‘Game-changing’ online financial support finder launched for seven Greater Manchester boroughs

By Jon Sands, Programme Officer at Resolve Poverty

Poverty always comes down to a lack of income. However, if money guidance is not your organisation’s area of expertise, knowing how best to help people who are struggling financially can sometimes seem too complex an issue to address.

The Money Advice Referral Tool (MART) has been designed to help guide such organisations through a conversation with a client who is struggling financially so that you can confidently refer or signpost them to an expert organisation that can help with their specific money issues. The MART has been available in paper/PDF form for several years, but in May we launched an online, interactive version of the MART covering all seven Greater Manchester boroughs that currently have a borough-specific version – Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Tameside, Trafford, and Wigan.

The online MART allows the user to choose which version is relevant to them. It has also allowed us to make the process even simpler for the user by reducing the number of choices they need to make. The results can either be downloaded to print off, or emailed to the individual.

A member of staff who regularly uses the MART said:

“[The MART] is a game-changer for us and has been a really helpful tool for [our organisation] to provide support.”

In addition to this, the PDF versions of the MART have been updated to include extra issues and to further simplify the document. While both the online and paper/PDF versions of the MART are still aimed primarily at organisational users, both versions could easily be used by an individual in need without any additional guidance. The paper/PDF versions can be downloaded from our MART webpage.

If you have any questions about the MARTs, or would like to discuss how we can help you utilise them within your organisation, you can contact me at jons@resolvepoverty.org.

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This article is featured in our Greater Manchester Bulletin.

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