Banzai 101 Quickstart

Banzai helps your institution meet and maintain company-wide objectives: employee and client wellness, site traffic, service hours, and community outreach through sponsored schools. When used at full capacity, Banzai becomes an essential piece of promoting financial wellness in both your community and the classrooms you sponsor.

This quickstart walks you through your first steps as a new Direct & Schools partner: getting connected, defining your goals, picking the right team, and planning both your community and school engagement.

Your First Three Steps

Step 1: Send us your logo

Send your institution's logo as an SVG, AI, or EPS file to your Banzai Representative. The sooner you send your logo over, the sooner our team can start setting up your Banzai site. We'd love to have a co-branded site designed for you by our very first meeting.

Step 2: Get to know your Banzai Representative

In the days following your sign-up, a Banzai Representative will reach out to you. This representative will be your eyes, ears, and voice for everything Banzai related—from onboarding and branding setup to community engagement strategies and school outreach.

Step 3: Implement the Banzai program

Your Banzai Representative is here to support you every step of the way. These initial calls and meetings are crucial, so include everyone who will be actively involved with Banzai in the onboarding process—both your community outreach team and whoever will oversee your school sponsorships.

Plan Your Program

Before launching publicly, take time to define a few key things up front. The clearer you are on these, the easier the rest of the rollout becomes.

Define your goals

What areas could your institution use support in? Whether it's marketing and promoting products, bettering employees' and account holders' lives, tracking product interest, promoting a culture of financial literacy, or serving local classrooms through sponsored schools, Banzai can help. Pick the goals that matter most so the rest of your decisions ladder up to them.

Define your program lead

You'll need someone who can voice your institution's motivations and concerns to the Banzai team. More importantly, Banzai has huge potential in the hands of a dedicated advocate—someone willing to tie this program into existing marketing, service, or community-outreach operations. Likely candidates:

• Marketing Manager
• Social Media Manager
• Community Relations Manager
• CRA Manager
• Branch Manager
• Human Resources
• Education Director (for the Schools side)

Define your audience

Banzai can build and bolster relationships with account holders, partners, employees, and sponsored classrooms, and educate communities at large. Who do you envision serving with this program?

Partners—Create and share a co-branded microsite with community partners such as non-profits and businesses.

Communities—Use Banzai's community-facing Wellness Center, complete with over 200 life-literacy resources like calculators, Coaches, articles, and assessments, to promote services, encourage learning, and motivate change.

Employees—Banzai offers the ability to build custom employee pages or a microsite that employees can use as a life-literacy learning resource. This feature helps you highlight resources within Banzai that touch on employee benefits and other life-literacy content.

Sponsored schools—Support classrooms in your community with award-winning financial literacy curriculum, workbooks, and teacher-led presentations, with your brand at the center of the learning experience.

Define your communication channels

How will you let people know about the new resources coming to your site?

• Your website
• Social media
• Member newsletters
• Local news outlets
• Branch magazines
• Email
• Internal staff communications (for school outreach coordination)

For Direct/Community partners

The Direct side of your program gives you access to a wide range of tools for promoting your brand and serving your community. Here's a high-level overview of what's available.

Manager & Analytics

• Banzai Manager—Access analytics, downloadable marketing content, and partner management.
• Analytics—Get user data on web traffic and leads.
• Manager Toolkit—One-stop shop for all Banzai resources: marketing materials, presentations, flyers, how-to guides.

Wellness Center & Content

• Wellness Center—A community-facing website with over 200 financial and life-literacy resources including calculators, Coaches, articles, and courses.
• Collections of Content—Bundle resources together into custom collections to feature on your co-branded Wellness Center.
• Featured Content—Highlight specific content on your Wellness Center homepage.
• External Resources—Add your own unpublished content (videos, activities, PDFs, more) to your Wellness Center.

Engagement Tools

• Calls to Action—Add clickable CTAs throughout any featured resources.
• Offers—Motivate users to take advantage of the services your institution offers.
• Rewards—Incentivize users to complete Banzai courses, assessments, and Coach sessions.

Integration

• Embedded Content—Embed Banzai resources throughout your site. Embedded Content and Integrations Library
• Copy & Paste Library—Over 150 Banzai articles and hero illustrations to copy onto your institution's website. Copy & Paste Articles
• Co-branded Partner Pages—Create co-branded microsites with community partners (non-profits, businesses).
• Employee Pages—Build a microsite for employees to use as a life-literacy learning resource.

Marketing

• Marketing & Social Media Content—Pre-made social posts (Instagram, Facebook, X), flyers, trifolds, and handouts. Marketing Kits

For Schools partners

When you sponsor schools through Banzai, your institution becomes their direct partner in financial education. Here's how to get started and ensure the program thrives in your sponsored classrooms:

Step 1: Connect with your Banzai Representative

Your dedicated representative will guide you through onboarding, branding setup, and school engagement strategies. They'll also help align your sponsorship goals with your institution's community impact objectives.

Step 2: Review your sponsored schools

Once setup is complete, you'll gain access to the School Dashboard within your Banzai Manager account. There, you can view active schools, teacher contacts, workbook orders, and presentation requests.

Step 3: Plan for engagement

Use the ready-made tools and presentations in your Manager Toolkit to begin connecting with schools. Plan to attend or host presentations, respond promptly to teacher requests, and explore ways to integrate Banzai into your community outreach calendar.

What's included with Schools sponsorship

Direct's toolkit is largely marketing-and-engagement focused. Schools sponsorship is a different beast—you're supporting real classrooms. Here's what your sponsorship enables and how to use each piece.

In-person + virtual presentations Access ready-made, age-appropriate presentations and handouts on essential financial topics like budgeting, saving, credit, and debt. Teachers request presentations directly from your institution; you deliver them using the provided slides and presenter notes. Browse workshops by age at Education → Workshops.

Teacher communication Streamline outreach with customizable email templates in your Manager dashboard. Whether responding to presentation requests, fulfilling workbook orders, or initiating contact with new teachers, communication stays simple and professional. See Contacting Teachers for the workflow.

School usage reporting Access engagement metrics—sponsored teachers, workbook order history, presentation requests, teacher notes, and student feedback. Every report is exportable as CSV. See Tracking Workbook Orders and Reporting & Impact 101.

Teacher development Every month, educators can attend two professional development webinars—one live and one on-demand—led by Banzai's curriculum experts and guest educators. By sponsoring, your institution is recognized as a supporter of teacher growth.

Omnipresent branding Your institution's logo and name appear throughout the Banzai platform—from the student dashboard to inside interactive game elements. Students and teachers always associate financial literacy learning with your brand's support.

Teacher & student feedback Built-in feedback tools let teachers and students share comments and testimonials directly with your team. Use this feedback to see your impact and share genuine stories that demonstrate your sponsorship's success.

Create Your Launch Plan

We recommend the following high-level steps to ensure a smooth launch:

1. Outline a full communication plan, including a timeline for each phase.
2. Identify the appropriate "messenger" for each strategy.
3. Brainstorm resources needed (e.g. materials, departments, colleagues).

To execute:

• Collect necessary materials.
• Connect with organizations, schools, and partners as needed.
• Draft your communication materials.

For a phase-by-phase walkthrough, see the full Launch Plan:

Direct & Schools Launch Plan

A four-phase launch plan covering internal rollout, partner and school outreach, teacher and business activation, and community launch.

Want the Full Onboarding Packet?

Download the complete Sponsor Onboarding Kit as a single PDF—useful for sharing internally or onboarding new team members. Schools coverage runs pages 3–8.

Download the Sponsor Onboarding Kit (PDF)

The full comprehensive guide to the Banzai product, including both Schools and Direct implementation.