Beware of One Time Passcode scams with these tips

While cyber criminals are always looking for ways to trick you into revealing information they can use to access your accounts, we have a few simple tips to avoid getting tricked by “one time passcode” scams that you may encounter while attempting to access your accounts securely.



Ganohonyohk (Giving Thanks): Indigenous Prosperity

The Ganohonyohk/Prosperity Research Project explored how seven Indigenous Friendship Centre communities in Ontario understood the concept of prosperity. The guiding research question of “How do urban Indigenous Friendship Centre communities in Ontario view a prosperous/wealthy life?” was used to gauge the meaning of prosperity through a community driven lens.

This strength-based research explores culturally appropriate approaches to urban Indigenous prosperity and considers the role of Friendship Centres in promoting prosperity. It concludes that approaches to Indigenous prosperity need to be context-specific and allow for self-determination in establishing communities’ priorities.



Guaranteed Income Community of Practice resources

The Guaranteed Income Community of Practice (GICP) convenes guaranteed income stakeholders, including policy experts, researchers, community and program leaders, funders, and elected officials to learn and collaborate on guaranteed income pilots, programs and policy.

The GICP website includes resources on:

  • GICP fact sheets and briefs
  • video curriculum
  • program design resources
  • task force reports and agendas
  • program evaluations and income research
  • literature reviews
  • policy, books, articles, films

 



Tax Prep Dispatch: Alternative Service Delivery Tips!

Tips and considerations for providing alternative tax filing service delivery.



Tax Prep Dispatch: The Drop-Off Process

Considerations and best practices for drop-off and virtual tax filing services.



Communicating on Race and Racial Economic Equity

This document is a compilation of best practices and recommendations from a wide range of resources that Prosperity Now’s Racial Wealth Divide Initiative (RWDI) and Communications teams thought would be helpful for naming, framing, defining and understanding the issue of racial economic equity. Design guidelines on visually depicting diverse communities and definitions of important terms and concepts for understanding the nuance and complexity of racial economic equity, the racial wealth divide and racial wealth equity are provided.



The MIX Challenge Toolkit: Tools & Techniques for Challenge-Based Innovation Partnerships & Procurement

The Municipal Innovation Exchange (MIX) project team created this Toolkit to assist municipalities - individual line managers or project owners, or municipal strategic teams (like a Smart Cities Office) - that are contemplating or undertaking a procurement by means of innovation partnership.

The Toolkit can help municipal staff decide which projects are a good fit for this approach to procurement. It can help them initiate and manage an innovation partnership. It can also help them assess the whole experience afterwards and determine if and how to apply innovation partnership again.

Creating Communities Where We Live – A Good Practices Guide

Creating Communities Where We Live - A Good Practices Guide is a locally-driven community-based researched project conducted in Edmonton, Alberta, by e4c and the University of Alberta Community Service-Learning program. The project seeks to add to the knowledge and practice of community care around supporting people to achieve a safe, secure, and affordable housing experience.

The 10 good practices in this guide describe structures, roles, and relationships which promote community and wellbeing for tenants who live in affordable housing. The practices are informed, in part, by research into tenant and staff experiences at affordable housing complexes run by four Edmonton housing providers.



COVID-19: Exclusive resources for service provider heroes

Families Canada is the national association of Family Support Centres. With a network of 500+ member agencies and thousands of frontline family service workers across Canada, they committed to providing leadership and support in the campaign for Canada’s children.

Families Canada has compiled resources for service providers to support families during COVID-19.



Making Safety Affordable: Intimate Partner Violence is an Asset-Building Issue

This brief explores three existing unmet needs that contribute to survivors’ inability to build wealth: money, tailored asset-building support, and safe and responsive banking and credit services. Within each identified need, specific issues facing survivors, strategic actions in response to those issues, as well as innovative ideas and existing promising practices to help funders take action to prioritize survivor wealth are discussed.



Serving Individuals With Disabilities – A Day in the Life of an American Job Center

The Disability and Employment eLearning Task Force in collaboration with the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) released three eLearning Training Modules to help support the professional development needs of the workforce development staff across the United States. 

The first module provide tools and resources to support front-line American Job Center staff effectively serve customers with disabilities, covering strategies for effective communication and interaction with individuals with disabilities.



Global Learning Partners: Shareable Resources

Global Learning Partners (GLP) helps individuals and organizations to learn by providing practical expertise in learning assessment, design, facilitation and evaluation.

Their shareable resources cover a variety of topics in learning, taking a learning-centered approach, including: Learning Design, Needs Assessment, Facilitation, Evaluation, and others.



Meeting the Emergency Moment: Key Takeaways from Delivering Remote Municipal Financial Counseling Services

Local governments across the United States are working to help their residents weather the health and financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In many cities and counties, that means deploying their Financial Empowerment Centers (FECs), which provide professional, one-on-one financial counseling as a public service. Local leaders were able to offer FEC financial counseling as a critical component of their emergency response infrastructure; the fact that this service already existed, and was embedded into the fabric of municipal anti-poverty efforts, meant that it could quickly pivot to meet new COVID-19 needs, including through offering remote financial counseling.

This brief describes how FEC partners identified the right technology; developed skills to deliver counseling remotely; messaged the availability of FEC services as part of their localities’ COVID-19 response; and shared lessons learned with their FEC counterparts around the country.



Five good ideas for remote client service work

Marco Campana shares his five good ideas for nonprofit organizations to connect deeply with their clients and communities and to start thinking about what their work might look like in the post-pandemic new normal.



Reaching Out: Improving the Canada Revenue Agency’s Community Volunteer Income Tax Program

The position of Taxpayers’ Ombudsman (the Ombudsman) was created to support the government priorities of stronger democratic institutions, increased transparency within institutions, and fair treatment. As an independent and impartial officer, the Ombudsman handles complaints about the service of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).

The Office of the Taxpayers’ Ombudsman hears first-hand the concerns of individuals, tax practitioners, and community support organizations. The Ombudsman visited with Community Volunteer Income Tax Program (CVITP) partner organizations, volunteers, and the Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) CVITP coordinators to learn more about the program and to understand the success stories and challenges they all experience. This report gives voice to what they have heard and provides recommendations on how to address the issues raised.



Consumer Perspectives on Fintech

This brief raises consumer perspectives on financial technology (fintech), and offers guidance for fintech developers on how to best serve low- to moderate-income clients.



2017 Bank On Data Pilot: Accessing Local Data

Bank On coalitions are locally-led partnerships between local public officials; city, state, and federal government agencies; financial institutions; and community organizations that work together to help improve the financial stability of unbanked and underbanked individuals and families in their communities. The CFE Fund’s Bank On national initiative builds on this grassroots movement, supporting local coalitions with strategic and financial support, as well as by liaising nationally with banking, regulatory, and nonprofit organization partners to expand banking access. This tool details the 2017 Bank On Data Pilot and includes instructions for accessing the local Bank On data at the city and zip code level.



Perspectives on Evaluation in Financial Education: Landscape, Issues, and Studies


Financial education plays an important role in guiding individuals to achieve their financial goals and contribute to the economic well-being of society as a whole. While the examination on the effectiveness of financial education has many factors to consider, the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) has taken measures to improve evaluation studies—both for the practitioner and the researcher. These actions include the conception of two documents what will assist in guiding practitioners and researchers in planning high-quality evaluations. The first is the Financial Education Evaluation Manual that is designed to support the evaluation of financial education programs by helping educators to understand the purpose and goals of evaluation, and to provide a basic understanding of the evaluation process. This information is designed for program managers, educators, and decision-makers, in traditional school settings or community-based programs/non-profit organizations, who are implementing financial education programs




An Evaluation of Financial Empowerment Centers Building People’s Financial Stability as a Public Service


This report provides information on the Financial Empowerment Center model, the people it served, the outcomes they achieved, the impact services had on nonprofit and city partners, and lessons learned for others looking to replicate or support this model. The evaluation was designed as a utilization-focused, foundational and exploratory study, aimed at creating an evaluation report that was useful to stakeholders. The report includes both qualitative and quantitative sources




Tax clinic planning for indigenous communities (2)


This webinar, "Planning a successful community tax clinic in Indigenous communities, Part 2," is the second in a 2-part series sharing information, community examples and promising practices with Ontario First Nation communities and Indigenous organizations to support the launch and planning of your own tax clinic that meets the needs of your community.

The speakers are:

  • Jocelyn Bebamikawe, Employment and Training Officer, Wii-ni n'guch-tood Employment & Training, Wikwemikong Unceeded Indian Reserve
  • Simon Brascoupé, Vice-President, Education and Training, AFOA Canada
  • Natasha McKenna, Program Officer, Prosper Canada
  • Jonathan Cheung and Vinoth Wimalanath, Canada Revenue Agency, Ontario Region

This is the webinar video recording. 

Read the presentation slides for the 'Tax clinic planning for indigenous communities' webinar.

 




Tax clinic planning for Indigenous communities (1)


This webinar, "Planning a successful community tax clinic in Indigenous communities (Part 1)," is part one of two webinars trainings which share information, community examples and promising practices from Ontario First Nation communities and Indigenous organizations. This training will support the launch and planning of your own tax clinic that meets the needs of your community. Speakers are:

  • Jocelyn Bebamikawe, Employment and Training Officer, Wii-ni n'guch-tood Employment & Training, Wikwemikong Unceeded Indian Reserve
  • Simon Brascoupé, Vice-President, Education and Training, AFOA Canada
  • Natasha McKenna, Program Officer, Prosper Canada; Jonathan Cheung
  • Vinoth Wimalanath, Canada Revenue Agency, Ontario Region.

Read the presentation slides from this webinar.

View Part 2 in this webinar series.

 




Indigenous financial wellness in Canada


This webinar, "Indigenous financial wellness in Canada," introduces an Indigenous financial wellness framework, identifies some of the key barriers and opportunities for building financial wellness in Indigenous communities, and highlights evidence-based best practices for building financial wellness. The webinar focuses on promising practices and considerations for the implementation and delivery of community financial wellness services. The speakers are:

  • Elizabeth Mulholland, CEO of Prosper Canada 
  • Simon Brascoupé, Vice President, Education and Training of AFOA Canada. 

Read the presentation slides for this webinar.




From Financial Literacy to Financial Action

Recommendation on Principles and Good Practices for Financial Education and Awareness

Big Money: Structuring Minor’s Trust Programs for Native Communities


This manual is intended to help tribal leaders and their attorneys, financial advisors, and money managers in Native communities in the US think about innovative ways to structure minor’s trust programs. It turns out there are a lot of simple things that can be done to help kids make good decisions when they get their Big Money.


Practical guidance for scaling up health service innovations

Increasing saving at tax time and promising practices for the field

United Way Evaluation Resources


The package has three parts: 1. A series of ten brief evaluation backgrounders that introduce and explore key evaluation topics and terminology; 2. A directory of evaluation resources focusing on technical aspects of evaluation; and 3. A directory of evaluation training options available to organizations based in the Greater Toronto Area. Evaluation is an ever-changing field. In order to make sure the information in this package remains useful, UWTYR staff will review and update the materials every year.


A Random Control Trial of Financial Coaching: The Practitioners’ Overview of “An Evaluation of the Impacts and Implementation Approaches of Financial Coaching Programs”

Mapping momentum: A snapshot of the emerging field of systems change

Promoting Competency, Self Care and Team Care

Financial Empowerment: Proven Strategies for Reducing Poverty in Ontario

Social Entrepreneurship: Social Impact Metrics

DE 201 – A Practitioner’s Guide to Developmental Evaluation

Train the Trainer: Adult Learning Principles

Expiring Operating Agreements: A Planning Guide for Ontario’s Former Federal Housing Programs


Welcome to the first in a series of planning guides on the Expiry of Operating Agreements. Housing Services Corporation has been working for a number of years on the issue of expiring agreements. We see this Guide as a living document. We hope that this Guide will become a trusted resource for you not only for the information it contains, which will be kept up to date, but also as we continue to add links to new resources based on work being done by the various organizations that operate in this sector. In addition to the range of information contained in the Guide, the online version allows you to link to additional resources which have been prepared or collected by Housing Services Corporation.


System Mapping: A Guide to Developing Actor Maps

Guide to Ecocycle Mapping

Tools for Development: A handbook for those engaged in development activity

Financial Literacy: Lessons from International Experience

Tracking Financial Capability – Identify and Prioritize Your Expected Outcomes

Increasing Financial Well-Being through Integration: Gaining and Retaining Employment

Highlights of The Case for Financial Literacy

Practical Evaluation Strategies for Building a Body of Proven-Effective Social Programs – Suggestions for Research and Program Funders

Family Strengthening Through Integration and Scaling of Asset-Building Strategies