Investing in Flourishing aims to transform investment in youth by bringing a sustained flow of commercial capital for communities to invest in flourishing outcomes. We are working to unlock significant investment to pay for a high-impact portfolio of actions that help ensure every youth and their families flourish and succeed from before birth to young adulthood.

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Mission

To address the “missing market” for youth well-being by creating a transformed system in health and social services that places a financial value on flourishing and drives widespread opportunity to thrive.

Vision

To flip America’s health and human services funding paradigm into one that successfully invests in lifting up America’s youth, we seek to increase the upstream financing of the Vital Conditions of health & well-being, including integrated, holistic, youth- and family-centered programs and neighborhood-level opportunities that enable youth and their families to flourish.

Overview

In late 2023, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York launched a “Missing Markets” project, including what has become the Investing in Flourishing Initiative. The Investing in Flourishing Initiative was introduced at the NY Fed’s second annual Making Missing Markets convening in late 2024. Over 2025 and early 2026, IIF and its leading demonstration sites are completing detailed plans and seeking resources for comprehensive tests of change of the IIF model. In late 2025, demonstrations are underway in OH and MD, and IIF was featured again at the Making Missing Markets annual event.

In these excerpts from the 2024 Making Missing Markets conference, David Erickson, senior vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, presents the context and key MMM themes and John Williams, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, describes who the initiative fits into the overall mission of the Bank to result in an economy that works for everyone.

Otho Kerr III, director of strategic partnerships and community impact investing at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, introduces Tyler Norris, MDiv, and Leslie Walker MD (IIF co-conveners), who present an overview of Investing in Flourishing.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Making Missing Markets initiative is focused on fostering and improving markets channeling investments into under-resourced communities. By engaging with local practitioners, it seeks to develop strategies that help connect new sources of capital to community needs and solutions, scale existing sources of capital for communities, and connect previously unlinked buyers and sellers of services and products that address critical community challenges.