Bilingual/bicultural Financial Coach, Financial Opportunity Center at NeighborWorks Umpqua

Bilingual/bicultural Financial Coach, Financial Opportunity Center

Financial Opportunity Centers (FOC) help low to moderate income families boost earnings, reduce expenses, and make appropriate financial decisions that lead to asset building through an integrated service model approach.  The centers provide individuals and families with services across three critical and interconnected areas: employment services, financial coaching and access to income supports.

Position Summary

The Bilingual/bicultural financial coach provides direct services too low to moderate-income individuals who are enrolled as Financial Opportunity Center participants.  Financial counseling and coaching involve an ability to engage and motivate clients, a strong understanding of personal finances, and the ability to teach that knowledge to others.  The financial coach is responsible for assisting clients in developing plans of action that are intended to help the client reach their goals and achieve financial stability.  The financial coach is expected to focus services in a one on one counseling format.  However, the coach might also conduct classes and workshops on topics such as budgeting, credit building, and banking products.

The Bilingual/bicultural financial coach will work with the employment counselors and income supports counselor to ensure that the client is getting assistance across these three major service areas.  The financial coach reports directly to the FOC Program Manager

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

The essential functions include, but are not limited to the following:

        Provide one on one financial coaching

• Teach clients about the value of their services and engage the client in a long-term relationship
• Assist clients in resolving current financial situations, while providing a wide lens on their financial health to shift the approach to proactive financial management
• Work with clients to complete a very detailed financial assessment
  • • Work with the client to document a budget and provide strategies for budget improvements
    • Access the clients credit report/score and provide strategies for credit building
    • Document the client’s balance sheet and provide strategies for increasing net worth
• Develop plans of action and provide tools, resources, and accountability to the client to help them meet their goals
• Understand other services offered by the organization, such as employment services and income supports counseling, and connect the clients to these other services

Outcome tracking—track the stories and successes of program participants

• Use Efforts to Outcome (ETO), a client management system, to document and reflect the outcome of their clients accurately and in a timely manner
• Completing Combined Financial Assessment (CFA) for financial counseling clients
• Working with the entire FOC team to ensure that any changes to the client’s CFA (new job, new benefit, change in credit score) is properly documented

The financial coach may conduct workshops as a means of outreach and education

• The classes may be part of a larger job readiness class offered by the FOC, or may be occasional workshops to the public
• Develop workshop materials or tailor existing materials to meet the needs of the community
• Workshop topics should be relevant to the community, and may include topics such as: budgeting, savings, banking products, credit building, identity theft, and more.

      Develop relationships with local financial institutions and community organizations

• Work with mainstream financial institutions to understand the needs of the community so they can provide products and services that fit
• Create a network of referral organizations to help you assist the client meet his goals (e.g. local housing counseling agency, legal aid, etc.)
• Bilingual / Bicultural
  • Bilingual/bicultural in English and Spanish
  • Excellent verbal and written communications skills required in both English and Spanish
  • Direct outreach to the LatinX population in Jackson and Josephine county and support NWU service area.
  • Adapt services for use in Spanish language and culture.

Minimum Qualifications (Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities)

Qualifications for the financial coach position include, but are not limited to:

Specific requirements include:

• A strong understanding of personal finances, particularly in the areas of budgeting, asset building, and credit building
• Strong communication skills, both written and oral 
• Previous work experience with the FOC’s target population, and/or the ability to provide financial counseling/coaching services in a culturally sensitive manner.   A good financial coach is able to relate well to team members and clients
• Proficient in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
• Internet and Resource Savvy

Preferred Qualifications:

• A bachelor’s degree from a four year accredited institution
• Previous work experience in the financial sector (banking, lending, insurance, investments)

Physical Demands and Work Environment

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the functions. While performing the duties of this position, the employee is regularly required to talk or hear. The employee frequently is required to use hands or finger, handle, or feel objects, tools or controls. The employee is occasionally required to stand; walk; sit; reach with hands and arms; climb or balance, and stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl. The employee must regularly lift and/or move up to 15 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this position include those required for reading, writing, and typing. This position will be working primarily indoors and some of the time in an outdoor environment for events or clean up. From this movement, the employee will encounter varying temperatures. The noise level is low in the office environment.

Note

This job description in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to be performed by the employee(s) incumbent in this position. Employees will be required to follow any other job-related instructions and to perform any other job-related duties requested by any person authorized to give instructions or assignments. All duties and responsibilities are essential functions and requirements and are subject to possible modification to reasonably accommodate individuals with disabilities. To perform this job successfully, the incumbents will possess the skills, aptitudes, and abilities to perform each duty proficiently. Some requirements may exclude individuals who pose a direct threat or significant risk to the health or safety of themselves or others. The requirements listed in this document are the minimum levels of knowledge, skills, or abilities. This document does not create an employment contract, implied or otherwise, other than an “at will†relationship.

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