
Using credit unions as the web hosts, FoolProof currently offers consumers five separate financial literacy and consumer education programs.

Free to all end users
The programs are available to all consumers, whether they are credit union members or not.

Web-driven, interactive
FoolProof uses highly interactive online "modules" and dynamic websites to reach consumers.

Separate consumer programs for all your constituencies
FoolProof’s modules are designed for use by high schools and community groups, parents, college-age students, young adults and adults.

Separate credit union programs depending on the size of your credit union
FoolProof provides its programs for free to virtually all credit unions with under $10 million in assets. Its ‘standard’ program is affordable by any credit union, and its “highly custom” program allows big credit unions to totally customize their FoolProof programs.

In the beginning…
FoolProof’s straightforward, hard and honest approach is the vision of two individuals brought together by chance; Will deHoo and Remar Sutton.

Will deHoo—known as “Will from Holland” by students—developed the idea of using highly interactive modules to teach young people financial literacy. Will has been working with FoolProof for over four years and has done the key design on all modules. He also works in other consumer areas, and has developed and managed several consumer education projects. A key project under Will’s supervision was the development of the StopBMA coalition (www.stopbma.com). As supervisor of the StopBMA coalition, Will worked directly with Peter Jennings. Mr. Jennings produced his final ABC news series on this project.

Remar Sutton is a former columnist for The Washington Post, an author, and a nationally-known consumer advocate. Dateline NBC, Twenty-Twenty, Sixty Minutes, Ted Koppel’s Nightline, CNN, ABC Primetime, Good Morning America, TODAY, CBS Morning News, Newsweek, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, PBS television’s News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and PEOPLE magazine have all used Sutton as either a consultant, on-air authority, author, or subject. Sutton’s columns in Credit Union Magazine ran monthly for over 10 years. He was a columnist for The Washington Post for 13 years.

Will and Remar happened to meet while Will was working on an internship in the British Virgin Islands. Remar engaged Will to develop a website, the two shared thoughts and visions and the rest is history playing out.

The three organizations behind FoolProof
FoolProof is owned by FoolProof Financial Education Systems, Inc.

The not-for-profit Education Credit Union Council & Credit Union Strategic Partners have partnered with FoolProof to offer FoolProof to credit unions and other not-for-profit educational institutions.

FoolProof Financial Education Systems, Inc. is responsible for all editorial content in the FoolProof program.

Judge FoolProof by their messages and their partners:

“The FoolProof Initiative is funded by the participation of credit unions. Our partners include individual credit unions, the not-for-profit Council for Credit Union Education, Inc., and Credit Union Strategic Partners. We believe good credit unions operate uniquely in the consumer environment. Their approach is normally more consumer-oriented rather than sales oriented, and we are proud of our credit union relationships. But FoolProof’s consumer messages are developed solely by FoolProof. We are consumer advocates, not marketers. At times, we say things even credit unions don’t like.”

Does the FoolProof message strike a chord with you? Interested in finding out more about this organization and their mission? Check out their websites to see sample videos and more information:

http://www.foolproofnational.com shows you their “standard” program.
http://www.foolproofcustom.com shows you their ‘highly custom” program.

Or give Will deHoo, CEO, a call and see how the FoolProof vision and the credit union vision match up.

Email: will@foolproofhq.com
Phone: (202) 360-4512