This year marks the 35th anniversary since the passing of the unanimous all-party federal resolution to end child poverty in Canada by the year 2000. Using tax filer data from 2022, the latest available, this year’s report card found a troubling trend: child poverty increased at record rates two...

This self-paced online course will help you learn about behavioural insights and how they can help you increase impact in simple, practical ways. In this self-paced learning experience, you will learn foundational skills and tools that you can apply immediately to your work, creating a long-lasting...

By most measures of economic success—whether it be income, education, wealth or employment—Asian Americans are doing well in the United States, both when compared to other communities of color as well to White households. But while these measures of success are noteworthy, the way they are...

In 2020, The Behavioural Insights Team partnered with United Way and Oak Park Neighbourhood Centre to develop and test an email intervention to increase participation in tax filing clinics. An "active choice" email (sample email) significantly increased response rate and attendance to virtual...

This report presents the findings of the process evaluation of the Financial Coaching pilot, a part of the Financial Empowerment Collaborative in Calgary. In documenting the procedures and early thoughts of participating programs on the implementation of this pilot project, we assessed how well...

Most community-based organizations are accustomed to managing scarce resources, which may discourage them from delivering additional services. However, partnering with other organizations to provide services allows service providers to tap into existing resources and infrastructure instead of...

When money is tight, consumers often pay bills in a way that makes the problem worse, with late fees, penalties, and higher interest rates. Research shows that consumers have many reasons for their actions. To gain insight into why it’s so hard for consumers to organize and manage their financial...

Sometimes we set new goals, have changes in income, or switch priorities in our lives. Making a plan is the easiest way to navigate these changes. You wouldn’t start a road trip without mapping it out first, and the same is true with your finances. This guide will help you gain a clear view of...

Surveys are a great way to answer some of the questions you have about the people you serve and their thoughts and feelings about the services you provide. Surveys can help you decide which new services will have the greatest impact on your clients and help you evaluate the impact of your existing...

This report estimates the price of inaction. Regardless of the strategy used to address poverty, it asks, “What does it cost us to allow poverty to persist in Toronto?” It estimates how much more we may be spending in the health care and justice systems simply because poverty exists, and how...

A lack of emergency savings renders low-income households vulnerable to material hardships resulting from unexpected expenses or loss of income. Having emergency savings helps these households respond to unexpected events, maintain consumption, and avoid high-cost credit products. Because many...

Drive through a low-income neighborhood in virtually any American city and it quickly becomes apparent that the area’s financial health is at risk. The giveaway? The abundance of payday lenders. According to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, there are now more than 20,000 of these organizations...

In the ongoing national debate over economic opportunity and rising inequality, one important factor is consistently overlooked—the price of housing in elite urban cores. Kotkin’s essay deepens our understanding of inequality and challenges the conventional wisdom about how and where we should...

The rise of economic inequality has become a staple of policy debates and stump speeches. Less visible is the way the rise has altered the landscape of America’s urban neighborhoods. Two books should help change that. Matthew Desmond, an urban sociologist at Harvard, has delivered a jolt with...

Using data gathered from the previous three censuses (2011, 2006, 2001) United Way/Centraide Windsor-Essex County, in partnership with the Great Lakes Institute of Environmental Research (GLIER), has mapped a number of the socio-economic indicators that have shaped Windsor and Essex County. Over...

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has unveiled its latest savings tool. “my Retirement Account”—myRA for short—is a retirement savings account designed for individuals who may not have access to a saving plan through their employers. It costs nothing to open a myRA account, and there...

In order to provide practitioners and researchers with a standard, reliable, and broadly available way to measure individual financial well-being, the CFPB led a rigorous research effort to develop a consumer-driven definition of financial well-being, and then tested a set of questions–a...

System mapping is a process often cited in social change literature as an effective way to infuse systems thinking into strategy development and evaluation efforts. However, there is a dearth of practical “how to” guides to help stakeholders apply the principles of systems thinking to their...

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,...

Toronto is facing a big problem. As access to opportunity is increasingly out of reach for too many that live here, the reputation of “Toronto the Good” is being compromised. Because of the concentration of poverty, declining job quality and rising income inequality, we are seeing that Toronto...

A well-designed logic model can provide the foundation to support your efforts to collect the data necessary to answer important questions about the performance of the program. A logic model can be developed and formatted in many ways. In this document, we are not prescribing the “best...

Consumers of financial products and services need both a safe, transparent marketplace, and the financial capability to navigate that marketplace effectively. This report describe initial research funded by the CFPB into how people acquire financial capability, to inform financial education and...

The Career Empowerment Curriculum was designed by Women Employed and The Allstate Foundation particularly for survivors of domestic violence. The curriculum helps them feel safe and confident throughout the process of getting a job, to help them elevate their thinking from “just getting a job”...

This paper offers an overview of the Financial Advocacy and Problem-Solving (FAPS) model as it has grown and evolved over the past five years of funding by the United Way Toronto Financial Literacy Strategy. The aim is to frame our evaluation efforts and to promote an understanding of the FAPS...

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...