A huge thank you to educators who have shared their excitement about our website and PD offerings to their colleagues. You have helped us expand our impact as we have added over 10,000 teachers to our platform in just the last 12 months. The largest source of new teachers: "word of mouth." This allows NGPF to spend less on marketing our services and more on serving teachers with FREE curriculum, PD and advocacy efforts. 

This jump in teachers has translated to tremendous growth with our website statistics. I thought looking at our website stats would help you gain insights as to how teachers are using NGPF. Here's what happened in October (all data from Google Analytics):

• Over 1,200 unique webpages were visited by at least 5 teachers in the last month. We tout the comprehensive nature of our content offering and it's great to see teachers dig deep into our catalog to find what they need for their students. 
  • Teachers come looking for curriculum, which is our second most visited page after our home page which is #1. Semester Course has been gaining fans and currently sits at #3.
  • Most popular units for the month: #1 Checking, #2 Careers and #3 Types of Credit.
  • Favorite NGPF Resource Type: #1 Activities, #2 Interactive Library and #3 Question of the Day
  • Favorite Blog post: NGPF PAYBACK Challenge: Over $125,000 in Cash Prizes [Get your essays in pronto; deadline is November 14th)
  • Favorite Interactive: PAYBACK

• Here are a few of the less visited pages of our website that I think your students will enjoy:
  • We know resumes and college applications list accomplishments, how about getting your students to reflect on their failings by creating a failure resume 
  • This question of the day will help your students understand the the cost of bad credit. 
  • Here's a video that will turn your stomach by highlighting the amount of food waste in our country. 
  • Playing PAYBACK with your students? Get the inside scoop on the motivation behind the game in this podcast with game designer Jenny Nicholson. 

• In terms of geographical reach…
  • We had users from all 50 states visit our website in October
  • California, New York and New Jersey were the top three states in terms of number of sessions
  • Over 2,500 different cities, towns and hamlets had at least five website sessions; biggest cities were New York, Las Vegas and Chicago. 
  • We had some international visitors too, with users from 25 different countries, including Canada, Australia, Malaysia and India

• In terms of other sites referring users to our site…
  • Our PAYBACK game (www.timeforpayback.com) was #1 for referrals by a long-shot! 
  • Users also came to us through the Jump$tart Clearinghouse (thank you Anne!), TeachFinLit.org website, Common Sense Education (which has us on their top 25 List!), the California Department of Education website, the state of Washington and Oklahoma financial education resource lists.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to serve you and your students! 

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.