No one’s life should be defined by their hardest moments, yet too often our inadequate benefits system makes this the reality. A lost job turns into a winter without heat, or having to make the impossible choice between paying for medical bills, groceries, or rent.

In a compassionate economy, there is support to overcome these bumps in the road. Children’s lives, wellbeing, and opportunities aren’t curtailed just because their parents may have lost a job. And in a productive economy, we can’t afford to have millions on the sidelines struggling and working below their potential.

The pandemic revealed both the inefficiencies and inequities in our benefits system, which included white people receiving twice the unemployment benefits of Black people, despite Black people facing higher unemployment rates, and millions still being excluded from benefits altogether, including many immigrants, gig workers, and domestic workers. It exposed the outdated technology and delivery systems that meant millions experienced lengthy delays, long wait times, errors, or clunky payment processing systems–right when they needed payment more than ever.

Too often, proposed solutions to the benefits system take either a tech-only or policy-only approach. Our goal? To marry the two. To get the current system to operate better, with greater equity and inclusion, it’s all about repairing, redefining, and reimagining.

Repair:

• Partner to create more effective and equitable UI systems, increasing utilization, reducing wait time, and improving the experience for unbanked, underbanked, and marginalized people and reduce wait times and increase output.
• Reduce racial disparities in benefits access and provision and provide a set of practices that could be adopted more widely
• Work in ways that support government in its commitment to overhauling many of the benefits systems that struggled to meet the need that emerged during the pandemic

Redefine:

• Counter harmful narratives around “the undeserving poor” and “welfare queens” that have long been used to make our social safety net less effective and robust

Reimagine:

• Address today’s pain points while working toward the north star of integrated, automatic, and digital benefits for all

Many of these solutions are waiting for the right grantee and funder. So if you are either and want to be involved, please get in touch.

In 2020, the Families and Workers Fund and our grantees were able to help provide direct cash transfers to 215,000 of the most vulnerable working families. This included immigrant day laborers, transgender People of Color living in rural communities in the South, domestic workers, restaurant workers, gig workers, and many others.

While we are no longer fundraising explicitly for direct cash transfers and are instead working to address underlying economic system failures, we are able to provide a direct relief “sidecar” offering for interested donors.

We work with vetted community and worker organizations across the country who have track records in effectively getting cash to the most marginalized people, and we can offer donor matchmaking with these groups, or allocate the funds ourselves based on our ongoing assessment of needs on the ground. Importantly, within these groups, cash transfers yield more than their financial value: cash is also an invitation to build community, collaborate on policy, and more.

This direct relief “sidecar”offering is deeply related to our 21st Century Benefits impact strategy, and we encourage donors who are interested in cash relief to also consider supporting this strategy. This way, marginalized workers and families will be better positioned to weather future crises and not have to rely so much on philanthropy.