EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In 2016, The Financial Clinic (“the Clinic”) launched its first Financial Security Ecosystem: WorkBOOST NYC. The goal of this unique collaboration was to support sector-leading workforce development organizations in New York City to embed financial security strategies into their existing service-delivery models. Borrowing a popular metaphor from the high-tech sector, “business ecosystems” leverage the power of connections, collaborations, and continuous evolution to create and capture new value. The Financial Security Ecosystem (“Ecosystem”) is designed to advance not only the Clinic’s vision and its partners’ unique missions, but the anti-poverty field as a whole.
WorkBOOST NYC included a complete bundle of the Clinic’s best practices and services and was designed to seamlessly combine with partners’ existing programs through capacity building, direct service, and lasting change—all connected through the Clinic’s cloud-based financial coaching platform, Change Machine. Combining customer-level financial data, workforce development outcome data, and qualitative insights from WorkBOOST NYC partners, this report demonstrates the positive impact of integrating financial security strategies into workforce development programs. In addition, it captures the key characteristics and high-impact practices that help providers of workforce services succeed at integrating financial security services. The Clinic is proud to contribute these results to the growing body of evidence demonstrating the value of financial security strategies to a broad range of workforce organizations.