Our Research
Commonwealth conducts original qualitative and quantitative research with financially vulnerable people—including Black, Latinx, and women-led households who disproportionately experience financial insecurity. We also interview industry experts and academics. We take what we learn and translate findings into actionable insights and practical solutions designed to change systems to work better for financially vulnerable people. We work with community groups, employers, financial services firms, fintechs, policymakers, and workplace solution providers to design and test real-world, practical solutions that not only work for individuals and families, but are also scalable and address the business needs of our partners.
We share the results of our work to provide you with innovative ideas, practical insights, and the tools you need to act. Explore our publications below.
Parents and Caregivers Saving for Today and the Future
Playing the Savings Game: A Prize-Linked Savings Report
This report shows how, in just three years, prize-linked savings (PLS) products in Michigan & Nebraska credit unions have accumulated over $40 million in savings. PLS leverages behavioral principles to invigorate saving, a traditionally difficult and mundane activity, by rewarding…
Gamifying College Readiness and Financial Literacy
D2D Fund partnered with BlackSmith LLC andRegions Bank to launch SummerQuest: Birmingham, a college readiness and financial literacy program aimed at high school students throughout the city of Birmingham, AL in the Summer 2012. With this program, Financial Entertainment expanded…
Emergency Gift Cards: Commoditizing Savings with Prepaid Cards
D2D Fund has designed an emergency gift card to test a new way of reaching consumers with a short-term savings product by incorporating the following insights: a) consumers like to gift savings to their loved ones and as seen with…
2012 Savings Bond Report
The 2012 Savings Bonds Report provides summary data on the third year of the Tax Time Savings Bond policy, in which over 35,000 people saved $20.3 million in savings bonds. The report also makes the case for the need to…
Product Innovation to Help LMI Consumers
With little reseach on financial tools to help households prepare for financial emergencies, Doorways to Dreams Fund designed a survey to understand LMI consumers perceptions of and experiences with emergencies and their insights into product design features that will help…
2011 PLS Summit Conference Paper
On November 18, 2011, over 80 individuals from an array of sectors, including financial services, public policy, government, academia, nonprofits, and start-ups, gathered in Boston, MA for the first-ever prize-linked savings (PLS) conference. Brought together by Doorways to Dreams (D2D)…
Prize-Linked Savings And Financially Vulnerable Americans
Prize-linked savings (PLS) products hold great promise as a tool for improving savings outcomes for financially vulnerable Americans. In early 2011, Doorways to Dreams (D2D) Fund commissioned a panel survey of low-to-moderate income (LMI) households in five states. The objectives…
2011 Savings Bond Report
Converting opportunity to impact was the central challenge for the Doorways to Dreams (D2D) Fund and the Savings Bond Working Group (SBWG) as we entered tax season 2011. The result was the Bonds Make it Easy national social marketing campaign,…
Everyone Can Save: Building Savings One Bond At A Time
The promising results of the first year of the Savings Bond Tax Time policy only confirm our growing conviction that U.S. Savings Bonds are a good product for new and small savers and that linking the opportunity to tax-time provides…
Save to Win 2009
This paper reports on the outstanding results of the Save to Win Pilot- 2009. The results of this unique demonstration confirm our growing conviction that a well designed and implemented prize-linked savings product will appeal to consumers and generate new…