FidRISE

Inspiration

FidRISE was inspired by the reality that many first-year college women are entering college and independence at the same time. For the first time, they may be managing spending, saving, career choices, side hustles, investing questions, and long-term goals without a clear roadmap. Finance can feel intimidating, especially when most resources sound too formal, too advanced, or disconnected from everyday student life.

We wanted to make financial literacy feel more like a campaign students would actually want to interact with: social, visual, mobile-first, game-based, and empowering. Instead of telling students to sit through a finance lecture, FidRISE invites them to scan a QR code, play a future-money simulator, discover their money personality, and build small habits that feel realistic.

Our campaign is called FidRISE: Fidelity Reimagining Investments, Savings and Education. It is designed around one core idea: young women should feel confident making their first money moves.

What it does

FidRISE is a two-part financial literacy campaign and digital experience.

The first website is the main FidRISE platform:
https://fidrise.vercel.app

The second website is the 2036 Money Mirror game:
https://fid-rise-game.vercel.app

Together, they create a campaign flow that can work both online and in person on college campuses.

The campaign starts with curiosity marketing. Students see a flyer or booth message that says:

“What will your financial future look like? Scan to find out.”

That QR code takes them to the 2036 Money Mirror game, where they make choices about spending, saving, career, side hustles, lifestyle, and future planning. The goal is to make students curious about how today’s habits can shape tomorrow’s outcomes.

After the game, students can visit the main FidRISE website for a deeper personalized experience. On the main platform, users can take the Money Mindset Quiz, learn their financial personality type, set microhabits, explore investing resources, ask the AI Guide questions, and learn about the broader campus campaign.

Main Website: FidRISE Platform

The main FidRISE website is the educational hub of the campaign. It includes several tabs that guide students through different parts of financial literacy.

Home

The Home page introduces FidRISE as a campaign for smart money moves. It explains that the platform helps first-year college women understand money habits, grow confidence, and connect finances to career growth.

Quiz

The Money Mindset Quiz asks students questions about spending, saving, investing, financial fears, and future goals. Based on their answers, they receive one of three money personality types:

The Cautious Saver
This user prioritizes safety and stability. They are responsible and organized, but may avoid investing or new financial opportunities because they are focused on protecting savings.

The Comfort Spender
This user values experiences, self-care, and enjoying life with others. They are emotionally aware and social, but may struggle with impulse spending or stress spending.

The Future Builder
This user is focused on long-term growth, budgeting, investing, and planning ahead. They are goal-oriented and disciplined, but may become stressed about money or forget to enjoy the present.

Microhabits

The Microhabits tab turns financial advice into small, realistic actions. Instead of overwhelming students with huge goals, FidRISE helps them choose simple habits like:

Move $5 into savings today
Check your balance before buying coffee
Skip one impulse purchase
Read one investing term
Apply to one paid opportunity
Set a weekly fun budget

Users can save their selected habits, choose reminder frequency, and enable desktop notifications. This makes financial literacy ongoing instead of one-time.

Invest

The Invest tab explains beginner investing concepts in simple language. It walks users through defining goals, choosing account types, starting small, picking an investment approach, and thinking long-term. It also connects users to Fidelity investing resources and encourages students to connect with qualified financial professionals for personal decisions.

AI Guide

The AI Guide combines a learning library with a chatbot. On the left, users can browse detailed educational topics about budgeting, savings goals, investing, retirement accounts, brokerage accounts, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, robo-advisors, side hustles, and the FidRISE campus campaign. The selected topic opens beside the list so students can read more detail.

A floating FidRISE Chat assistant lets users ask questions. The chatbot uses the learning-library information as context, so it can answer questions using the campaign’s educational material instead of acting like a generic chatbot.

2036 Simulator

This tab connects users to the second website, the 2036 Money Mirror game. It includes a QR code and a preview link to the game.

Side Hustles

The Side Hustles tab gives students ideas based on their personality type. Suggestions include tutoring, campus jobs, paid research, event help, resale, content creation, design commissions, coding projects, startup competitions, and investing clubs.

Campaign

The Campaign tab explains the larger FidRISE campaign experience. This includes campus tables, QR posters, social media outreach, finance games, Instagram content, mini hackathons, and student-centered events.

Account

The Account page supports Google sign-in so users can save their experience. We simplified it to use Google authentication only, which keeps the sign-in process fast and student-friendly.

Second Website: 2036 Money Mirror Game

The second website is the campaign hook:
https://fid-rise-game.vercel.app

The 2036 Money Mirror is a money-life simulation game. Students make choices about their college life, career, spending, saving, investing, side hustles, and lifestyle. Those choices shape their projected financial future in 2036.

This game is designed to make financial literacy feel fun and interactive. Instead of asking students to read a long article first, the game gives them a reason to care. It shows how small decisions can add up over time.

In the campaign, this game would be promoted through QR flyers, campus booths, and social media. Ambassadors could say:

“Want to see what your financial future could look like in 2036? Scan this.”

That makes the first interaction playful and curiosity-driven.

Campus Campaign

FidRISE is designed as more than a website. It is a full campus campaign.

The campaign could include:

Fidelity ambassador tables around campus
QR code posters and flyers
Instagram posts and reels
Money Bingo Night
Family Feud-style finance games
Budget Battles
Side hustle challenges
Remote mini hackathons
Student ambassador outreach

The purpose is to make finance feel social and accessible. Students can discover FidRISE through a flyer, play the game, take the quiz, learn their personality, and then continue using the platform for reminders and learning.

A sample campus interaction would look like this:

Two students walk by a FidRISE booth and say they are stressed about spending too much on coffee, food, and shopping. A Fidelity ambassador invites them to scan a QR code to see their 2036 financial future. They play the Money Mirror game and realize how small habits can affect their long-term goals. Then the ambassador directs them to the FidRISE website, where they can take the quiz, get personalized insights, and set microhabits.

The campaign message is:

Scan, play, and rise financially with FidRISE.

How we built it

We built the main FidRISE website using React, Vite, JavaScript, and Tailwind CSS. Firebase Authentication and Google Sign-In power the account system, while Cloud Firestore stores user profiles, quiz results, selected microhabits, reminder preferences, and personality data.

The AI Guide uses a Vercel Serverless Function connected to the OpenAI API. We also built a local learning library so the chatbot can answer questions using FidRISE’s own educational content. The app is deployed on Vercel.

We used browser notifications and a service worker to support reminder notifications. We also used QR code generation so the simulator page can connect students directly to the 2036 Money Mirror game.

The second website, the 2036 Money Mirror game, is deployed separately on Vercel so it can function as its own campaign QR experience.

Design

The visual identity uses green and pink:

Green: #71A95A
Pink: #E37383

We chose these colors because they feel friendly, energetic, and accessible while still connecting to growth, confidence, and action. The design avoids making finance look cold or intimidating. Instead, it feels like a campus campaign students would actually want to click on.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge was making FidRISE feel like a complete campaign instead of just a website. We had to think about the full student journey: seeing a flyer, scanning a QR code, playing a game, taking a quiz, learning from personalized results, and continuing with reminders.

Another challenge was organizing the platform clearly. We changed the Dashboard tab into Microhabits because the website already had a Home page. We also moved account features into a separate Account page so microhabit settings stayed where they belonged.

We also worked through technical challenges:

Connecting Firebase Authentication
Supporting Google Sign-In
Saving user data in Firestore
Deploying both websites on Vercel
Building the AI Guide with contextual learning-library responses
Creating a floating chatbot interface
Handling browser notification permissions
Making the two websites feel connected as one campaign
Slow API calls for the simulation

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of....

What we learned

We learned that financial education becomes more powerful when it is personal, interactive, and connected to real student life. First-year college women do not just need definitions. They need confidence, small next steps, and tools that make money feel manageable.

We also learned that campaign design matters. A strong QR hook, a simulation game, social media, campus tables, and ambassadors can make financial literacy feel more approachable than a traditional workshop.

Technically, we learned how to connect frontend state, Firebase data, serverless AI, and deployment into one experience. We also learned how important user flow is: each tab needs a clear purpose, and the experience should guide students naturally from curiosity to action.

What's next for FidRISE

Next, we would expand FidRISE into a larger campus campaign by adding:

More levels and outcomes in the 2036 Money Mirror game
Text and email microhabit reminders
More advanced AI personalization
More Fidelity learning resources
A way for campuses to request a FidRISE visit
Ambassador dashboards for campus teams
More finance game templates
Instagram campaign content
Data insights from quiz trends to understand student needs

The long-term vision is for FidRISE to become a national financial literacy campaign that helps first-year college women build confidence, independence, and smarter money habits early.