Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund logo Emergency Financial PreparednessMessaging architecture & toolkit
Messaging architecture & toolkit

Emergency Financial Preparedness Toolkit

A campaign-centered playbook for helping city and county teams connect disaster readiness with financial preparedness — and route residents to realistic, supported actions.

Why this matters

Financial preparedness is disaster preparedness.

Cities and counties already help residents build credit, access safe banking, review insurance, avoid scams, and strengthen their finances. This toolkit helps teams connect those existing resources to disaster readiness — without making preparedness feel like one more impossible ask.

For emergency management

Broaden readiness

Add financial readiness to preparedness campaigns, trainings, public service announcements, and seasonal outreach.

For financial empowerment

Name the emergency value

Show how everyday financial work also helps residents evacuate, recover, and rebuild faster.

For communications teams

Deploy stronger assets

Use the campaign directions, then localize them with your city or county’s programs, trusted messengers, and calls to action.

Featured campaigns

Lead with the campaign assets.

The toolkit is organized to make the strongest materials easy to find first. Each campaign has a clear use case, a rationale, adaptation guidance, and placeholder links for Canva templates.

Core idea

Build on existing behaviors; don’t try to create new ones.

Emergency financial preparedness works best when it feels like a continuation of what residents already want: protecting their family, building toward their goals, keeping their money safe, and being ready for whatever comes next.