What are the core tenets of the Financial 

Empowerment Center Model?

• People in financial trouble need individualized help, not just education, to empower 

them to address complex financial challenges.

• Those helping people with their finances must be professionally trained and offer 

quality services

• Financial counseling serves a critical public need, and local government oversight 

provides for accountability and success.

• Because financial instability impacts the need for, and success of, other social services, 

strategic counseling referrals or integration partnerships are important.

Financial Empowerment Centers provide professional, one-on-one

financial counseling as a free city service available to all residents to 

improve their financial lives. First developed by Mayor Michael R. 

Bloomberg’s administration in New York City, and now being replicated 

thanks to generous support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Cities 

for Financial Empowerment Fund is partnering with cities across the 

country and beyond to build sustainable, ultimately government-funded 

public programs. A recent evaluation of the FEC model, drawing on

data from 22,000 clients who participated in 57,000 counseling sessions 

across the first 5 city replication partners, provides additional evidence 

of the program’s success.

 1 http://www.urban.org/research/publication/delinquent-debt-america

Financial Empowerment Centers

of Americans 

have a debt 

in collections.1

Rather than offering them 

financial literacy, what if they 

could receive free, high-quality, one-on-one financial counseling...as a free city service?

Average number of 

sessions per client

Helping Low Income Residents

Build Financial Stability and Changing 

Anti-Poverty Services in Cities

One-on-One

Counseling

Returning for multiple sessions was critical

for financial outcome achievement

Counseling

Session

How do Financial Empowerment Center

Counselors Work with Clients?

First session: conducting comprehensive assessment of client’s finances, understanding 

client issues and mutually identifying financial goals and service plan, beginning to create 

a budget, setting client follow up steps, and scheduling the next appointment.

Subsequent sessions: Follow up based on service plan, revise budget, pull and review credit 

report, negotiate with creditors, develop payment plans, and explore bank account options. 

2.5

35%
Establish 

Credit

Reduce

Debt 

Asset 

Building

Safe

What are Accountable Measures of Banking Success for Financial Empowerment 

Centers?

Counselors work with clients to help them achieve meaningful,

quantifiable outcomes:

• Banking: Open or transition to a safe and affordable bank account 

• Credit: Establish a credit score 

• Credit: Increase credit score by 35+ points 

• Debt: Decrease non-mortgage debt by 10%+ 

• Savings: Increase savings by 2%+ of annual income

Anecdotally, clients also said that financial counseling helped 

them discuss money more effectively with partners and 

children, reduced their stress and improved emotional 

health, and enabled them to develop decision-making and 

negotiating skills.

How are Financial Empowerment Centers 

Growing as a Public Service Movement?

The Financial Empowerment Center initiative already has helped tens of 

thousands of clients across the country demonstrably become more 

financially stable; has been sustainably embedded in the fabric of numerous 

cities’ services; and has meaningfully changed the way that partner cities 

deliver antipoverty services. Beyond the first five replication city partners, 

the CFE Fund already is providing technical assistance to nearly a dozen 

additional cities, as well as two foreign countries.

How Do Financial Empowerment

Centers Impact City Services?

The experience of cities implementing the FEC initiative reflects meaningful change 

in the way cities and their nonprofit partners approached anti-poverty programs and 

policies. Organizations appreciated their new capacity to work with clients on critical 

financial issues that affected their long-term goals while addressing urgent needs. 

FECs also expanded municipal governments’ commitment to financial inclusion: 

all five initial replication cities secured public dollars to sustain FEC counseling, 

including federal funding, and three of them also opened entire new Offices of 

Financial Empowerment.

Over 70,000FEC clients

increased their

savings by almost $9M

and reduced their 

debt by more than $83M

Contact the CFE Fund

to learn how your city can 

join this critical movement, 

to receive our FEC 

evaluation report, or just 

to join our mailing list.

www.cfefund.org • info@cfefund.org