National Financial Educators Council

What the NFEC's online personal finance program is

The National Financial Educators Council (NFEC) is a financial education organization in Frisco, Texas, that trains and certifies financial educators and supplies the programs they teach. Its online personal finance program runs on eVolve, the NFEC's own eLearning platform, and is sold to the organizations and educators that run financial literacy programs. They buy student licenses and put their participants through the course, with the NFEC providing the content, the platform and, as optional extras, a facilitator dashboard and custom branding.

The program page opens with a pointed claim: most online personal finance programs on the market "are just videos and articles put on a website", and "they are not eLearning." eVolve is the NFEC's answer to that. The page describes lessons that are "interactive, practical, and fun, yet also meet core educational standards", and lists the formats organizations have run with it: workshops of various lengths, after-school programs, weekend seminars, camps, in-class training, lunch-and-learns, for-credit college classes and year-long courses.

What learners work through

The course is aimed at high school and college students and adults. The program page says it covers 10 core personal finance topics, includes activities at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels, and offers up to 120 hours of training if every activity is completed. Lessons blend videos, reading, activities and testing, with self-assessments to guide each participant.

The centerpiece is the Financial Life Guide, a project-based activity that moves participants from budgeting to retirement planning, investment strategy, becoming a homeowner, credit reporting, major purchases, a debt payoff plan, education choices and lifestyle goals, ending in a complete lifetime financial plan. The program page says participants come away with a personalized financial plan they can refer back to throughout their lives, and that the activities have them take real steps such as creating a budget and checking their credit.

The teaching approach is spelled out in some detail. eVolve is described as grounded in constructivism and learner-centered, using scaffolding, simulation, project-based learning, micro-elearning, scenario-based learning and case studies. The NFEC says it built its learner standards with Dr. Heidi Jacob's Curriculum 21 consultants, around backwards planning, active learning, audience adaptation and attention to the emotional side of money. Integrated testing is meant to measure changes in participants' financial capabilities and long-term behavior. On accessibility, the page says eVolve is designed around the W3C accessibility standards it names as "CAG 2.0".

Every participant who enrolls receives a lifetime license to their personal online learning center, with their own login.

Pacing and delivery

Facilitators get a good deal of control over how the course runs. Pacing can be time-released on a chosen schedule, progression-based so each lesson opens when the previous one is finished, or adaptive, sending a student back to review modules when they hit a roadblock. Delivery can be self-study, in-person, or flipped and blended, mixing live classes or workshops with the online lessons.

The package goes beyond the online lessons. The program page lists live presentation resources for blended or flipped classrooms, pre-education and marketing material to reach participants before training starts, and ongoing education through mobile, online and social media resources.

The LMS Central Dashboard

The Learning Management System, called the Central Dashboard, is an optional add-on at $495 a year, and the page makes clear it is needed to see any data from the participants an organization enrolls. It gives the facilitator real-time reports on activity completion, time spent on lessons, test and quiz results and defined milestones, with downloads to Excel spreadsheets. Users can be added one at a time or by CSV bulk import, with enrollment invitations and registration codes sent by email. Testing is graded automatically with real-time results, and filters segment users by course progress and performance.

For organizations running several classes or client groups, instructors can be assigned to groups and see only those groups' data, which the page suggests for keeping classrooms separate or giving a client's managers their own reports. Facilitators can give feedback, reset passwords and manually adjust a user's progress. An optional Tin Can API records learning activity across systems in a consistent format.

Pricing

Unlike many education vendors, the NFEC publishes its prices. Student licenses come in packages, and the page notes more can be added later:

• 20 licenses at $9.95 each, $199
• 50 licenses at $9.95 each, $497
• 100 licenses at $7.95 each, $795
• 250 licenses at $6.95 each, $1,737
• 500 licenses at $5.95 each, $2,975

Every participant who enrolls counts toward one license, and the page lists the ability to resell student licenses and build extension products among the license features. On top of the licenses sit the optional pieces. The LMS adds $495 a year; the package summary for 20 licenses with the LMS shows $694, then $495 annually from year 2.

Branding has its own tiers. NFEC Branded costs nothing extra. Basic Branding, at $1,995, puts the organization's logo on every page, adds a custom domain or subdomain and custom login and registration portals, and removes the NFEC logo. Private Labeled, at $3,995, adds the organization's color palette, removes all NFEC branding and mention, and makes single sign-on integration available. Advanced Co-branding is $25,000 with a $4,995 annual renewal, includes single sign-on, custom video intros and custom CSS, and requires NFEC approval. For custom branding of the student guide and PowerPoint, the page says custom branding orders are not eligible for any refund, since a designer modifies the materials, and an annual investment of $695 keeps the branded resources available.

A program resources package covering program design, user experience, measurement and reporting tools, and business, marketing and funding resources adds $495 in the first year and costs $197 a year after that to maintain access.

The organization behind it

The NFEC describes itself as an IACET Accredited Provider that offers CEUs for its learning events, and as a Certified B Corporation. It says it is "100% independent", with "no national sponsors, no financial products, and no government affiliations". Separately from eVolve, it runs the Certified Financial Education Instructor (CFEI) course, which the home page says has over 5,000 graduates who have reached more than 1.4 million people in over 71 countries. The online program page adds that the NFEC has supported the development of thousands of programs over the last decade.

Who it suits

eVolve fits an organization that wants to run a structured personal finance course for a group, in the formats the NFEC names, from after-school programs and workshops to for-credit college classes, and wants published per-license prices rather than a sales quote. The Financial Life Guide gives participants something concrete to leave with, and the pacing and blended options let a facilitator fit the course into anything from a lunch-and-learn to a year-long class.

Two cautions. The smallest package is 20 licenses, so this is not a course an individual buys for themselves. And participant data is only visible through the paid LMS, so any program that needs to report outcomes should budget for the $495 a year from the start.