First Nations Foundation

The Challenge

With all strategic pivots and business repositioning there are strengths and challenges. Our journey had a few:

Strengths

Based on 10 years of feedback on our successful in-person Indigenous financial literacy training program, combined with research telling us we needed to lift the scale of our work to reach many more First Nations people if we were going to move our communities from a perennial bottom rung of national financial literacy knowledge, we resolved to pivot to edutech, knowing most of our people have digital devices nationally.

We had a ten-year validated training program with stunning impact 90% of participants having more confidence in managing money, 83% feeling better at managing money, and 70% being more confident about their financial future, confirming research that Indigenous-led products work.

We also had the magnitude, reach and resources of the largest sector in Australia: financial services. Our foundation has been the charity alliance partner for this industry for 6 years so we had positive relationships on our side that we could leverage for scale. We also had government and employers across numerous industries as committed stakeholders. We needed to make this product work for all these stakeholders as well as our Indigenous learners.

We also had sobering research we released in 2019 showing Indigenous people face a financial emergency, all driven by low financial literacy:

• 1 in 2 Indigenous people in severe financial stress
• 9 in 10 lacking any financial security
• 52% of Indigenous people with no savings
• 75% of Indigenous people struggle to access financial services, 25% take up fringe credit, and 38% have no insurance.

“This cannot be transcended without financial literacy, and we are enlisting the help of government and industry to help reach and build a financially-savvy Indigenous population.” First Nations Foundation CEO, Amanda Young, said.

Weaknesses

As a small non-profit, we had to raise the funds for product development and surmount quite a few learning challenges:

• No experience in online delivery and learning management systems
• No experience in adapting successful face to face learning
• Aligning the product and data collection to our Impact Measurement Framework to measure change and continuously improve
• Reducing cost while reaching a greater number of learners
• Appealing to diverse sponsors we would be shifting the cost of delivery to.

The Solution

First Nations Foundation undertook a procurement process with expert advice and selected as our technology partner the education technology leader, Androgogic.

Androgogic was able to cater for all our requirements using Totara Learn and off-the-shelf plugins including their Totara Plus plugin suite. They collaborated with us to adapt our unique business model to a seamless, elegant and positive experience for each type of user. We are able to direct all potential sponsors, employers, organisations and learners to the one website. Each group has a simple and easy to follow pathway to use the site to meet their objectives.

Sponsors are able to register, use their own custom dashboard, choose a sponsorship package, link the package to an employer or organisation and track the progress and success of anonymised learners. Sponsors are logged into a learning management system and its features and functions have a familiar experience such as using a catalogue, a shopping cart and a payment system.

Similarly, employers and organisations are able to register, use their own custom dashboard, assign registration keys and send them to learners via templated emails, post, SMS or telephone. Employers receive automated reports and notifications to track and support the progress of their learners.

Learners are able to sign-up with their registration key and are immediately immersed in the learning program. On successful completion of the core program learners are guided to elective modules. There are currently six electives, and more are planned.