Executive Summary

Across the country, existing benefits systems are falling short. America’s patchwork unemployment system leaves out gig workers and tipped workers, and U.S. citizens that have family members of mixed immigration status are being denied federal relief they should be eligible for. Families excluded from federal and state benefits have very few options for safety net help and this puts them in a vulnerable position during pandemic-related shut downs. A variety of city, state, and community-based organizations are stepping up to raise and distribute money quickly in an attempt to prevent the current humanitarian crisis from spiraling further.

In March 2020, the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) established the Coronavirus Care Fund to provide emergency assistance for home care workers, nannies, and house cleaners to support them in staying safe and staying home to slow the spread of the coronavirus and to care for themselves and their families. This national fund has raised more than $25 million, and is helping thousands of domestic workers throughout the United States.

To execute its Coronavirus Care Fund for domestic workers, NDWA developed a technical platform, Alia Cares, that builds upon elements from their domestic worker portable benefits platform to facilitate direct cash assistance disbursements. Given that NDWA’s fund was among the first to emerge in the country, philanthropies and local and state governments began contacting NDWA for advice and assistance on setting up their own funds. To ensure that the lessons and rapid learnings were documented and widely shared, NDWA requested New America to partner on a report detailing best practices and the broader landscape.

New America conducted approximately 41 interviews with 36 groups during the course of two weeks to document their work and capture some of the lessons they learned. We wanted to share how these organizations are finding their own ways to distribute cash quickly to those who need it most. We also wanted to share how they are choosing implementation methods with the intention of treating recipients with dignity, building longer term power within economically vulnerable communities, and developing strategies that advance a stronger safety net in the future.

It’s important to note that delivering emergency cash assistance describes emerging sets of solutions—each that tackle different parts of the process or serve different constituencies. At this point, there is no end-to-end, time-tested comprehensive solution. Therefore, we stop short of calling these “best practices,” as there are no long-term impact studies on the effects of these programs in the United States, and many of the organizations we spoke to were establishing direct cash programs for the first time—all of them with a sense of urgency in the midst of a global pandemic. While this guide offers an overview, you should still seek legal and financial advice prior to launching your own cash assistance fund, as regulatory requirements may vary from state to state or by organization type.

This guide was written to help cities and states set up cash assistance programs for their own residents. In it we offer information that we hope will help you make key decisions as you start your program. We also offer (1) an agenda for your first team meeting to help you get key elements of your program in place and (2) a “two-weeks-in” checklist to make sure you’re not overlooking any important considerations once you’re already doing the work. At the very end we’ve included a list of additional resources that we hope will help you as well. We hope this guide will act as a resource and a living document that highlights lessons learned for organizations and cities looking to establish similar programs.

*Note that if you are involved in running a cash assistance program and you have lessons of your own to share, believe that we left something out, or believe that we got something wrong, please let us know. We’ll be collecting feedback through the end of July. Thank you!