When people have the tools and support to take charge of their finances, it changes everything. Clarifi is helping individuals and families across Philadelphia do just that by offering judgment-free financial counseling, housing guidance, and direct assistance that helps communities stabilize, build, and preserve their wealth. Taylor Goebel, communications and marketing lead, and Brianna Thomas, community engagement lead, are two of the storytellers and strategists helping bring that mission to life.
When Clarifi was selected to participate in Macquarie Group’s Pro Bono Marathon Day, facilitated by Common Impact, Taylor and Brianna brought a timely, strategic challenge to the table: How could Clarifi better leverage social media to engage corporate donors, strengthen its brand, and amplify its voice as a trusted leader in financial wellness?
From social media wins to fresh community event strategies, the project helped Clarifi move the needle on outreach and engagement in measurable ways. Taylor and Brianna reflect on how that experience shaped their work, deepened their impact, and reinforced the value of matching corporate skills with community needs.
The presentation deck the volunteers created has been a constant source of guidance that I often return to.
How does Clarifi help individuals build financial resilience and create positive change in their communities?
Taylor: At our core, Clarifi is about helping people stabilize their finances and build and preserve their wealth. We do this through our free financial empowerment and housing counseling services. We take a relationship-based approach, where our counselors meet one-on-one with clients to understand their situation and the challenges they face. From there, we build a personalized action plan which can include strategies for paying down debt, improving credit, or working toward a bigger goal like homeownership.
Building trust is huge. Especially with people who’ve had negative or even traumatic experiences with financial systems. Sharing financial information, like pulling up a monthly statement, can feel really personal. For some, it can bring up shame or fear, especially if they’ve had rough experiences before. Our counselors meet people with respect and care.
We also provide direct financial assistance because we’ve seen that pairing counseling with cash grants can be even more effective in ensuring long-term financial stability. If someone is struggling to afford groceries or paying their rent, it is much more difficult to focus on and achieve long-term financial goals like building credit and emergency savings. We’ve grown so much, especially in our home preservation program and client grant program. In 2021, when we launched the grant program, we gave out about $30,000 in grants. Fast forward three years, and we distributed over $1.3 million in client grants and payments in 2024 alone.
We celebrated 600 homes being repaired through the City of Philadelphia’s Restore, Repair Renew program, in which we helped homeowners access more than $18 million in low-interest home improvement loans. We’re now working with the William Penn Foundation on a major grant to help prevent homelessness for families with small children. That grant will enable us to serve up to 1,100 families.
Our services are all tailored to the individual, but there’s a ripple effect too. When someone is financially empowered, they pass that knowledge on to their kids, their neighbors, and their community. That’s how we begin to break not just cycles of poverty, but cycles of financial misinformation and lack of access.
Can you share an example of someone or a group who benefited from Clarifi?
Taylor: Since June is National Homeownership Month, we recently told the story of a couple in their fifties who had been lifelong renters. They finally achieved their dream of owning a home in July 2024, so they’re about to celebrate their first full year as homeowners!
When they came to us, they knew homeownership was their goal, but the process was overwhelming. They weren’t sure where to start. That’s where Clarifi came in. One of our amazing counselors, Lorrie, helped the couple create an action plan. Lorrie helped them understand their debt-to-income ratio, reviewed their credit scores, and walked them through how to improve those areas. She also got to know them and their goals personally, asking what kind of home they wanted and what neighborhoods they were looking at. Lorrie was with them every step of the process, and she was always just a phone call or email away. She even secured grants that helped cover part of their down payment. She really prepared them for every part of the process.
When I spoke to the couple, they told me they were so excited to have a backyard for the first time. Just being able to experience that joy with them and knowing it was their own home was incredibly special.
Can you speak to the specific challenge you brought to the Macquarie skills-based volunteer event?
Brianna: In the past year, we shifted our primary social media focus from Facebook to LinkedIn. That was a strategic move to better connect with corporate partners and enhance our appeal. We knew it would be beneficial to have a team of experts assess how well our messaging was actually landing, especially on LinkedIn, where we’re working to strengthen our reputation as a financial wellness leader and attract more aligned partners. We were curious about how to better understand engagement, reach the right audiences, and use LinkedIn as a tool to build stronger relationships.
It was an incredibly helpful experience. We were able to tap into the volunteers’ marketing expertise, and since Macquarie is one of our corporate partners, the project also allowed us to purposefully steward that connection.
What key takeaways or strategies did you gain from that collaboration?
Brianna: We were really impressed how our team of volunteers went above and beyond. One of their key takeaways was the idea of hosting more community events and promote them on LinkedIn and inviting our corporate contacts. We didn’t have a long history of doing this before, but their recommendation helped us think differently about how we engage our network.
Shortly after this experience, we expanded the vision for an upcoming event and launched our Spring Into Wealth event series in April 2025 to align with Financial Empowerment Month. The volunteers’ guidance helped us shape it into one of our best events yet. We brought together our incredible coalition of supporters including volunteers, board members, partners, and clients. Pair that with a T-shirt campaign Taylor created and as a result, we raised over $1,000!
Another big takeaway was their advice to be more vocal about our accomplishments on LinkedIn. We took it and shared a post about receiving a grant from the William Penn Foundation, which received over 70 reactions, double our usual engagement. It was clear that their recommendations worked.
Taylor: The presentation deck the volunteers created has been a constant source of guidance that I often return to. It helped me feel more organized and encouraged me to think more strategically about our communications approach. Along with offering ideas for our social media presence, they also gave us clear suggestions for how to engage our board, promote events, and use stronger calls to action.
The volunteers presented their ideas with a level of care and professionalism that made it feel like we were working with a paid consultant. They took the time to really listen and responded with thoughtful, actionable recommendations. We felt valued and understood. The project showed us how powerful volunteerism can be when people bring not just their skills, but also a deep sense of commitment to your mission.
What was your experience collaborating with Common Impact staff?
Brianna: When we were selected to participate in the Pro Bono Marathon Day, we had a call with Sam and Marisa to nail down the final project description. We had two ideas, and the conversation helped us land on the one that felt most valuable for our organization as a whole. The process from that call to the final event was smooth and organized.
What makes skills-based volunteering uniquely valuable for nonprofits like Clarifi compared to traditional volunteering?
Brianna: While traditional volunteering is great, skills-based volunteering is especially complimentary for us. As Taylor mentioned, we work with sensitive financial data from clients, so we have to be intentional about how we can collaborate with volunteers. We’ve had volunteer programs before, but not always geared toward skills-based volunteering projects. Going forward, we want to ensure our programs are scalable and skills-based volunteering friendly, especially since that aligns with our strategy for engaging corporate donors and partners.
Any final thoughts you’d like to share about Clarifi’s mission or work?
Taylor: If anyone is passionate about financial empowerment and helping people meet their financial and housing goals, I encourage you to visit clarifi.org. And if you want to follow along, we’re “WeClarifi” on social media.
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