Social Benefit
Social Benefit LLC is Imagine LA’s new entity dedicated to helping individuals and families maximize their public benefits and tax-credits and chart a permanent pathway out of poverty.
I. SOCIAL BENEFIT OVERVIEW
Imagine LA’s new subsidiary Social Benefit LLC is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) that is dedicated to maximizing the ability of public benefits (including tax credits) and access to living-wage careers to aid individuals’ and families’ journeys out of poverty and into financial independence. Co-founded in 2023 by Jill Bauman & Brit Gilmore, Social Benefit is incubating the Social Benefit Navigator and convening the Public Benefit Impact Alliance.
The Social Benefit Navigator (the “Navigator”) is an easy-to-use online tool created by the Social Benefit LLC subsidiary of Imagine LA. It has been created for case workers and potential benefit recipients to navigate the extremely complex public benefit and tax credit landscape (Federal, State & County). The Navigator’s human centered design is anchored in research and recommendations from USC’s Center of Social Innovation, vast lived experience/expertise input, Imagine LA’s 15 years working alongside families trying to navigate public benefits and completion of the Initial Pilots with 10 LA based social service agencies.
The Navigator provides:
A Benefits Information Hub for mainstream LA County public benefits and tax credits. This is a straightforward knowledge building, time saving, and training tool for users (case managers, their clients, and potential benefit recipients).
Benefits Maximization via a quick (3-5 minutes), simple input of non-private information, users can determine what benefits they qualify for with links to apply.
Knowledge of what will happen to benefits when income or family make-up changes. The Navigator equips users to quickly understand what will happen to their benefits when their income or family makeup changes (heretofore users have been blind to, and often extremely fearful of, this information).
Actual user behavior data to inform public policy (note: this data heretofore has also not been available).
Note: The Navigator can be used in English, Spanish, and many additional languages.
Watch a demo video of the Navigator below!
The Public Benefit Impact Alliance (PBIA) is a collaborative group of California and national nonprofit and government entities, co-founded by Imagine LA/Social Benefit, ALLHOME, and REDF. The PBIA’s mission is to collaboratively seek to end poverty and homelessness in California via the lens of public benefits. Specifically, the Alliance’s areas of focus are: eliminating benefit cliffs and plateaus, expanding and increasing access to benefits, decreasing administrative burden, accessing and maintaining stable housing, and facilitating income growth. Within these focus areas, members of the Alliance will seek to educate, discern, and advocate together for policy solutions and develop tools that facilitate policy analysis and/or help people exit or avoid poverty/homelessness.
Current members include the LA/Social Benefit, ALLHOME, and REDF, Atlanta Federal Reserve, United Way of California, Golden State Opportunity, SPURS, Benefit Kitchen, and Policy Engine. We anticipate that membership will continue to grow. Social Benefit facilitates the PBIA monthly meetings. Members of PBIA are currently working on educational presentations for policy makers on benefit cliffs that utilize real scenarios from the Navigator to highlight the work disincentives created by the current “system” of benefits and tax credits.
II. SOCIAL BENEFIT NAVIGATOR PILOTS
Initial Pilot with 10 Social Service Agencies. During 2023 Navigator was piloted by 10 Los Angeles based social service NGOs serving families, youth and individuals emerging from homelessness and/or experiencing severe poverty. The Initial Pilot included a rigorous third-party evaluation by Format Consulting with active Navigator users as well as non-user control groups (60 case workers and 450 clients, approximately ½ users and ½ control group) as well as live feedback loops to learn from the user experience. The pilot collected baseline and quarterly data on all the case managers’ clients’ use of public benefits and income levels as well as information from the case managers, such as time spent navigating public benefits, related challenges, and the Navigator’s impact on their clients (particularly how changes to income and consequential benefits changes affected their career and financial decisions).
Initial Pilot Agencies:
Children’s Institute Inc., serving families enmeshed in poverty thought LA County
Covenant House, serving unhoused youth in Hollywood
Downtown Women’s Center, serving unhoused women in Downtown LA
HOPICS, serving unhoused in South Los Angeles
Union Station Homeless Services, serving unhoused in Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley
The Whole Child, serving unhoused families in Whittier and Southeast LA
LA LGBT Center - Hollywood
New Economics for Women (NEW), serving women and families in Pico Union and SF Valley
LIFT-LA, serving families in the City of LA
Imagine LA, serving families emerging from homelessness in South LA, Mid-City, San Fernando Valley, and West LA
Initial Pilot Results:
The Initial Pilot culminated with a November 2023 convening of the pilot participants and a presentation and discussion of the evaluation data and user experiences. Conway C Collis, the CEO of the Mayor’s Fund of LA, opened the convening and compared the potential impact of the Navigator to the first handheld calculator invented in 1967 by Texas Instruments; other key highlights include:
Clients of Navigator Users significantly increased their Benefits & Tax Credits.
54% of Users identified additional Benefits & Tax Credits as compared to 10% in the control group.
Tax-credits - while many people secured tax-credits once they knew they were eligible, many did not file because of fear around immigration or owing back taxes.
Clients of Navigator Users Earned income increased.
43% of User clients earned income increased as compared to 12% in the control group.
24% increase in User client earned income (average) as compared to a decrease of 16% in earned income by control group clients. The Navigator's scenario planning feature showed clients thinking about starting to work, or earning more wages for very low-income workers, that the additional earned income would not cause significant loss of benefits, plus the gain in tax-credits was substantial. The result was that clients felt safe to start working or to work a little more, hence the significant rise in earned income.
*Please note that most of the Initial Pilot partner clients initially had zero to very low-income. For Pilot 2.5 we are targeting next level workforce development agencies, so we can see the impact when benefit cliffs are identified in advance.
Case Worker Navigator Users increased their feeling of efficacy around maximizing their client benefits, especially regarding tax-credits as well as building client rapport/trust.
"Prior to Navigator our team used historical knowledge, staff networking and web research to try to navigate benefits."
"Navigator helped me do my job better and more efficiently – no more co-worker networking or research."
"Helped my clients increase both benefits and earned income."
"Empowered my clients by giving them the autonomy to know what benefits they qualified for and how earning wages impacted their benefits."
Clients felt more seen and fear around applying for benefits decreased - "By creating more clarity around all benefits and especially around the impact of immigration status, my clients felt more seen and fear around applying for benefits decreased."
With the Navigator, caseworkers could help clients apply rather than referring to government agency. This result can be interpreted as bringing efficiency to the government both in terms of using less of their staff time and in getting the benefits to those in need more quickly.
Program Managers were delighted to report how much the Navigator empowered staff and clients to make confident and informed decisions, plus made their jobs easier.
The Navigator “Took out the guesswork - prior to Navigator, case workers used their historical knowledge, which varied”.
"Helped empower staff and decrease burnout by decreasing time searching for benefits and feeling good that they were being thorough with their clients."
"It was great to watch my team go from “Oh another thing on my plate” to “this is really helpful”. Key to this was how user friendly it was and became even more so during the Pilot. Confidentiality was greatly appreciated as well as the straightforward functionality."
Question: How did the Navigator effect your management of staff? “Made it is easier, especially training around benefits - didn’t need to worry about it”.
"As benefits are always changing, use of the Navigator eliminates a perplexing training challenge."
When users were asked, “What their wish was for the Navigator?”, the most frequent answer was that “everybody in LA could use it.”
Current Status: Inspired on the feedback from the Initial Pilot, the Navigator has been updated to version 2.5. Navigator 2.5 Expansion Pilots are both underway and being formulated to maximize the breadth of populations served, provide input to enhance functionality, and inform our creation of human centered customer service to maximize the Navigator's impact. 2.5 Pilots participants will include 25-30 non-profit and government service entities, 400-500 case worker Users and 10,000 to 25,000 beneficiaries. We will also be testing offering the Navigator directly to end users, not just via case workers. Priority populations are poverty enmeshed homeless, Youth, workforce development and immigrants. Lead Pilot 2.5 participants are: expanded use by the Initial Pilot agencies, the Mayor’s Fund for LA’s We Are LA homeless prevention initiative to 200,000 targeted Los Angelenos (includes all of the 20 LA City Family Source Centers), Department of Health Services (DHS) and other LA county government agencies.
Planned 2024 Navigator Enhancements include: creation of the Living Wage Calculator; integration of Living Wage Pathways; additional benefits, tax credits and resources; the integration of local resource databases; the development of Benefits/Tax Training for Users, and the implementation of the Zen Desk customer service system including live chat and an AI enhanced User Best Practice Forum. In addition, our 2024 Goals include: utilizing the Navigator functionally to inform public benefit policy reform; branding; creating a sustainable social enterprise model and being able to offer the Navigator to LA Countywide in 2025.
Funding: Social Benefit’s efforts are being fueled by innovative and generous grant funding from: the Carl & Robert Deutsch Foundation, the Reissa Foundation, the May & Stanley Smith Trust, and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Corporation for Supportive Housing. Additional funding is needed to execute our 2024 Navigator 2.5 Expansion Pilots and 2024 Enhancements.
III. SOCIAL BENEFIT TEAM
Leadership – The Social Benefit Oversight Committee:
Joe Takai, Imagine LA Board Chair; Partner, McKinsey & Co., significant expertise in the incubation and scaling of tech companies.
George Phillips, Imagine Board Vice Chair; Partner, Phillips Law. Lawyer, CPA, entrepreneur and experience working a mentor to a family seeking to exit homelessness & poverty.
John Kobara, Random Acts of Progress; former EVP & COO California Committee Foundation, CEO Big Brother Big Sisters, UCLA Vice Chancellor.
Adlai Wertman, Professor Social Entrepreneurship, USC Marshall School of Business; Former CEO, Chrysalis (model for social enterprise).
Brit Gilmore, Co-Founder Social Benefit; former President, Giving Keys and Forbes 30 under 30.
Jill Bauman, Co-Founder Social Benefit; Imagine LA, CEO Emeritus; Successful entrepreneur including software engineering experience.
SBN Development and Deployment Team:
Co-Founders, Brit Gilmore & Jill Bauman.
Customer Experience & Support Manager, One, previous Customer Experience for Boingo Wireless.
Customer Experience Advisor Karen Van Kirk, Former SVP, Viewer Experience for Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+, Former Director of Business Operations, Intuit QuickBooks Payments.
Senior Technical Advisor: Peter Marx, former CTO, City of Los Angeles, Universal Studios.
Engineer/Programmer: Allen Lai.
Interface Designer: Uche Onyeka.
Benefit Policy Expert: Soledad De Gregorio, Ph.D., Research Associate, Abt Associates.
Benefits Research and Writer: David Tausik, Writer & Entrepreneur.
Third Party Evaluator: Jaime Thomas, CEO Format Consulting.
Benefit Eligibility API: Benefit Kitchen.
Lived Experience Team Members:
Leilani Reed, Imagine LA Program Graduate and Board Member.
Quenisha Johnson, experienced case manager, public benefits specialist with lived expertise.
Claudia Iglesias, Imagine LA Program Graduate and Family Team Manager (staff).
Youth Advocates from Aspen Institute’s Ascend Initiative’s Young Parent 2Gen approach in LA County.
Other Key Advisors:
David Crippens, President, City of Los Angeles Workforce Investment Board Youth Council, former Sr. Vice President, KCET.
Kelvin Driscoll, PhD, MSW, MPA, Deputy Director of Access, Outreach, and Health Service, Homeless Outreach Program & Care System (HOPICS).
Greg Ericksen, Director, Government Partnerships & Policy, REDF.
Carrie Miller, PhD,Senior Manager Policy Implementation and Alignment Branch, LA County Chief Executive Office, former founding Executive Director, Los Angeles County Poverty Alleviation Initiative.
Lisa Salazar, General Manager, Youth Development Department, City of Los Angeles.
Andy Goodman, storytelling expert, Founder, The Goodman Center.
Rob Jensen, Professor of Economics and Director, Program on Social Enterprise, Yale School of Management.
Jonathan Kroening, SVP, Global R&D Lead of Data Science & AI Lab, Ipsos
Ali Motroni, Client Experience Director & Impact Investing Advisor, Align Impact Capital.
Adam Miller, Social Entrepreneur, Tech Founder and Philanthropist - Better Angels.
For more information, please contact jill@imaginela.org.
