How a Family Foundation Backs a Multifaceted Approach to Lifting Families Out of Poverty

Participants in LIFt. Photo by Tricia Messeroux, courtesy of lift.

Hope. Money. Love. These are the three tools that LIFT employs to break generational cycles of poverty. The nonprofit, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, works by providing funds, coaching and support to parents of young children.

“We work with parents of young children in particular because we know that if we're providing the supports that parents need, that changes the trajectory for the children,” explained LIFT CEO Michelle Rhone-Collins. “We know that poverty, like wealth, is handed down from generation to generation, and we want to be able to interrupt at the point of transmission. It's also important to work with parents and children in a two-gen approach: improving the results for two generations at once.” 

The Crimson Lion/Lavine Family Foundation has been one of LIFT’s most stalwart supporters; it has provided close to $10 million since it began funding the organization in 2012. Other funders include the Hirsch Family Foundation, Share Our Strength, the Kresge Foundation and a number of corporate foundations. LIFT also received a one-time, $7 million gift from MacKenzie Scott last year. While Kresge is one of the largest foundations in the country, the Hirsch Family Foundation is a smaller funder based in Dallas; it doesn’t have a website. Share Our Strength was created in 1984 by Billy and Debbie Shore; it works to promote economic mobility and end hunger in the U.S. (my colleague Liz Longley highlighted the organization’s efforts to alleviate child hunger during the pandemic).

The Crimson Lion/Lavine Foundation was established by Jonathan Lavine, co-managing partner of Bain Capital, and his wife, Jeannie, in 2007 (it doesn’t have a website but one is under development). The couple and their foundation support organizations that promote education equity, including City Year and uAspire. Health access and equity are also a priority, as is nonprofit journalism. In 2016, Crimson Lion gave $1 million to Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative, as IP’s Ade Adeniji reported. At the time, Jonathan Lavine told Adeniji that he and his wife’s give to programs that “help level the playing field, create opportunity and support fairness.”

While it predates the trend, the foundation’s interest in LIFT, which in part functions as a guaranteed income program, coincides with a growing interest in the concept, which picked up pace in the wake of the pandemic. Foundations have taken an interest in programs that either focus on handing over sums of cash to those in need, no strings attached, or those that routinely provide a partial income to a community or segment of its population.

Crimson Lion’s philanthropic advisor, Jeremy Cramer, called LIFT “one of our signature investments toward our mission of leveling the playing field. Our foundation believes that LIFT has spent its first 25 years developing proof of concept and that now is the time to scale, now is the time to look at changing some of the systems that can break down barriers to economic mobility.”

Cash plus coaching

Families that participate in LIFT are typically connected to the program by a healthcare provider, child care center, community center or by word of mouth. Parents who enroll are immediately assigned a coach who offers one-on-one financial, education and employment guidance and advice. Participants, who LIFT calls members, receive $150 in direct cash payments every three months; up to $1,200 over two years. LIFT also helps families build community by hosting workshops and regular gatherings.

Rhone-Collins explained that these program elements reflect LIFT’s pillars: Hope. Money. Love. “Hope is about attending to the trauma of being in poverty — the increased stress and anxiety that can get in the way of reaching your goals. We ask members, what are your hopes? What are your dreams? It's often the first time parents have been asked these questions. The dignified partnership and loving support we're able to provide with the coaches enlivens hope.” 

Money, in the form of regular cash payments, helps ease families’ immediate needs and allows them the space to identify and pursue longer term goals. But coaching is the centerpiece of LIFT’s approach. “The crux of our model is about financial and educational and employment coaching,” Rhone-Collins said “These are integrated because we know that one influences the other. We want to see our members in living-wage jobs, not just getting any old job that doesn’t pay enough, because that will just increase the volatility and the tenuous nature of life.”

Finally, love is provided through important social connections. “We put our members in touch with each other and with others who have different lived experiences to drive that social capital and that loving support,” Rhone-Collins said.

Providing direct cash payments to help lift families out of poverty is a strategy that’s being piloted around the country — and gaining backing from many in the philanthrosphere, as Inside Philanthropy has reported. Foundations like Ford, JPB, Kresge, Robert Wood Johnson, Rockefeller, and W. K. Kellogg, among others, have taken an interest in such programs. IP’s Wendy Paris recently spotlighted a guaranteed income pilot in Austin, for example. And in Flint, Michigan, a program called Rx Kids is providing direct cash payments to expectant mothers.

LIFT introduced this approach long before it was on many experts’ radar, Rhone-Collins pointed out. “LIFT has been giving cash out to our parents before it became much more readily acceptable in the mainstream. It was, I think, 2017 or 2018 when we started our cash transfer program, and it is couched within the coaching. It’s not just about cash: We’re about cash plus coaching.” 

Along with cash transfers and personalized coaching, LIFT makes a sustained commitment to the families it works with, as Jeremy Cramer, Crimson Lion’s philanthropic advisor, pointed out. “LIFT has research that shows that after three months, the parents they work with earn more money and have more confidence. And it would be easy for an organization like LIFT to say, OK, our job is done. But the organization sticks with these families for two years. If we want this work to stick for parents and families, we have to invest in folks for the long term. And that's what LIFT is doing.” Cramer is also the founder and CEO of Exponential Philanthropy, which provides philanthropic advising, leadership coaching and mentoring, and other services to those in the sector.

Research demonstrates the effectiveness of LIFT’s approach. Fifty-five percent of members pursued additional education and 82% percent of families who participated in the program to improve their finances made progress on their financial goals. In addition, the average LIFT family sees $63,000 in benefits from better employment opportunities and higher income — twice the gains they would achieve without LIFT participation. 

Waiting list and plans for expansion 

LIFT has offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C., and it serves about 1,000 families. Each of the offices has a waiting list of families who want to participate. Because the demand is greater than LIFT currently has the resources to meet, it is working to introduce the model in other settings. It has forged partnerships with early childhood centers, including national Head Start; LIFT provides training and support on family economic mobility practices to Head Start centers across the country. It also works with health clinics, community colleges and government agencies.

A recent article in Pediatrics demonstrates the potential of this approach. LIFT had an existing partnership with a pediatric clinic to offer financial coaching to families who brought their children to the clinic for care. UCLA researchers conducted a randomized trial of this medical-financial partnership and found that parents who participated in the coaching were significantly more likely to bring their child to the clinic for recommended visits and vaccinations than those who did not receive coaching.

Over the last several years, LIFT has started to focus on policy and advocacy. It is supporting the reintroduction of the expanded Child Tax Credit, for example. President Biden expanded the Child Tax Credit in 2017 under the American Rescue Plan. It was reversed at the end of 2021, despite its demonstrated effectiveness, after it faced opposition from Republican lawmakers and Joe Manchin. Analysis by the Center on Policy and Budget Priorities found a sharp rise in child poverty after the measure was scrapped. Now, it has been reintroduced in Congress and has the support of the Biden administration, but it faces stiff opposition from Republicans in the Senate.

“When we talk about hope, money and love, it is how we design our program, but it's also our rallying cry around the change that needs to be made more broadly,” said Rhone-Collins. “We feel like if our systems operated in that way, they would be more generous. It's a values-based change; it's about shifting the narrative about who deserves help and who gets it.”

The Crimson Lion/Lavine Family Foundation is supporting LIFT’s growth and expansion, and Cramer hopes other funders will, too. “My hope is that the philanthropic community understands that this model has been proven, they have plans to exponentially increase the scale of their impact, and that now's the time to step up,” he said. “One of our core beliefs as a foundation is that philanthropic capital at some level should serve as the risk capital that the social sector uses to prove what works, and then government systems can scale them, because they have more resources than philanthropy does.”

In the meantime, Cramer said, “We couldn't be prouder of our investments at every stage, and we believe that the organization is about to do some big things.”