donaterelief.org

Problem being solved

Vulnerable populations are disproportionately impacted by disasters, and specifically this pandemic we’re all facing. The social safety net in its current state will still not be enough for many, and they may find it even harder to find a job once shelter-in-place has been lifted.

Social service workers, across local nonprofits and governments, know their clients’ needs better than us. This we know. Their job already involves offering resources and doing whatever it takes to help their clients land a job.

And this often includes removing barriers that slow them down, or bring their job search to a halt.

Securing mental health services, having a means to get to a job interview, and paying for childcare while attending training-- while many of us may take for granted the fact that these are affordable and easily attainable-- social workers in the workforce development space know this is not so for the clients they are close to.

Service providers may know a client well enough that if they had the means to pay for these supportive services, they’d find employment sooner, and with less stress.

Often, they simply don’t have the resources to fund these needs like transportation, childcare, and temporary shelter.

Solution

Empower social workers, caseworkers, and front-line staff who already regularly support vulnerable populations focused on finding employment, by delivering a system of direct cash relief. These providers normally offer high-touch, in-person services across numerous communities and neighborhoods. We’d like to collaborate and research with them to explore ways of delivering resources to the people they serve, while potentially remote.

Rather than take a heavy-handed approach, where someone in need is required to jump through demanding hoops in order to be eligible for social services, we’d like to offer a pipeline of cash that allows workforce development administrators to directly assist the unemployed, unconditionally, and with no strings attached.

Tracks

Communities; Vulnerable Populations

Next Steps and Execution Plan

Because we’re focused on testing a potentially scalable model, we’d like to partner with local workforce development organizations or nonprofits who value measurable outcomes. Then we’d like to work directly with front-line staff in these organizations to jointly pilot a workflow for delivering cash to them (tied to payments technology), so that they can use our funding to remove common barriers to employment for underserved and vulnerable populations, like transportation, childcare, mental health services, and securing professional attire. The pilot may involve researching a way to order and deliver resources while remote. The lessons, feedback, and outcomes from this pilot would be used to potentially expand the program into other social service sectors. Ultimately, we’d like to test the hypothesis: does direct cash assistance shorten the time it takes for a job seeker coming from a vulnerable population to land a job.

Path Forward

We’d like to solicit donations, piggybacking off of the recently passed stimulus and popularity tied to Universal Basic Income, in order to fund the program. These donors would receive updates specifically on how their cash is being used. (Donors would not have a say in how their cash will be used specifically, other than the fact we’re focusing on vulnerable populations.)

Necessary Resources

Cash funding for workforce development administrators to cover the needs of their clients
Marketing to raise cash and awareness
User research (time) to deeply understand how technology can be used to empower front-line staff, especially if they want to deliver resources to their clients remotely.
Funding to cover the technology to deliver notifications to donors when and how their cash is being used to help remove barriers

How product incorporates feedback

We’d like to collaboratively measure outcomes with social workers and caseworkers we partner with, in order to observe the impact of direct cash assistance. We’re also creating a feedback loop between donors and their recipients that allows them to thank and offer continuous support.