Anita Saville is the co-founder of Budget Buddies. (Image: Courtesy of Anita Saville)
A Nonprofit Founder Reflects on the Startup Journey
Anita Saville recounts the founding of Budget Buddies, in a new book that’s part memoir, part how-to guide. The nonprofit, now named Women’s Money Matters, has helped over 2,000 women.
There is a poignant moment at the end of Anita Saville’s new memoir, “With a Passion: Seeing Good Ideas Through,” where she and friend Kathy Brough – for the last time – lock their office door and leave behind the nonprofit they created, Budget Buddies. It’s 2019, and they’ve spent the last decade teaching low-income women how to manage money and develop confidence on a path toward economic independence. “We did a good thing,” Saville says. “Yes,” Brough replies, “a very good thing.”
The weight of that moment, happily, gives way to an epilogue about Budget Buddies’ transformation into a new organization, Women’s Money Matters, that today lives on and has helped over 2,000 women better understand their finances. The Boston-based organization is now run by Danielle Piskadlo, who has served as executive director since Saville and Brough stepped back.
But the chapter on the founders’ leaving is memorable for what it is: The quiet marking of the end of an era. Brough died in July 2024 at age 79. Saville, now 72, is retired – although she is still very active in politics – and wanted to write “With a Passion” not to “pat ourselves on the back,” but to share the story of Budget Buddies’ founding as a how-to guide for others.
“The story that I wanted to tell was: ‘If you have a passion, you should go for it. You should try to see what you can do with it,'” she says, during a recent interview. “If it’s a good idea, there will be people to help you.”
In fact, something that was “really stunning” to her and Brough, she says, is how many supporters quickly appeared when they started Budget Buddies. After spending over a year developing the curriculum, hosting focus groups and winning an initial $7,000 grant, Saville and Brough kicked off a pilot program on Sept. 21, 2010, in the parish hall of an Episcopal church near Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
“From local banks to local representatives, to a great volunteer community to corporate sponsors, people glommed on to the idea of helping women with lower incomes improve their financial futures for themselves and their families,” she says. And most importantly, the women and girls who went through the program – many in transitional housing – made clear progress in terms of learning about credit, banking and basic money-management skills.
A hallmark of Budget Buddies, which continues today at Women’s Money Matters, has always been one-on-one coaching, where volunteers (who do not need to have financial expertise) are matched with women living on low incomes. Saville says a favorite memory – which she enjoyed writing about in the book – was seeing how much the volunteers benefitted from the program, too.
“One of the big surprises to us was how appreciative the volunteers were for the opportunity to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes,” she says. In the “segmented society” we live in, women working in white-collar jobs might not have much interaction with women using SNAP benefits to pay for groceries. But volunteers and participants often quickly realized “that as women, they had a lot in common.”
In the book, Saville recounts the fits-and-starts of building Budget Buddies, breaking out lessons learned along the way, and includes anecdotes such as she and Brough celebrating wins with trips to a local ice cream shop. But there came a time when both realized they needed to step aside.
“Kathy and I would have had to learn a whole lot of new technology in order to be able to keep up with the demands and the potential for Budget Buddies,” she says. The two announced their plans for retirement in January 2018 and began their search for a successor – and their “clear first choice” was Piskadlo, who brought several degrees (including a master’s in public administration from Harvard University) and years of experience with Accion, a global nonprofit.
Piskadlo joined Budget Buddies about 9 months before the Covid pandemic hit. She turned the organization into a virtual one, with online sessions that made it safer – and now easier – for volunteers and coaches to meet. “That’s been a big shift,” says Piskadlo. “It’s kind of incredible, the response we’ve had to our programs going virtual.”
In 2022, the new team changed the organization’s name to Women’s Money Matters, to keep the focus on women and to avoid the word budget, which for many is “anxiety-producing,” Piskadlo says. It also helps reflect the organization’s expanded mission, which includes advocacy in three areas: pay equity, the so-called benefits cliff (where people on public aid lose benefits if income goes up) and K-12 financial literacy. Women’s Money Matters now has an operating budget of $1.7 million and 16 employees – quite a leap from when Saville and Brough hosted early meetings at a local diner in Chelmsford.
Saville and Piskadlo both say the need to help women with low incomes is as critical today as it was when Budget Buddies first started. The wage gap, coupled with the lack of support for women caring for children and elderly, has “barely changed” over the past two decades, Saville says. Piskadlo is worried about cuts to social services that may happen under the administration of President Donald Trump. “No matter how you slice poverty data, it disproportionately impacts women of color,” she says. “It’s a really scary time.”
As she prepares (finally) to enjoy retirement, Saville is pleased she’s managed to publish the memoir, which took her about five years to write. She hopes the lessons in the books will inspire others to follow their dreams, especially if they involve helping other women. “Lesson number one is, find a partner,” she says, and the book is dedicated to Brough.
Saville doesn’t hesitate to include mistakes and missteps in the book, which she feels are instructive. “We went down some dead ends, and had to turn around and go back the other direction,” she says. “If you’re really committed to your project, you will find another way to do it.”
The stories in the book are “an honest accounting,” she says with a laugh. “It was fun to relive all of that.” ◼️
“With a Passion: Seeing Good Ideas Through” is available for purchase here. All profits go back to Women’s Money Matters.