Program
A complete financial-confidence program for your campus.
ASCND combines two things students rarely get together: real financial knowledge and a real person to talk it through with. The result is support that feels thoughtful and credible, not another app to ignore.
It arrives as a complete package: curriculum, trained peer counselors, and the technology that connects them. Donors fund it, and universities host it for the students they serve.
A financial wellness center in a box.
Knowledge alone has not been enough. Students can read about budgeting, credit, and taxes and still freeze when a real decision arrives. The gap is rarely information. It is having someone to ask, in a moment that feels safe.
ASCND closes that gap by pairing guided learning with a peer counselor: a trained finance student who has been where the learner is. Money knowledge becomes something a student can act on, because there is a real conversation behind it.
That pairing is what a financial wellness center provides. ASCND packages the whole thing so that any campus, with a donor behind it, can host one.
How students experience it
A student starts with plain-language lessons on the decisions that actually arrive: budgeting, credit, taxes, insurance, debt. There is no quiz to game and no streak to chase. The learning is structured but unhurried, so a student can come back to it when a question becomes real.
Students work through the curriculum in the app and meet with their counselor when a decision feels heavy. Knowledge and a real person, in one place.
Real conversations
Every student can talk things through with a counselor: a finance student at their own university, trained to support a peer without judgment. The counselor reaches out first, so support feels offered rather than asked for. This is the part an app alone has never been able to do.
Counselors are trained and paid through the program: students supporting students, which keeps the support genuinely peer-to-peer.
What your campus receives
A university does not assemble ASCND from parts. It arrives complete and ready to run.
Curriculum and textbook
A grounded financial curriculum written in plain language: the same body of knowledge a strong personal-finance course would cover, organized so students can learn at their own pace.
Counselor training
Finance students at the host university are trained to support their peers. They learn the material deeply and how to hold a real conversation about money without judgment.
The app and the Console
Students learn and message their counselor in one calm app. Counselors and administrators use the Console to stay close to who needs a check-in and organized across a cohort.
Ongoing support
ASCND stays involved after launch, keeping the material current and the counselors supported, so the program holds up across cohorts rather than fading after the first year.
How it is funded and run
ASCND works because three groups each get something real out of it.
A donor funds it
A philanthropic gift covers the program, so the university carries no new budget line and students pay nothing.
A university hosts it
The campus provides the students, both the learners and the finance majors trained as counselors, along with light administrative oversight. ASCND handles the rest, from training and the technology to day-to-day operation, so the institution is not asked to build or run a new service.
Students grow with it
Learners build real financial confidence. The counselors gain meaningful, paid experience supporting people through decisions that matter.
The program sits alongside existing student-success efforts rather than competing with them. It can start with a focused group of students and grow as the campus sees how it lands.
The Console
What leadership can see
Hosting a program means being able to speak to it. The Console gives administrators a clear view of engagement and reach: how students are participating and where the program is making a difference. It is a view you can bring to a board, a donor, or a cabinet meeting. Reporting respects student privacy and is shaped with each campus, built on real participation, never on figures invented to look good in a deck.
Below is the counselor’s view of the Console. You can also open the working Console yourself and look around. It runs entirely on sample data, populated with fictional students, so the caseload reads exactly as it would in practice without any real records involved.
Opens the working Console with sample data. Best viewed on a desktop screen.
The evidence
The case for the program is grounded in independent research on financial stress and student persistence. ASCND’s own pilots will be measured on real campuses and reported plainly. What we will measure, and how, lives on Pilots.
Bring ASCND to your university
ASCND grows campus by campus, with a donor and a university behind each one. If that could be yours, we would like to talk.