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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.

Planning for the Future

While there has been a lot of growing excitement around The Magnolia Mother’s Trust and some of Springboard’s newer initiatives, we recognize that at our heart, we are a resident service provider committed to helping families in low-income housing reach their goals in life, work, and school. It’s hard to believe, but Springboard has been in existence for 6 years now and those 6 years have been filled with growth, new developments, and many lessons learned.

In light of all of this, we have spent the last few months creating a strategic plan for the next 5 years, ensuring that each community where we provide services is complete with strong, innovative, wrap-around supports for families that serve as springboards to their goals. While we’ve expanded our reach quite a bit in recent years, our hope right now is to dive deeper in the places where we already are.

We have supported kids through elementary afterschool programs and middle school empowerment programs and now it is time to make sure we’re offering programs for high school students that provide safe spaces after school, help them apply for college, and support them as they begin to explore careers and make plans for their adult lives. We want to ensure that the programs we have are supporting families at critical junctures in their education, like being prepared for kindergarten, passing third grade, not falling behind in middle school, and being on track to graduate high school on time.

We have learned how important financial security and empowerment programs are and want to expand efforts around Children’s Savings Accounts and workforce development programs into all of our communities. We want to renew and expand our programs around self-image and leadership development, as we recognize so many of our families have internalized the hurtful and patronizing narratives our culture has told, particularly around women of color trapped in poverty. And we want to find ways to empower our residents to advocate for themselves and their families in their schools, communities, or wherever they find themselves knowing their voice has worth and dignity and needs to be heard.

While we’d love to go into details about every program and support we provide, we also know you’d probably rather not read a newsletter that is 20 pages long. Instead, we hope you’ll take some time to look at the graphic below and see just a small glimpse of what it looks like for us to provide holistic, family services in each of our communities.

The Child Tax Credit is Here!

Over the past few months, we’ve been sharing our excitement about the newly expanded Child Tax Credit. Starting this Thursday, July 15th, families with children will receive regular, monthly payments that can be used as they see fit. Child care, groceries, rent, bill — all these expenses add up fast for families, especially those in low-wage jobs and with limited incomes like the families we work with each day. The Child Tax Credit (CTC) not only offers support and relief, but also isn’t tied to work requirements or limiting vouchers that have historically harmed, rather than helped, low-income families move out of poverty.

We know from our experience with The Magnolia Mother’s Trust that cash works and can provide families with the means necessary to meet their basic needs, care for their families, and begin to work toward their goals. That’s why we’ve been doing all we can to make sure our families are prepared for the CTC to begin! Our staff has been in communities, knocking on doors, and providing information to families about what these payments are and when they can expect them. Additionally, they’ve been helping families who might not have filed taxes recently due to disability or unemployment get registered in the IRS system.

But unfortunately, even some of the best intended policies can still leave out the voices of low-income families or fail to recognize their potential to further inequities. That’s why we have been especially excited to work alongside national organizations, such as Community Change, to uplift the voices of our families and make sure they are being heard ahead of the July 15th rollout. Their team has shared the stories and experiences our families have had with the user portal and generally understanding the CTC directly with the White House, helping the administration refine the portal and adjust their fact sheets to meet the needs of all families and ensure payments are able to reach the families who need them the most.

It’s also why we are proud to co-sponsor alongside 30 other organizations, Family Matters: A Virtual Celebration of the Child Tax Credit on July 15th at 1 p.m. CT/2 p.m. ET, featuring keynote remarks by Vice President Kamala Harris! The celebration, co-hosted by the Economic Security Project and Building Back Together, will be emceed live by Dorian Warren and Melissa Harris Perry.

The celebration, in an effort to maximize awareness and show how transformative the Child Tax Credit is, will feature parents and families from around America and includes special appearances by: Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Raphael Warnock, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, Robert Griffin III, Reverend William Barber II, Ai-jen Poo, Rashad Robinson, Sara Nelson, Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, Natalie Foster, Addisu Demissie, and more.

Family Matters will stream live on Facebook.com/EconomicSecProj and at markham.live/childtaxcredit starting at 1 p.m. CT/2 p.m. ET on July 15th and you can RSVP here: https://p2a.co/n9crzFJ

We truly believe the Child Tax Credit provides an opportunity to restructure the social safety net in our country in a way that centers the needs of families and recognizes that families themselves know better than anyone else what is is that they need to thrive. We look forward to sharing the stories of the impact the Child Tax Credit will have on our families, and we hope you’ll join us in celebrating this momentous policy moment and help spread the word about it in your own community!

Economic Security Across Generations

Mothers filling out 529 applications in a Springboard community room

June always seems to be a busy month filled with graduations, celebrations, and many new transitions. Whether moving from one grade to another or to an entirely new school, this is the time when families and students begin thinking about what is coming next, their future goals, and preparing for next steps.

In 2017, we began piloting work around Children’s Savings Accounts (CSAs) to support families through one of those transitions and overcoming what often feels like an insurmountable financial barrier as their children prepare for higher education. We’ve quoted these statistics a lot, but it’s worth noting again that children with $500 or less saved for college are 3 times more likely to enroll and 4 times more likely to graduate. Our CSA program has continued to expand and be shaped to best align to the feedback and expressed needs of families over the last 4 years.

And this year, we were able to do something even more. Thanks to a very generous gift, we were able to offer Mississippi Affordable College Savings accounts (individual 529 savings accounts) with $1,000 of seed money to every school-aged child of current Magnolia Mother’s Trust participants. Through a partnership with the Mississippi State Treasurer’s Office, we were able to host events in each of our Jackson communities and set up 161 accounts for students. Additionally, we are finding opportunities to provide an additional $1,000 to families who have had CSAs with us since we started in 2017, altogether investing an additional $231,000 in savings accounts for our students in Mississippi. We have also started working with the State Treasurer’s Office in Maryland to begin setting up accounts for families and introducing the concept of CSAs there to continue expanding our work there.

Ensuring our programs are targeting whole families and taking a 2-Generation approach has always been a part of Springboard’s DNA, and we are especially excited to be adding this component to The Magnolia Mother’s Trust. Throughout the program, moms have told us that one of their priorities is to save for their children’s future and ensure that their kids are taken care of. Seeded CSAs provide the vehicle and jumpstart for families to do exactly that. We continue to pair the accounts with other strategic, supportive programming, like our Super Summer Camps that just kicked off this week. We know that it is never just one thing that prevents our families from reaching their goals, and it is always our hope to provide holistic, resident-driven supports and services to make what might have seemed like an impossible dream become an achievable goal for all people.

2020 Magnolia Mother’s Trust Evaluation Report

Yesterday was Mother’s Day and it probably comes as no surprise to any of you that we were celebrating and honoring all the incredible mothers who we have the chance to work with each day. But we don’t think that celebration should ever be limited to just one day of the year, which is why we’re continuing it today!

It is with deep excitement and joy that we are releasing our final evaluation report from our second cohort of The Magnolia Mother’s Trust. We view this report not only as a testimony of the life-changing effects cash and programs grounded in trust and dignity can have for mothers, but also as an opportunity to share and celebrate the stories of the mothers who have been a part of this program.

With the backdrop of a global pandemic that disproportionately affected women of color in so many ways, participants in The Magnolia Mother’s Trust were able to meet their basic needs, prioritize their health and the health of their family, and had the agency to make decisions for their family as they saw fit. We hope you’ll take some time to read the full report below and celebrate these amazing women alongside us.

Introducing Front and Center

Over the last few months, you’ve been hearing us say that we are working to change the narrative by changing the narrator. We have always known that low-income families themselves are the ones who should be telling their own stories instead of being mediated through gate keepers or thought leaders or even our staff. We had already started our commitment to that work this year with our first storytelling night with Melissa Harris-Perry, the establishment of our Springboard Storytelling Lab, and one of our Magnolia Mother’s Trust moms, Brenita Burns, had her very own Op-Ed published just last week in Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity.

And today, we’re thrilled to announce that we are partnering with Ms. Magazine to launch a series of Op-Eds entitled Front and Center that will feature the voices and stories of the women of the Magnolia Mother’s Trust. The published pieces will not solely be about guaranteed income, but will be first-person accounts of Black women living in extreme poverty sharing the reality of their daily lives, their dreams, and their struggles. It will be a national platform for their stories and experiences to be heard and a way to ensure that their voices, as the name suggests, are kept front and center.

The Magnolia Mother’s Trust has always been more than a guaranteed income project set up to prove that cash works because frankly, we already knew that. The Magnolia Mother’s Trust is working to center the voices of those affected most by the paternalistic and punitive public policies. As we move into this next year, we know that some of the most important policy debates, particularly as it relates to the social safety net, are going to be happening. Too often, those debates are shaped by abstract ideas and false narratives. This project is a chance to ground new narratives in trust, dignity, and the actual stories and experiences of Black mothers.

I’m purposefully keeping my letter short today, because I hope you’ll spend some time reading the introductory Front and Center column from myself and Kathy Spiller, and get ready for the first mother’s piece, written by Tia Cunningham, a Magnolia Mother’s Trust participant from our very first cohort, that will be released tomorrow! And make sure you’re following us on social media to be the first to see new features as they come out twice every month for the next year. We promise these are stories you want and need to hear!