Looking Back to Step Forward: 2023 in Review

2023 marked a new beginning in the New Practice Lab journey. Since we began our work in 2019, our team has been working towards improving benefits delivery for families. The last year has been crucial in that effort, as we’ve made huge strides towards improving our work, our team, and the mission that guides us.

In reflecting on everything that we accomplished last year, our team put together a microsite to highlight and share more about the New Practice Lab’s recent work and where we’re headed.

This year we:

• Refined a clear North Star for the organization: to improve benefits outcomes for at least 3 million families with young children who face the greatest systemic barriers to full participation in the economy.
• Put our new practice into practice, running three policy sprints with government partners to advance tax delivery, smooth the experience of paid leave and increase access to childcare; shaped new policy with partners and legislators; and kicked off an engagement with dozens of families for a multi-month study to understand what helps them thrive.
• Expanded our talented team, adding leaders that can deliver on our ambitious goal, and more than tripling our size.

We cannot build a different future for economically excluded families— or for the rest of us— by showing up with the same approaches and solutions that got us here. As we have reimagined the Lab over the past year we have been careful to build a place that works in new ways.

Our decision to ground our work in the lived experiences of families is a direct outgrowth of that commitment, and it is essential to who we are. Family voices are our compass.

Working together with families and our partners in government and civil society, we’re incredibly proud of the work that we have been able to achieve over the last year, and we’re excited for the work of what’s to come.