Four parties. One repeatable unit.
Money that keeps moving.
Capital has no doorway into these neighborhoods. The doorway has no capital. The people have neither — and they are the ones paying for it. DueSmart is the engine that connects all three and makes the arithmetic work for every side.
And the engine is a pal on demand — not a coach you book, but a pal who lives on your phone, 24 hours, no appointment, no clock, working the problem through with you in your own language. Six of them, including Jamaican Patois and Kreyòl.
Who is actually at the table
Most community-finance programs have two parties: a funder and a provider. That structure fails in exactly the neighborhoods it targets, because the provider has no standing there. This model adds the trusted doorway — and a named beneficiary treated as a customer rather than a case file.
The funder
A bank, credit union, corporate foundation or community trust. Has money and an obligation to reach low- and moderate-income households it cannot reach directly.
The anchor
A pastor, imam, or community leader with standing. People show up for them without being marketed to. They hand over the pal; we never could.
The households
Credit-invisible and underbanked families in the anchor's own neighborhood. Not a demographic — the anchor's members, by name.
DueSmart
The pal itself, the course, the workshops, and the measurement that turns activity into a report a compliance desk can file.
Each party holds exactly one thing the other three cannot manufacture. Capital cannot manufacture trust. Trust cannot manufacture product. DueSmart cannot manufacture standing. That is why this is a partnership and not a vendor contract.
What a pal on demand actually does
Not a course someone means to finish. Three things that are live right now, that a person uses at the moment the problem is in front of them.
Talk to Money — say it, review it, post it
Say it. "I paid three hundred forty on the Chase card." Out loud, in their language.
Review it. It prepares the entry and reads it back.
Post it. Nothing is recorded until they say yes.
No forms. No accounting screens. Any hour, any day.
The Tracker — and the arithmetic done for them
Statement close dates and due dates across every account, utilization goals, reminders one to seven days ahead, payment and purchase logging, calendar export.
The Pay Before Close calculator works out the exact amount to pay before the statement closes to hit a utilization target. It does the math for them rather than explaining the math to them.
No bank login. No Plaid. Which matters enormously to people who have been given reasons not to trust linking an account.
Stage Pass — plain-language financial education, $147 at retail, the same product anyone buys. Program members receive it free. The course is what someone learns; the pal is what gets them through Tuesday.
The problem was never the teaching. It was the clock.
Most financial help in this country runs on an appointment. A booking, a branch, a business day, a session count — and almost always in English. The moment that decides whether someone moves from invisible to visible does not schedule itself.
A coach, a few times a year
Skilled people doing real work — and fully booked. A typical client sees someone every couple of months, during business hours, at a location they have to reach.
It works, for the hour it lasts.
No booking. No clock. No session limit.
At eleven at night, when the worry actually shows up, in their own language, on the phone already in their hand.
This is not a substitute for a human coach. It is the days in between — which is most of them.
Nobody fails at money because one hour of instruction was unavailable. They fail in the twenty minutes alone with a bill, a form, or a number nobody taught them to read. Funding more appointments does not reach that moment. Something that answers at eleven at night does.
In their language — including two nobody else serves
DueSmart Finance runs in six languages. Two of them are the reason a Caribbean or Haitian congregation chooses us over a national program with a Spanish toggle.
Why Patois and Kreyòl matter more than the count
Financial shame is language-shaped. People will say out loud in the language they think in what they will never type into an English form. A translation layer bolted onto an English product does not get you that. Being spoken to does.
What is honest about the coverage
DueSmart Finance runs in all six. The Tracker runs in five, including Kreyòl. The live voice line on this page handles English, Spanish, French and Portuguese. We would rather state that precisely than let someone discover the gap on their own.
Who a pal on demand is for
National figures from named sources. We do not publish local statistics unless we can name the source for them.
DueSmart exists because its founder paid cash for everything, which left him credit invisible — and went from no file to a 727 FICO in seven months, alone. That is a personal result, not a promise the program makes to anyone. It is the reason the product answers the phone at an hour when nobody else does.
One congregation = $50,000
One anchor congregation, 170 sponsored members, twelve months. Programs scale by repeating the unit, not by inflating one. Here is the entire budget, including our share.
| Line | Controlled by | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Scholarships | DueSmart — delivery | $24,990 |
| Workshops | DueSmart — at the anchor site | $9,000 |
| Community outreach | Anchor-directed | $6,500 |
| Anchor partner stipend | Paid to the anchor | $5,000 |
| Measurement & reporting | DueSmart | $4,510 |
| Total request | — | $50,000 |
Size it yourself
Every line recomputes and the total closes to the penny at any figure. The stipend is a rate — $5,000 per 170-member anchor congregation — so it lands on exactly 10% at whole-unit multiples and stays inside a 6.71%–13.33% band in between. The toggle changes only how one unit's pool is divided; the amounts are identical either way.
| Line | Amount |
|---|
- Lending capital, loan loss reserves, or any credit product.
- DueSmart's general overhead, sales team, or product development.
- Lobbying, political activity, or advocacy of any kind.
- Capital improvements to the anchor's building.
How this reads to your compliance desk
On August 12, 2026 the OCC and FDIC published a proposed rule that would rescind and replace the 2023 CRA final rule. The comment period is open and closes October 13, 2026. We track it because it changes what a qualifying grant looks like, and we would rather raise it than have you raise it.
What the proposal would change
- Raise the small bank threshold from $412 million to $1 billion, and the intermediate threshold to $10 billion.
- By NCRC's count, roughly 814 banks would no longer face community development evaluation.
- Require grants be tied to a specific community development project or program.
- Cap indirect costs at 15% for recipients administering a large-bank grant.
- Narrow retail banking services toward credit and away from deposit services.
How this program sits against it
- It is specific by construction. 170 named seats, 12 dated workshops, 2 survey waves, 4 reports. No general operating support to defend.
- The stipend is 10% of the ask at whole-unit multiples, with outreach budgeted as direct program cost.
- We are not selling you deposits. The proposal moves away from deposit services, so that argument belongs with your business side, separately.
- You get a filable report. Named community, named partner, counted outcomes, misses included.
This is a proposed rule, not a final one, and whether an anchor stipend counts as a direct or an indirect cost is your institution's determination and your counsel's — not ours. We will restructure the budget to whatever classification you need. What we will not do is tell you it is already settled.
Who applies, and why it matters
Much foundation money is closed to DueSmart permanently, because we are a for-profit company. It is not closed to the congregation. We would rather tell you how to route around us than waste your program officer's time.
The anchor can be the applicant
The IRS does not require churches — including synagogues, temples and mosques — to file Form 1023 to be treated as tax-exempt, and contributions to them are tax deductible. The congregation is the grantee; DueSmart is the program provider it pays, named openly in the application.
Where a funder requires a determination letter, a church may obtain one voluntarily, or a fiscal sponsor can hold the grant instead. We ask this in the first meeting.
What you receive
An application from a local leader serving their own neighborhood, with a named provider, a fully itemized budget, and a for-profit disclosure on its face. You are not being asked to trust an out-of-town vendor — you are funding a community institution that chose a capable provider and showed you the invoice.
What we measure — and what we refuse to claim
Measurement is 9% of the budget and 100% of whether there is a second year. Every target is a goal rather than a guarantee, and every miss is reported next to every hit.
✅ Counted directly
- Scholarships issued and activated
- Course completion against a 70% goal
- Workshops held, attendance per session
- Free starting plans distributed
- Pre and post survey waves, twice a year
📋 Reported, not promised
- Accounts opened by graduates — self-reported and labeled as such
- Credit file established or score movement
- Self-reported change in debt or savings behavior
- Retention into paid products after sponsorship ends
🚫 Never claimed
- Causal attribution of income or credit change to this program
- Deposit dollars delivered to a specific institution
- Any outcome the survey design cannot support
- Local statistics without a named source
The hard questions
Every one of these gets asked. Tap to open.
Fair question. The test is whether it does something or only says something. Talk to Money posts a real transaction to a real ledger after reading it back for confirmation. The Pay Before Close calculator returns the exact figure to pay before a statement closes. That is work performed, not advice narrated. And it declines to tell anyone what to do with their money, because a pal helps you think it through — it does not run your finances.
Because 77% of it is the program. $24,990 is 170 real seats at the same $147 the public pays — product delivered to households, not overhead. $9,000 is twelve facilitated workshops. $4,510 is the measurement you are asking for. The genuinely organizational portion is the $5,000 stipend, and it goes to the anchor, not to us.
Your members receive the full retail product, because a watered-down edition would embarrass you in front of your own people. They pay nothing, you are paid for your work, you control the outreach budget, and you can end it at the end of the term owing nothing. If the honest answer to "what does the church get" were a plaque, you would be right to decline.
No. Anyone who guarantees that is either misleading you or planning to. Our founder went from no file to a 727 in seven months — that is his result, not a promise attached to a product. What we guarantee is delivery: seats issued, workshops held, surveys fielded, reports filed on schedule.
They keep the access they were granted under its normal terms, and nobody is auto-enrolled into anything. Some will choose to continue and pay; most will not, and the program is not designed around the ones who do.
Yes, and it says so in writing every time. The scholarship line is arithmetic — seats times the published price. Everything else is a proposal.
What happens next
If you lead a congregation
Tell us three things
Your organization's name, your name, and roughly how many people you serve. Nothing goes in writing until we have them from you.
We send you the numbers
A budget sized to your community, with your stipend and outreach lines called out before anything goes to a funder.
You pick a lane
Apply together, let us bring a funder, or start a small self-funded group now — every $147 raised puts the pal in one more pocket.
If you fund community programs
Tell us your constraints
Grantee eligibility, indirect-cost treatment, reporting format, geography. We build to them rather than asking you to bend.
We name the community
A specific anchor organization in a specific neighborhood — never a hypothetical, and never named before they have agreed in writing.
You get a full proposal
Itemized to the penny, with the exclusions, the measurement design, and the for-profit disclosure on the face of it.
Would you rather just ask?
Partner is a pal on demand for this program specifically — it explains how it works and knows what it is not allowed to promise. It will ask whether you lead a congregation or fund programs, then answer for your side of the table. English, Spanish, French or Portuguese. Calls are capped at ten minutes.
Prefer a phone? (470) 740-8343
Every figure above, sourced
- OCC and FDIC joint proposed rule on CRA regulations, Federal Register August 12, 2026; comment period open, closing October 13, 2026 — federalregister.gov
- OCC Bulletin 2026-35 — asset thresholds, the 15% indirect-cost provision — occ.gov
- NCRC analysis of the 2026 proposed CRA rollbacks — the 814-bank figure and the $412M to $1B change — ncrc.org
- FDIC 2023 National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households — fdic.gov
- CFPB, "CFPB Report Finds 26 Million Consumers Are Credit Invisible," May 2015 — consumerfinance.gov
- NFEC annual survey, 2025 — $948 per adult, $246B nationally — prnewswire.com
- IRS, "Organizations Not Required to File Form 1023" — irs.gov
- Product features and languages as published at money.duesmart.com and founder.duesmart.com. Stage Pass $147 is the public retail price.