Ladies of Nerd Wallet making waves in S.F.
The Ladies of Nerd Wallet announced their arrival as a Tenderloin volunteer force by standing poolside at the Phoenix Hotel on Oct. 8. One by one they teetered and fell into the water like a row of synchronized swimmers, each in a black dress and green-flowered swim cap.
By the time they had bobbed to the surface, neighborhood afterschool programs were $13,000 richer — and that was just the start. Unlike the other tossees in the annual TNDC (Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation) Celebrity Pool Toss, the Ladies of Nerd Wallet plan to follow their dunking with a heavy company commitment to a tutoring program run by the development corporation.
Nerd Wallet is a company that helps consumers avoid the traps and pitfalls of debt, fees and come-ons, lessons they will be passing along to 250 kids in the Tenderloin After-School Program. Five Nerd Wallet tutors have each committed to two hours a week for six months in the pilot for a program that is expected to be ongoing and expanded among the staff of 110 at Nerd Wallet.
The company motto is, “We do the homework for you,” but they won’t do the homework for the kids in the after-school program.
“They really want people who are nerdy like us because they need help with science and math,” says Danielle Lichliter, whose business card reads “Nerd Scholar” to indicate she is on the team that helps college students navigate financial aid. Nerd Scholars have done community work before, bringing in low-income high school students from around the Bay Area for one-day workshops on managing college budgets.
But this is the first time Nerd Scholars will also go into the community where the kids are, and to do so, they had to get tuberculosis shots and have their fingerprints taken.
The five tutors in the pilot program are not among the women who went into the water. The eight tossees are all top management and have led the way with their willingness to endure humility in the water.
“To raise money for an afterschool program aligns really well with what we’re trying to do here on financial literacy and education fronts,” says Shiyan Koh, vice president of financial management at Nerd Wallet. “We’re all about helping consumers make better financial decisions.”
The dramatic premise of the pool toss is that bidders drink cocktails under tiki lights and up the ante until the minimum is reached to see a person of prominence go into the water in a sophisticated version of the dunk tank.
In actuality, it is the tosseeelect’s duty to raise the money before the event. Most companies get their top executive to go in, but Nerd Wallet is all about careful financial planning. Its people watched tape of previous pool toss events and came up with a sound strategy.
“There is a spectacle to the pool toss,” says Koh. “When you think about why would people give you money, I was like, ‘Oh, throw a bunch of women in.’ ”
Once it was decreed that the Men of Nerd Wallet were ineligible, Koh recruited the Ladies, all in their 20s and 30s.
Koh ordered matching swim caps and blow-up floating tubes and organized a happy hour at Hawthorne Lounge. Cocktails were discounted in exchange for a donation. In addition to the usual cash jar, they had a Square Reader, which plugs into a cell phone and allows credit card swipes. That brought in $2,000.
“We’ve got a ways to go,” Koh says afterward, “lots of guilttripping and peer pressure.”
It was suggested that the Ladies of Nerd Wallet might heighten the bidding frenzy by attaching their wallets to the front of their swim caps. But this was decided against as sending the wrong message.
“It looks tacky,” Koh says. “The hat is aggressive enough.”