Becoming A Partner

Partnership Opportunities with Innovative Changes:

Refer clients to Innovative Changes for Loans that can help them to:

• Avert financial emergencies, such as a utility shutoff or eviction;

• Achieve household stability by paying a rental deposit or making car repairs;

• Pay down other high-cost debt like outstanding payday loans or accounts in collections;

• Increase asset building and banking opportunities by building credit

Offer ICS’ four-part Financial Education Curriculum: “Financial Household Stability” (Click HERE to learn more about our classes) to your clients:

• Contract ICS to provide the entire series or individual workshops to your clients OR

• Contract ICS to provide your staff with a Training of the Trainers workshop and purchase our curriculum to teach the curriculum in house.

Partner Expectations

We ask any group that may be interested in referring to our programs sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and assign one point person to coordinate referral partner orientations for anyone within the organization who may be referring clients to Innovative Changes.

This orientation usually takes about 45 minutes to an hour and is offered by Innovative Changes  in person or by webinar.  We hold orientations by webinar on a quarterly basis. Please contact talia@innovativechanges.org if you would like to sign up for an orientation. If your organization has a large number of staff who are interested in referring to Innovative Changes, we can provide an orientation specific to your organization in person.

Partner responsibilities are outlined in the MOU and focus on making sure anyone who refers from the organization for loans participates in our orientation and is doing so because:

• They think our services will help and not just because it may be expeditious to send the person our way if resources are scarce;

• They think the person being referred is likely (we never ask partners to promise but we do ask them to use some judgment in who they refer) to repay the loan; and

• If for some reason the person stops responding to us, the partner is committed to helping facilitate re-contact (we ask that all referrals come with a signed release by the client allowing us to talk to the partner about his/her situation).

We encourage partners not to refer people whom they think will not be successful loan clients. We don’t have a cut off policy at this stage but the might soon if their losses grow.

When you refer a client for a loan, you are serving as a character reference for that person. If you don’t know the person well enough to make an assessment about their ability to repay the loan, it is better not to make the referral. When any of your referrals fail to repay the loan, we will contact you and ask you to follow up with the person you referred.

Things to look for when assessing candidates for loans:

• Do they meet they meet our basic criteria?
• Have they followed through on past tasks and appointments with you at least 75% of the time?
• Do they return phone calls promptly?
• Are they realistic and honest about their financial situation? For example:

-If their expenses consistently exceeds their income, a loan will not likely help them out of their situation.

- If their rent and utilities take up more that 60% of their income, they are probably not a good candidate.

• Are they using credit for non-essential expenses?
• Are they open to learning/coaching around how to improve their financial situation?
• If the loan amount they qualify won’t cover their entire shortfall, do they have a plan to come up with the difference?
• Can they identify how they plan to pay the loan back, and what changes they need to make in order to avoid the situation that necessitated a loan from happening again?