Communities on the rise: Building prosperity together in Bluefield and Johnstown
To build economic prosperity in communities in economic transition with high-quality jobs, vocational training, and resources to help small businesses thrive.
Intuit Prosperity Hubs arrived in Johnstown, Pennsylvania and Bluefield, West Virginia with an ambitious goal:
To build economic prosperity in communities in economic transition with high-quality jobs, vocational training, and resources to help small businesses thrive.
Recognizing the importance of saving to change the trajectory of families’ financial futures, SaverLife partnered with Intuit to increase savings rates in these communities. During a nine-month pilot, SaverLife blended our flagship digital experience with a robust grassroots outreach campaign to build a culture of savings in Johnstown and Bluefield.
Getting to Know the Communities
To understand the communities and their core challenges to financial health, SaverLife interviewed banks and community leaders, attended local community events, and surveyed residents. SaverLife needed to address three key challenges in Bluefield and Johnstown for our digital model to work effectively:
- Challenge 1: Fewer people use online banking than our typical client populations.
- Challenge 2: Familiarity with financial technology products is lower, especially those that require linking an online bank account.
- Challenge 3: Information is disseminated in a variety of ways, including online, local media, community events, and word of mouth.
The most critical element to success is building trust. While the arrival of Intuit and the subsequent boost to the local economies created a halo effect, SaverLife recognized the need to become ubiquitous in the community to be seen as a trusted resource.
SaverLife launched efforts in the regions with three key strategies: establishing employer partners as anchor institutions, creating community savings challenges to encourage engagement and drive savings, and combining digital and grassroots outreach efforts.
Communities on the rise
With the support of Intuit, SaverLife took an innovative approach to successfully pilot a technology-based savings solution in two close-knit communities. SaverLife built a culture of savings in the Bluefield and Johnstown communities, helping more than 3,300 households begin their savings journey.
