In 2020, West Neighbourhood House in Toronto received a grant to build a data platform that financial coaches can use to longitudinally track participants’ savings, debt, net worth, credit scores, and progress towards financial goals over time. Their hope was to make the case to funders that an investment in an FTE working one-on-one in relationship with 100 people on financial in year in a year would have a greater, and more measurable impact, than traditional funding for FTEs to have a broader reach to 1,000+ people annually in transactional “financial literacy” interventions, but few ways to measure effectiveness of the intervention.

Since then the scope has grown to incorporate so much more.

  • Financial coaching allows for relationships to develop based on trust. This trust allows for longitudinal outcomes tracking. When integrated into workforce training, entrepreneurship, newcomer supports, housing, healthcare, higher education, and more, can have the effect of reducing financial volatility in the participants household, allow them to better succeed in the program where coaching Is Integrated.

  • We introduced a wellbeing survey to track associations between money and health. This customizable survey is administered at intervals to look at associations between financial and program outcomes in relation to stress, social capital, social connectedness, mental health, and more.

  • The platform is built with FHIR interoperability standards. In theory, an ecosystem could track wellbeing outcomes in the platform, and with strong privacy and data sharing agreements and permissions from participants, share data with health systems to compare social interventions with medical interventions. For example, tracking reductions In stress and hypertension through income supports and surveys vs. medical interventions.

  • Ultimately, this platform and the evaluation tools will support individual to have ownership over how data is entered and who can see it. Communities can use these models and tools to develop and track information important to them and their own stakeholders, if they choose.

  • By 2025, or sooner with additional funding, the platform will allow participants to login themselves through an online portal to access or add their information from anywhere. This holds much potential for exploring how data is managed and moved, and how this platform can transform the intake process for the sector.

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