DoD Office of Financial Readiness COVID-19 Resources

From halted base-to-base moves for military families to service members facing lost secondary income due to paused business ventures and a sudden need for parents to provide at-home child care, COVID-19 had wide ranging financial impacts for the U.S. military community. A comprehensive, COVID-19 landing page of financially focused government resources for this audience, the Department of Defense Office of Financial Readiness webpage was expertly crafted and executed within two weeks of the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic in early March 2020. One of the first connections for the military community to expert knowledge on the economic and financial impacts of COVID-19, the webpage was designed in line with and part of the federal response to the pandemic and aggressively updated within its two-week production period. In that time, the webpage was expanded to feature more than 15 federal resources, delineated by topic, including guidance from Department of Defense, military relief societies, Securities and Exchange Commission, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Housing Finance Agency and U.S. Department of Education as well as original content created by the production team. Original content included fact sheets, articles and blogs which were shared by government collaborators attracting additional awareness of and traffic to the webpage. As one of the first financially focused government pandemic resources, the DoD webpage was featured on USA.gov driving a high volume of traffic early on and connecting families and service members in limbo with necessary resources. Tuned in, often with first-hand knowledge, to the military’s experience of the pandemic, the production team created a universal resource that guided military community members seeking financial advice during an international emergency.