Discover financial empowerment resources
Discover financial empowerment resources
The Prosperity Now Scorecard is a comprehensive resource featuring data on family financial health and policy recommendations to help put all U.S. households on a path to prosperity. The Scorecard equips advocates, policymakers and practitioners with national, state, and local data to...

Prosperity Now has created state-level Cost-of-Living profiles as new features on their Scorecard website. The Prosperity Now Cost of Living profiles provide a comprehensive look at the financial stability of every person living in the United States. Each state profile can be downloaded and used to...

This is the slide deck from a webinar by Community Action Partnership for the CFED, on the racial wealth divide and the challenge of wealth building for families of color in the United States. Racial Inequality has always had economic inequality at its foundation....
Program strategies grounded in an understanding of your community can increase the likelihood of engagement and follow-through. The following resources are intended to support VITA programs with implementation strategies at key program stages, like outreach and intake, and offer examples of how...

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...

These calls, featuring guest practitioners, cover a variety of topics most pressing to the financial coaching field, provide useful tips and resources and serve as a peer-learning platform. Topics include: Financial Coaching Program Design Guide (2/28) - The Role of Financial...

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...

Tax time financial capability services offered at Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) sites range from encouraging taxpayers to save a portion of their refund to free credit reviews, to referrals to financial coaching, and others in between. This report from Prosperity Now summarizes research...

This is Prosperity Now’s Taxpayer Opportunity Network VITA Volunteer Training platform, designed to help VITA volunteers (in the United States) train and become certified to provide free tax preparation services. These resources can provide a complete training or supplement the training offered...

This is a three-part webinar series exploring how practitioners, policymakers, and product developers are supporting the diverse savings needs of LMI households during the ongoing crisis. Solutions that help families save flexibly for short, intermediate, and/or long-term goals that address their...

This report explores the behaviors and outcomes related to savings and financial well-being of low- and moderate-income (LMI) tax filers in the United States. Findings from research conducted by Prosperity Now, the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis and SaverLife...

The following profile presents data on the economic inequalities within New Orleans. These statistics may seem overwhelming. However, we know with more information about the challenges of racial economic inequality, there is greater opportunity to identify best practices and policies that can...
These are the webinar slides from the CFED webinar on asset limits and savings possibilities for Americans on social assistance. The webinar highlights findings from 3 research studies that explore asset limits and household financial security; discusses policy changes to asset limits and their...
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, there are 20 million youth ages 16 to 24 participating in the American workforce, many of them in municipal workforce and employment programs. While some of these local programs offer financial education workshops, many young workforce program participants...
Inclusive retirement savings policies build the means for a safe post‐work future and the chance to pass a little more stability on to the next generation, a goal often believed to be far out of reach for low‐ and moderate‐income families. While wages and the ability to cover day‐to‐day...
Many public benefit programs – such as cash welfare and Medicaid – limit eligibility to those with few or no assets. If individuals or families have assets exceeding the state’s limit, they must “spend down” longer-term savings in order to receive what is often short-term public...
For generations, federal policies have helped Americans build assets. Millions of individuals and households have taken advantage of these policies to plan for the future, buy homes, prepare for retirement, send their children to college, and weather unexpected financial storms. Today – through a...
This is a Presentation showing several different frameworks for assets and financial capability, collected by the CFED. This includes the Household Financial Security framework, the Financial Capability Lifecycle, Road to Economic Security, and...
CFED has developed a Household Financial Security Framework to help us think through what it takes, at the household level, to build financial security over time. Reducing poverty and achieving financial security and empowerment is a dynamic process in which households iteratively gain skills,...
While the progress of the IDA field to date has surprised even its most ardent supporters, its potential in the coming years is greater. We think this progress stems from two fundamental strengths: first, asset equity is an idea whose time has come; and second, individuals and institutions from all...
Last year, the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) helped to lift nearly four million children out of poverty and provided economic relief to millions of struggling households. However, many first-time and lapsed filers from underserved and vulnerable populations missed out on these critical benefits....

This is a presentation given at the CFED Assets Learning Conference in 2014. The session objectives were that by the end of the session, participants will have: Shared what type of organization they work with and your experience with integration; Named for yourself how you want to integrate or...
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....

The COVID-19 pandemic has already had an unprecedented impact on the financial lives of households across the United States. During June and July 2020, Prosperity Now conducted a national survey of lower-income households to better understand the circumstances these households are confronted with...

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...
