The National Financial Empowerment Champions (NFEC) Project supported leading non-profit community organizations and their local partners to develop, implement and scale proven financial empowerment (FE) interventions across Canada with the aim of improving the financial well-being of over one...

Financial stress is the root cause of many adverse health outcomes among poor and low-income children and their families, yet few clinical interventions have been developed to improve health by directly addressing patient and family finances. Medical-Financial Partnerships (MFPs) are novel...

Amidst the COVID-19 lockdown, community service agencies across Canada have had to rapidly adapt the way they engage and support people in the community. ​ A growing number of Canadians need (or soon will need) support as they deal with the financial strain brought on by an unprecedented global...

This report was originally developed to support the work of Feeding America and its member food banks in exploring interventions that support households’ economic well-being. Such strategies can be valuable not only for organizations serving households facing food insecurity, but for agencies and...

During 2020, alternative approaches to the traditional community tax clinic model have become even more valuable as COVID-19 lockdown measures prevented in-person program delivery. In response to the growing demand for alternative ways to deliver tax-filing support Prosper Canada partnered with...

Fair By Design and Turn2Us (in the United Kingdom) commissioned this research to explore recent changes in the poverty premium landscape, to understand if they are having any impact on the cost of premiums, or the number of people who pay them. Importantly, we did this through the lens of the...

Human insights are used when designing programs and improving services through understanding clients’ hidden preferences, environment factors and behaviors. The Human Insights Tools from Prosperity Now are intended to take you through the process of discovering opportunities for innovation from...

Since 2017, the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness and A Way Home Canada have been implementing and evaluating three program models that are situated across the continuum of prevention, in 10 communities and 12 sites in Ontario and Alberta. Among these is an early intervention called Youth...

This website shares tools, tutorials, and resources on service design. The tools will help you prepare for different stages of the service design process, think through who to engage and how, and plan or improve a service. Includes templates for tools such as empathy maps, personas, service...

Grantmakers and practitioners recognize the importance of financial security for individuals and families, and many organizations therefore offer financial capability programs aimed at strengthening the financial well-being of the people they serve. But good financial capability programs are often...

This guide is designed to be a resource for programs working with low income families to use when anticipating or implementing a new approach, such as coaching, to doing business. It helps you to systematically – and honestly – look at your foundational readiness for change, so that the...

There are many different ways to deliver financial empowerment programs. Financial literacy education, financial coaching, and matched savings programs can be successfully delivered independently, with successful outcomes for participants. They can also be blended together to accomplish several...

This brief discusses the savings penalties in public assistance programs in the United States, also known as asset limits, and that actions that can be taken to eliminate these limits and the barriers towards building savings for families living on low...

This brief uses the experiences of participants in a service design process called the Savings Innovation Learning Cluster (SILC) to gather key insights into client perspectives and how it can be used to better program design. Four human insights research and design methods are explored—client...

This document is a “how to” guide for planning and implementing evaluation activities. The manual, based on Centers for Disease Control and Preventions's Framework for Program Evaluation in Public Health, is intended to assist managers and staff of public, private, and community public...

This one-hour webinar shares insights on why service design is so valuable for organizations and businesses, and what is involved in the service design process. The purpose of this webinar is to introduce you to what service design is, how it works, and what elements of service design you can take...

In early 2018, Enterprise Community Partners (Enterprise) began a pilot program, Enterprise Community Plus (EC+), to provide financial capability services to residents in two neighborhoods in New York City. Enterprise is a nonprofit housing developer seeking to create opportunity for low- and...

Because of the key role that financial education can play in people’s lives, the CFPB has conducted research over its first five years into what makes financial education effective for consumers. What do we mean by “effective?” It does not just mean training that helps people perform better...

This report is a three-year evaluation of the Financial Empowerment Center initiative’s replication in 5 cities (Denver, CO; Lansing, MI; Nashville, TN; Philadelphia, PA and San Antonio, TX). Financial Empowerment Centers (FECs) offer professional, one-on-one financial counseling as a free...

This overview summarizes the Financial Empowerment Center (FEC) model’s Counselor Training Standards. The Standards delineate the breadth and depth of the financial content areas, counseling and coaching skills, practice and experiential learning, and socio-economic and cultural context setting...

This is a one-hour webinar on matched savings programs and personal savings strategies that work for people living on low incomes. Our panelists share experiences from their programs in Ontario and Calgary. The presenters in this webinar are: Dean Estrella, Momentum, Calgary, AB John...

This comprehensive resource from Prosperity Now supports organizations in developing a participant-centered financial coaching program. Grounded in a field survey, over 100 interviews, expert advice and beta-testing with six new financial coaching programs, the Coaching Guide highlights the...