Strategic Partners
Give credit to your community.
Working Credit partners with institutions of higher learning, municipal governments, and nonprofit service providers. Here’s how we can partner with you to add credit building to your existing initiatives and programs.
How credit building can help.
While the organizations we work with may have different goals, we’re here to help them offer credit building and lasting financial tools to their communities. Whether it’s for small business owners, college students seeking debt forgiveness, or young adults in transitional job programs, we’ve been able to provide credit building services that lift up communities and open the door to wealth-building opportunities, secure housing, better jobs, and more.
Giving small business owners of color a helping hand.
Through the Chicago-Area Businesses of Color Partnership Fund, we’ve worked with more than 80 small business owners to help them grow their businesses and succeed. We partner with them to build strong credit scores, which in turn allows them to qualify for small business loans, or separate their personal finances from their businesses.
Opening doors for students.
Working Credit partnered with City Colleges of Chicago’s (CCC) Fresh Start program, a debt forgiveness program for more than 20,000 students. Working Credit is helping Fresh Start students make lasting financial changes while earning their degrees. Students who enroll in Fresh Start learn the ins and outs of the credit scoring system, and then meet one-on-one with a credit building counselor to create a Credit Action Plan.
Helping young adults become credit worthy.
Working Credit’s partnership with the City of Boston’s Office of Financial Empowerment brought credit building services to young working adults, many participating in transitional job programs. A Northeastern University study documented significant success, comparing people who got the service (treatment group) to people who didn’t (control group). From the 2019 final report:
- Within the first six months of the program, the share of individuals in the treatment group with no credit score had fallen by 11% points compared to a decline of only 4% points for the control group.
- By the end of the 18‐month observation window, the average credit score among individuals with a credit file prior to the start of the program was 26% points higher for the treatment group relative to the control group, raising the likelihood of achieving a “good” credit rating by 8% points.
- By the end of the program, individuals in the treatment group had interest rates on car loans that were 3.5% points less than those in the control group.
Some of our strategic partners.
