Blog

2022 Year in Review

It is truly hard to believe that it has been a whole year since we sent out our 2021 Year in Review. So much in our world and work has shifted over the past few years and sometimes it feels like we are moving at lightning speed. But as we look back on this year, we cannot help but be grateful.

We moved deeper into our resident-centered advocacy work, building out fellowships to support residents in their own advocacy and leadership journeys and providing opportunities for residents to share their stories with lawmakers, in policy papers, and with community leaders. We expanded our cash work beyond The Magnolia Mother’s Trust to provide cash disbursements to families affected by the Jackson Water Crisis honoring our residents’ voices who said it was cash, not material donations, that would support them more in emergencies. We expanded our footprint and continued to be recognized as national and local leader on cash disbursements and developing community-centered programming.

And there’s so much more in store for 2023 – including Springboard’s 10th birthday, which we will be celebrating all year long. We are so grateful to count you as a partner on this journey and look forward to continuing forward together. But for now, take some time with us to celebrate all that happened in this past year.

Finding Holistic Prosperity

As a part of our radically resident-driven philosophy, we are always trying to listen to the voices of our residents and adjust accordingly as unexpected circumstances and changes become apparent in their lives. This was especially key in the spring of 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic first descended on the country.

While we’ve talked a lot about our economic security responses during that time, the pandemic brought additional trauma into communities that were already experiencing the trauma of poverty and long-standing consequences of systemic racism in the United States. As residents worried about the health and safety of their families, experienced less time for themselves and their own needs, and became increasingly isolated from friends, family, and other relationships, residents expressed a need for mental health support and a trusted community to lean on in the midst of crisis, even if they were already receiving cash benefits.

When we talk about prosperity, we often link it simply to economic security. But we started wondering what would happen if we expanded our definition to recognize the importance of mental health and wellness in helping families thrive.

What if having trusted community and support during a crisis mattered just as much as cash? What would it look like for families to experience holistic prosperity beyond just financial prosperity?

These were some of the questions that we set out to answer as a part of Ascend at the Aspen Institute’s Family Prosperity Innovation Community. We worked alongside mental health experts and residents to co-create a self-care toolkit and program intended to support growth, healing, and leadership amongst participants we came to call the MISS Program. As a part of this program, participants reported on metrics comparable to those used in the evaluation of The Magnolia Mother’s Trust to help us better understand if there were ways self-care and mental health supports could support families in ways that cash does not.

And today, we are proud to share with you our final report summarizing the findings from this initiative. Highlights include decreases in difficulty with mood and mental health, less reported days feeling worried or anxious, improved physical health, and more healthy coping mechanisms. The full report is available below. We hope you find time to read it through. Beyond the initial statistics are quotes and stories from families finding hope and community, comparisons to our guaranteed income evaluation findings, and recommendations for cash policies and guaranteed income pilots.

Our mission has always been to help families reach their goals in all aspects of their lives. And with programs like MISS, families can take one more step toward holistic prosperity.

Cash in Crisis

In October, we announced that in response to the ongoing Jackson water crisis, we would be providing all families in our multifamily Jackson communities with $150 each month for six months to help cover the additional costs families were incurring due to continued water outages and unsafe drinking water. The last of these six month payments was disbursed this month and based on the feedback and evaluation of the program, we heard one big thing: cash works.

When asked “in times of crisis, which type of support is most helpful?,” 70% of respondents in the communities said cash. 17% preferred in-kind donations, while 13% had no preference.

When asked more about why they felt this way, the answer was clear – cash provides agency, choice, and the ability to deal with all the effects of a crisis, not just the obvious ones like not having water.

“With cash, you have options.”

Residents often cited the importance of being able to choose for themselves. Some talked about having delayed paying utility bills or other household necessities so that they could stock up on water. These participants were able to use the cash assistance toward their utility bills or rent. Another participant said she used the funds to pay her internet bill as schools were forced to close when they had no water and students needed WiFi to participate in virtual learning from home.

Others talked about using the funds to put gas in their car to make it to water distribution sites or drive to other towns to find water, especially when the shelves in stores in Jackson were empty. Still others cited that donated food – a necessity since residents were unable to cook with the water they had – often contains ingredients their families could not consume because of allergies or restrictions. Having cash allowed them to pick out items that they knew were safe and appropriate for their household.

“I could go shopping for my own personal needs and not have to wait in line and drive from site to site for assistance.”

“It allows me the freedom to allocate the assistance as I see fit.”

“Cash gives me the opportunity to budget and make sure I get everything.”

“It helps me pay on my high bills for having to boil my water in the kitchen where I don’t have hot water. This runs my light bill up high. I also can buy a few groceries with what is left over.”

“Because with cash I could, if I needed to, relocate. Go to a different county and pay for a room, or stay with a friend and help with her utilities while I’m there. Transportation to and from school or work.”

“Because during a crisis we need help in all ways and with cash it could help for anything that we are lacking.”

“We are able to get the things we need without all the stress and fear of not having what we need for our household.”

A crisis never just affects one part of a family’s life; it affects everything. Providing cash acknowledges this and trusts our residents to know better than anyone else what they need to care for their family through that crisis. When everything around someone feels like it is falling apart, cash gives back a bit of agency and stability. And that is what every family deserves, despite economic circumstances, in any crisis.

The MMT Alumni Report is Here!

It has been an incredible past week here at Springboard To Opportunities.

Last week, we hosted our annual Night of Storytelling. Four of our Magnolia Mother’s Trust moms, Shaquille, Yamiracle, Anquoindria, and Sequaya, bravely shared a piece of their story with all of us in the audience.

They were beautiful stories of their journeys with motherhood, finding independence and agency, and dreaming of creating better futures for their children. They spoke of the ways that receiving the funds from MMT changed their lives, but even more importantly, they talked about the experiences and opportunities that had changed them.

They were able to be the mothers that they had always wanted to be – spending more time with their children, celebrating birthdays, and enrolling children in extracurricular activities. They built community with other people in the program and saw they were not alone. Their children grew in their confidence and social skills as they played on sports teams or visited museums and other parts of the country for the first time.

At the event, we also officially released our Magnolia Mother’s Trust Alumni Study. This study engaged with mothers from the first three cohorts of The Magnolia Mother’s Trust and their children. While we have always documented and shared the experiences of mothers as they took part in the 12 months of the program, we also wanted to understand the lasting changes that continued beyond that year for both the mothers and their children.

And our alumni report shows that MMT had a lasting positive impact on parenting efficacy, parent-child relationships, and children’s mental health, just like we heard our storytellers shared last week.

When most people talk about guaranteed income, they are only interested in hearing about economic markers of success. And while these are important and a part of our evaluations, too, we also know that the intrapersonal gains of programs like MMT, ones that center trust and voices of participants, are just as significant – especially for our mothers whose stories and experiences are often marginalized or dismissed.

Both an executive summary and the full report are below, and we hope you’ll take some time to read them. We would like to thank the amazing team at Social Insights Research who once again served as our evaluation partners and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation for believing in this work and funding the evaluation.

It Takes a Nation

At Springboard To Opportunities, we believe that poverty – especially the persistent and widespread poverty seen in the United States in comparison to other wealthy countries – is the result of policy choices rather than personal decisions or individual moral failings.

Over the past several years, we have watched this play out in real-time. The bolstered family security policies enacted in 2021, most notably the expanded federal Child Tax Credit, reduced child poverty by almost 30%. However, the following year, after failing to pass the American Families Plan and, despite an increasingly strong labor market as well as an increase in parents’ employment, the number of children living in families with inadequate incomes went right back to the where it had been.

But today, we’re excited to release a new report created in partnership with the Center for Economic and Policy Research called It Takes a Nation. Guided by the voices of Springboard families and utilizing their definition of a prosperous and successful life, this report traces the history of economic security policies within modern US history, noting the way that state-based policies – particularly in the South – have failed to provide the means necessary for families to earn an adequate income.

Using the original provisions of the American Families Plan, which ultimately failed to pass by just one vote in the Senate, and the groundbreaking work and findings of our own Magnolia Mother’s Trust, It Takes a Nation proposes a federal plan for family economic security that would include:

A universal and unified child allowance that brings together the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit as a monthly, automatic payment.
Paid family and medical leave that includes equitable income support for new parents, disability insurance, and wage replacement for workers caring for family members with serious health conditions.
Supplemental security income for caregivers that ensures unpaid caregivers who lack recent employment necessary to qualify for paid leave receive a caregiver allowance.
Assured child support in advance that decouples support for means-tested programs and ensures solo parents who seek public child support services are able to receive funds even in cases where the noncustodial parent does not pay or pays late.

Following the lead of MMT and pandemic-era programs, this plan would reduce burdensome requirements and administrative overload, allowing families easier access to benefits and reducing the barriers to access.

We recognize that this a bold and ambitious plan, but it’s also very possible. The truth is, we can make different policy choices – in fact, we did in 2021 and saw the overwhelmingly positive results. We hope you’ll take some time to read the report and join us in calling on our elected officials and leaders to make some new, courageous policy choices for families again today.