Table of Contents
- Executive Summary
- Introduction
- Aligning Around a Clear Vision
- Determining your Funding Strategy
- Choosing Your Partnerships with Community-Based Organizations
- Privacy Best Practices
- Implementing Your Program
- Managing the Program
- Delivering Cash
- Building Toward the Future
- Additional Resources
- Worksheet 1: Putting your Cash Assistance Program Strategy in Place
- Worksheet 2: Program Checklist: Use two weeks into your program
Aligning Around a Clear Vision
Key takeaways from this section:
- Be clear about your fund’s purpose and goals to speed up decision-making
- In order to facilitate cash transfers, you’ll need to understand your recipients based on their banking status
- Identify someone in-house to own this program and be accountable for it—this cannot be outsourced
Set your north star
Be clear as you can about your fund’s purpose and goals; know what outcome you plan to reach. Write it down and make sure that everyone working on the project has access to it. It will help you with decision-making, managing your partnerships, and managing the expectations of people applying to the fund. There will be moments when the goals of a program are in tension with each other, and when hard decisions about which groups to serve and how to serve them will need to be made. When you, your partners and your funders all align around a clear vision, you’ll be able to make these decisions more easily, gaining you time and energy.
One organization raised an example of managing a difficult decision-making process: they wanted to both distribute cash quickly while also collecting data about recipients’ broader needs for advocacy purposes, but collecting data that was not critical to the distribution process could compromise applicants who are vulnerable. By having a clear vision, that organization was able to say no to collecting data because they knew that their highest priority was to distribute cash in a way that protects applicants. This allowed them to focus their energy and resources on cash distribution over other initiatives. Having a north star helps organizations stay the course, even as they have to make difficult choices.
Understand your recipients based on their banking status
This is key—if you want to distribute cash, you need to understand how your cash recipients manage money. Our safety net excludes a variety of different communities that handle and manage money differently. According to a 2017 survey by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, 25 percent of U.S. households are unbanked or underbanked, meaning that they don’t have bank accounts nor access to banking services. You’ll be best suited to distribute cash quickly if you know this about your recipients and make plans to distribute cash in a way that works best for them. You’ll also be able to make quicker implementation and technology decisions once you understand your recipients’ banking status. Speak with community-based organizations to understand this early on.
Identify who will own this project
Too frequently, initiatives waste time and resources when they don’t have clear leadership. Cash assistance programs inevitably involve collaborative efforts from different teams and different organizations. To avoid confusion that can slow decision making, and slow down cash distribution, identify your program’s leadership early on. Have one person in place who is empowered to make decisions and who is willing to be accountable for outcomes. If you are a city or state administering a cash assistance program, this person needs to be from your team so that you retain accountability. Although you’ll partner with a variety of organizations along the way, if this is your initiative, you need to own and lead it.
*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!