United Way’s newest ALICE report shines a light on more than 1 million Hoosier households struggling to afford the basics
By Michael Budd, president and CEO of Indiana United Ways, and Denise Luster, chief strategic intelligence and information officer for United Way of Central Indiana
The data is striking.
Over one in four workers in Indiana’s most common jobs struggled to get by in 2023.
Yet many of these workers earned too much to qualify for government assistance. Among them: child care workers, nursing assistants, cashiers, food service workers – the very people who keep our economy running.
In all, more than 1 million Hoosier households could not afford a basic household budget that year. And some 31% of Indiana families with children struggled to make ends meet.
In May, Indiana United Ways and United Way of Central Indiana published the newest ALICE report, in collaboration with research partner United for ALICE. Released annually, the report shows the depth and nuance of need in our communities. It shines a light on households that are in poverty or considered ALICE, an acronym for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed.
For more than half a century, the government has used the Federal Poverty Level to determine who among us qualifies for public assistance. But the ALICE report shows that this measure misses many more who are struggling.
ALICE households earn above the Federal Poverty Level – too much to receive aid – and yet not enough to afford the basics of housing, child care, food, transportation, health care and technology.
This report seeks to give them a voice. Read through its pages, and you’ll see there is not a population untouched by financial hardship. These challenges affect every community in every corner of our state – urban, suburban and rural.
The ALICE report – this data – is us. So how do we use it to take care of each other?
Here are a few places we can start:
Educate. The ALICE report is a powerful resource for understanding community need. We can use it to educate the public and policymakers about those needs – and how human services nonprofits are working to address them. Once others understand the breadth and depth of the challenges, then they can become an active part of solving them.
The report can play an important role in humanizing the data and dismantling stereotypes. It shows that financial hardship doesn’t show up in the way some may assume: Just because a person has a job doesn’t mean they are OK.
This interactive tool includes detailed reports for all 92 counties in the state and calculates the true cost of living for each, allowing you to see a more detailed picture of need in your community.
The report highlights the economic impact of meeting all Hoosiers’ basic needs, a useful framework when speaking to stakeholders. Meeting everyone’s basic needs changes the trajectory of struggling Hoosiers – and also boosts economic activity through increased tax revenue and consumer spending.
Employers can use this data to understand their own workforce and consider policies that support their employees, such as helping with child care costs, offering flexible schedules to accommodate for transportation challenges, and providing small loan options like the Community Loan Center model. They may also consider partnering in the Good Wages Initiative, which supports living wages and access to benefits for workers.
Build and adjust programs.
It is critical that we use data to inform our decisions. The ALICE data shows us the challenges Hoosiers are really facing. We should use this information to help us create – and modify – programming tailored to those needs.
It requires all of us – nonprofits, government, businesses, philanthropy – to take part.
Partnerships can start small. Perhaps your nonprofit addresses food insecurity. How can you connect to other agencies that address additional basic needs – such as transportation, housing, child care, health care – to ensure your clients’ needs are met holistically? We need to work together.
Above all else, what we hope you take away from the ALICE report is this: Data is a representation of real people. This report is about what is happening to real families every day in our communities.
We all deserve dignity. Let’s ensure all Hoosiers have access to the basics, to good-paying jobs, to opportunities.
Michael Budd is the president and CEO of Indiana United Ways.
Denise Luster is the chief strategic intelligence and information officer for United Way of Central Indiana.
During United Way of Central Indiana event, author of “Evicted” says we’re doing a terrible job of connecting impoverished people with available resources
Growing up, Matthew Desmond’s family didn’t have a lot of money. His family’s gas got shut off all the time. The bank took their house. Seeing how his family was stressed by poverty drove Desmond to understand its dynamics and consequences. He has spent much of his life reporting and researching it.
“But even after all that, I felt I didn’t have this answer for: Why? Why is there so much poverty in America?” Desmond told a crowd of nearly 500 people during a recent event presented by the United Way of Central Indiana, alongside Glick Philanthropies, Indianapolis Neighborhood Housing Partnership and The Mind Trust.
“(Poverty’s) persistence in American life means that millions of families are denied safety and security and dignity in one of the richest nations in the history of the world. Why?” Desmond asked during his talk at the Indiana State Museum.
Desmond, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Evicted,” said he sought to answer that question, which became the topic of his latest book released in March 2023, “Poverty, by America.”
United Way seeks to serve those living in or near poverty in the region. According to a new report released by United Way in April, more than 36 percent of Central Indiana households were either in poverty in 2021 or considered ALICE, an acronym for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, ALICE households earn above the Federal Poverty Level but not enough to afford a basic household budget.
That’s more than 244,400 households — more than one of three Central Indiana households. The number of households in this category has increased 11 percent since 2018, according to United Way data.
During his speech, Desmond, who also is a sociology professor at Princeton University and the principal investigator of The Eviction Lab, painted a picture of the landscape of American poverty: A third of U.S. households make $55,000 or less. More than 38 million Americans can’t afford basic necessities. If America’s poor founded a country, it would have a bigger population than Australia, he said.
While some have suggested there’s nothing to be done, that government programs don’t work, Desmond said that’s not true. Evidence shows programs such as housing assistance and food stamps are essential and effective — and anti-poverty spending has grown over the last several decades, he said. This makes America’s “stalled progress” on poverty even more baffling, as poverty has persisted despite an increase in federal relief.
Desmond offered several explanations for why poverty endures.
First, a “fair amount” of government aid earmarked for the poor never gets to them. Desmond said roughly 7 million people who could receive the Earned Income Tax Credit don’t, passing on $17 billion a year, for example.
“This is a picture of us doing a terrible job of connecting families to programs that they need and deserve,” he said.
The poor are exploited in the labor, housing and financial markets, Desmond said. Wages are falling and unions are weak in today’s labor market. Since 1985, rent prices have exceeded incomes by 325 percent, and every year poor Americans pay billions of dollars in overdraft fees, check cashing fees, and fees from payday loans. A hard pill to swallow, he said: Not only corporations but consumers, those invested directly or indirectly in the stock market, many homeowners and even those with free checking accounts all benefit from the exploitation of the poor.
Desmond argued the United States does more to subsidize affluence in American than to fight poverty. When considering all government spending from tax benefits to programs, he said, data shows that households in the bottom 20 percent — the poorest families — get about $26,000 a year from the government. By comparison, the richest ones — the top 20 percent — receive about $35,000 from the government.
“We give the most to those who have plenty already and then we have the audacity … to fabricate stories about poor people’s dependency on the government and shoot down proposals to reduce hardship because they would cost too much,” Desmond said.
“… There’s so much poverty here, not in spite of our wealth, but because of it.” Affluent Americans also create poverty by building walls around prosperous communities, using municipal zoning ordinances to keep affordable housing out of their backyards, he said. It creates concentrated poverty.
Different anti-poverty investments are needed to fix the problem, not just deeper ones, Desmond said. He argued we need to create public policies that disrupt poverty and address exploitation by empowering the poor.
He suggested addressing labor exploitation, for example, by promoting worker empowerment and supporting the unionization of entire sectors as a way to level the playing field.
As for housing, Desmond said more can be done to expand the public housing infrastructure, to provide a path to homeownership for low-income families and to invest in community land trusts so tenants can build permanent, affordable housing.
He said we can end segregation of the poor by replacing exclusionary zoning policies with inclusionary ones — removing walls.
Desmond said the philanthropic sector has a role to play, too: Nonprofits can shift the conversation about poverty and advocate for more robust policy action.
“… The best hope we have of ending poverty is to bind ourselves together and demand this of our country. A mass movement for economic justice is necessary and a mass movement stirs,” Desmond said. “… The end of poverty is something to stand for.”
The new dashboard illustrates community need and the collective impact of United Way’s partners
By Margaret Matray, communications manager, United Way of Central Indiana
Data tells a story.
United Way of Central Indiana has long collected and analyzed data to understand the needs of the community and inform its decisions and strategies.
The data paints a picture of who in our community is living in or near poverty, what their greatest barriers are – and how organizations across the region are working to address those challenges.
Now, United Way is making that data available to the public for the first time. Launched this month, the Impact United Dashboard is an interactive data tool that illustrates community need and the response of United Way’s partners in Boone, Hamilton, Hancock, Hendricks, Marion, Morgan and Putnam counties.
“It’s our way of making sure that we are showing how we have been accountable to the community, to donors, to funders – to ensure we are lifting their impact but also (showing) how we’re trying to invest in communities where there are gaps in services,” said Denise Luster, United Way’s vice president of impact research and data analytics.
The dashboard provides snapshots of United Way and its partners’ work in key focus areas, including economic mobility, educational success, food, health, housing and transportation. Users can explore the data by focus area, dig into the demographics of those served and filter the data by county.
“This should be a tool that anyone can use to see some key highlights of what’s happening within their community, no matter where they’re located,” said Stephanie Fritz, United Way’s strategic research and analytics senior director.
The tool reflects the most recent data that’s available and is designed to be a “living dashboard” that will be updated as new data emerges, said Daniel Hedglin, United Way’s director of data insights and storytelling.
Throughout the dashboard, data that shows community need comes from national, state and local sources and The Polis Center’s SAVI program at IUPUI. Data showing impact comes from organizations, programs and community-based organizations that partner with, or receive funding from, United Way.
“This data comes from our partners in impact,” Fritz said. “It’s their work that they’re doing in the community.”
United Way’s reporting and analytics team – called the Strategic Information team – began talking about creating a public dashboard last year.
Community organizations that work with United Way report data to the nonprofit quarterly and biannually. A dashboard was a way to show them – and the community – what their collective impact looks like, said Purbasha Dasgupta, United Way’s research and evaluation senior manager.
“This is our collective footprint in the Central Indiana community,” said Dasgupta, who led the project.
The dashboard reflects the “immense collective efforts” of United Way’s partners to serve people in the community, Hedglin added.
According to the dashboard:
More than one in three Marion County households are in poverty or are considered ALICE, meaning they earn above the Federal Poverty Level but not enough to afford a basic household budget. (ALICE stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed.)
About 29% of households that are in poverty or ALICE in United Way’s seven-county service area are families with children.
A racial wealth gap exists between white Hoosiers and communities of color. For every dollar earned by a white household in the region in 2019, Black or African American households earned 88 cents on average. Hispanic households earned 76 cents.
Through the dashboard, users can see how particular community needs are being addressed. For example, more than 63% of households that are in poverty or considered ALICE in the region are headed by single women. The data shows that more than half of adults receiving career counseling and coaching from United Way’s partners are from the same population. And 42% of childcare assistance services are provided to single female parents or caregivers.
“Through our various initiatives, we’re not only addressing the fact that we see there’s a need that’s particularly present in this one specific population, but our impact work was able to tie together to help move them … on a trajectory from poverty to ALICE, ALICE to stability,” Fritz said. “Our partners in impact are providing these services to address that.”
Whenever she talks about data, Luster points out that it’s more than numbers. Data represents real people living in our community. The dashboard can educate Hoosiers on where the need is and what can be done to meet those needs.
“The breadth and depth of the need is great, but there are also many organizations out there trying to help address that need,” Luster said.
WonderSpace expands options in area with one of Indiana’s highest rates of childhood poverty
by Shari Finnell, editor/writer, Not-for-profit News
After Stephanie Freemyer and her family returned to her hometown of Marion, Ind., several years ago, she was struck by the lack of indoor opportunities for children to engage in stimulating play. Her two young children, ages 5 and 2 at the time, often complained of having “nothing to do.”
“When we were in North Carolina and Pasadena (Calif.), our kids were outside all the time,” Freemyer said. “Then coming here, it was cold, raining, or snowing eight months out of the year. It really impacted our kids.”
Grant County, where Marion is located, is familiar with these types of comparisons when it comes to opportunities for children. For years, it has had the distinction of having one of the highest rates of child poverty in Indiana — as high as 31 percent in 2018 and 22.7 percent in 2019, according to Indiana Kids Count data. That compares to a national childhood poverty rate of 14.4 percent in 2019.
And, as research continuously reveals, childhood poverty can lead to other challenges, including poor academic outcomes and an elevated risk of behavioral, social, and health challenges. In Grant County, 2018 average math and reading proficiency scores lagged behind state averages — 36 percent for math and 40 percent for reading, compared to the state’s averages of 46 percent and 49 percent, respectively.
These types of statistics, along with the lack of indoor play opportunities, were on Freemyer’s mind when she launched WonderSpace as a nonprofit in 2019 with no previous experience in establishing an organization. WonderSpace now includes a mobile play experience of four distinct areas designed to increase health and wellness among young people through physical, exploratory, imaginative, and cognitive play.
Since it doesn’t have a permanent location, WonderSpace welcomes visitors to free one-day or two-day pop-up mobile play days held in schools, churches, and businesses that donate their space. In its first year, more than 600 children and family members attended WonderSpace pop-up events. Last year, it welcomed more than 5,000 individuals to the mobile play event, which features the interactive stations Cardboard City, Imagination Playground, Snug Play, and Higher Flyers. The stations all contain loose parts that encourage exploration, engineering, and imagination.
Freemyer, who also serves as the children’s ministry director for College Wesleyan Church in Marion, noted that many Grant County families aren’t able to drive for an hour to reach destinations like the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis or the Science Center in Fort Wayne. The realization of those restrictions motivated her to move forward with her idea to create a children’s experience in Grant County.
In 2018, Angela Leffler, an associate professor in education at Indiana Wesleyan University, and Freemyer attended a 2018 Hatch-a-thon run by Ministry Incubators, which helps people launch ministry-focused ideas. As part of the competition, they won $500, which they dedicated to securing a business name.
The project continued to evolve after they hosted a community fundraiser to pay for $11,000 worth of play equipment. Sponsorships and donations followed to help fund additional play materials, supplies, and a 26-foot trailer to transport blocks, cardboard elements, and other loose play materials.
Meeting community needs
Tara Griffin, executive assistant at WonderSpace and a former teacher, said it was important to host WonderSpace as a free event to ensure access for children from all backgrounds. She also stressed the importance of families playing with their children, which may not come naturally for some of them.
“It is family directed,” Griffin said. “It’s not a place where parents drop off their kids and come back in two hours. They stay and engage with them. That’s what makes it so special. Families need to be provided those opportunities.”
WonderSpace also has been beneficial because it encourages socialization among young children who haven’t had opportunities to play with other children during COVID-19 lockdowns and social distancing, Griffin pointed out.
The mobile play experience also is designed to meet the needs of children who may need a space separate from the larger areas to comfortably play, Griffin said. WonderSpace has designated calm or quiet areas.
“We try to make it accessible everyone, including handicapped children, children with special needs, or anyone who might be inhibited from playing in a larger environment,” Griffin said. “We want to provide an area for all children to be able to play and engage.”
According to Shayona Funches, a long-time Grant County resident, consultant, and former board member for WonderSpace, the nonprofit is meeting numerous community needs. Funches, who has three children, said that the area has been in decline for decades. During that time, many businesses have closed, including bowling alleys and movie theaters, she said.
“We’re not like Fort Wayne or Indianapolis, where there are a lot of things to do,” Funches said. “At one time, there was always something going on here. That’s just not the case anymore.”
WonderSpace fills a void not only by providing children a stimulating play experience, but also by connecting people throughout the community.
Funches said that WonderSpace has been successful, partly because Freemyer invited community input from the start. She said that it is important for nonprofits to ask questions. “What does your community want? What are their hopes?,” Funches said. “You want to them to buy into whatever you’re doing because eventually you will need their support. It also was important for Stephanie to have a team of people who truly believed in the vision.”
Freemyer continues to receive reinforcement that WonderSpace is making an impact, but one special moment will always stay with her.
During the opening night, a mentor to several troubled youth who were exhibiting signs of play deprivation came over to Freemyer with her smartphone held out. She displayed a photo she had captured while the children were playing. The photo showed a boy’s joyful face. The mentor told Freemyer that it was the first time she had seen him smile.
She immediately recalled her son’s prayer during dinner the night before; he had prayed that there would be smiles at WonderSpace. “I still get choked up,” she said. “I knew we’d see smiles. I just didn’t know it would be so significant.”
Local nonprofit leaders predict a complex journey in addressing underlying issues
by Shari Finnell, editor/writer, Not for Profit News
Like many other nonprofit organizations, the team at Christel House Indianapolis had to quickly assess how to carry out its mission in spite of COVID-19 restrictions in early 2020 — an endeavor that revealed many of the challenges facing the students they serve.
“When the pandemic hit last March, our board members and our entire team came together and realized that the pandemic was not just going to last for a couple of weeks,” said Dr. Sarah Weimer, executive director of Christel House Indianapolis.
It was a critical undertaking as they considered the potential for educational setbacks among Christel House students living in some of the most under-resourced communities in Indianapolis. The closing of school buildings for 2,300 K-12 students and 750 adult learners would require addressing any challenges in their home environments.
Technology was identified as a priority, and the team implemented a plan to distribute devices to each of their students at their Indianapolis schools. However, that plan only addressed part of the equation. “They had the device but couldn’t access the Internet to download their assignments,” Weimer said. “We discovered that over 50 percent of our students in Indianapolis did not have access to WiFi.”
Although telecommunications companies offered discounted and free internet service for students in low-income households during the pandemic, more challenges came their way. “Providers were having deals for families to get free internet, but they had barriers,” Weimer said. “If you owed a bill, you couldn’t get free access. If you didn’t have a social security number, you couldn’t get access.” Through a partnership with the Indianapolis Mayor’s Office and a fundraising initiative, Christel House was able to purchase data packages totaling $10,000 a month to support their students.
In looking back, Weimer said the pandemic further revealed the inequities that already existed based on demographics and neighborhoods. “The inequity question is one that we’re going to be grappling with for years to come,” Weimer said. “We don’t have a good grasp of how impoverished communities and communities of color were impacted by the pandemic. We know statistically but we don’t have an understanding of the toll, including the emotional and mental toll.
“There’s going to be a lot to unpack for the kids,” she added. “Besides academic and learning loss, the students we serve come from backgrounds where they need additional mental health services, food insecurity and childhood trauma, all of which were exacerbated by the pandemic,”
Dennis E. Bland, president of the Center for Leadership Development, an organization that equips African American youth with education, business and community leadership opportunities, including scholarships, said that the pandemic highlighted varying mindsets about the value of an education — a gap that must be addressed to ensure that equity is achieved.
Bland said there often is a perception that everyone understands the opportunities that are open to an individual who is committed to advancing their education. However, he said, that lack of understanding can be at the root of some inequities.
Students, especially those growing up in households where the importance of an education is stressed, will more likely take advantage of tutoring, counseling, summer classes, college prep and other programs that are available to them. “Students who were committed to taking advantage of those resources were the students who did the best,” he said. “It’s not necessarily the lack of resources, it’s a lack of understanding about the value of an education.”
Bland said the conversation must start there — educating students and their family about the value of an education. “It is the duty of caring people in our community to encourage students to study and to take advantage of these resources — not whether or not you feel like it. This is about whether or not you want to be successful. Success often means doing the opposite of what you feel.”
“We need to give more people an education on education,” Bland added. “We struggle as a society because we go along as if we think that people innately value education and learning.”
The challenges in understanding the impact of the pandemic on students is multi-faceted, Weimer agreed. “It’s not just about academic preparedness,” she said. We must address the social and emotional issues that have been confounded during the pandemic year. We will be focusing on those issues during the upcoming year.”
Christel House has had a history of addressing those complexities as part of the support it provides students. “We follow our students for five years after they graduate,” Weimer explained. “Poverty isn’t alleviated just because they graduated. The hurdles they have to overcome don’t magically disappear after they get a diploma.”
The organization tailors a support plan for each student, depending upon their specific needs. As they navigate college or other educational and career paths, each high school graduate stays in contact with college and career administrators who are aware of the potential barriers to their success.
“They (students) can proactively reach out if they need gas cards if they lose a job. If they have a job interview, we can help them secure interview clothes,” Weimer said. “We may have students in college who will sign up for classes and realize their books are not covered by financial aid. We’ll pay for their books.”
Navigating the complexities of college, like understanding what a Bursar’s Office is, can be difficult for first-generation high school graduates or first-generation college-goers, especially since they can’t go to their families for direction, Weimer added. “Some things are foreign for a large portion of our families,” she said.
While these challenges were already familiar to Christel House, the pandemic shed more light on some of the hurdles facing students who are in households where English is a second language.
Many families with children learning at home are able to easily stand in and help them adjust and assist with questions related to their studies, Weimer noted. However, about 50 percent of the Christel House Indianapolis students live in households where the adults don’t speak English or who don’t engage with computers on a day-to-day basis.
“When they’re trying to help their child navigate assignments or instructions, there’s a language barrier,” Weimer said. “We need to do a better job of paying attention to low-income households, communities of color, immigrants so that we can do a better job of outreach, equitable practices and equitable access.”
Community leaders announce plans to build 96 more permanent housing solutions as part of a comprehensive plan to end and prevent homelessness by 2024
by Shari Finnell, editor/writer, Charitable Advisors
The road to homelessness can be complex — with individuals and families experiencing varying factors that can lead to them living on the street, in parks or in vehicles, as outlined in Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. In the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, sociologist Matthew Desmond provides a rare look into the lives of several individuals who failed to avoid homelessness in Milwaukee.
After years of analyzing the homeless population in Indianapolis, city officials and community leaders realize they still don’t have all the answers — but are hopeful that a comprehensive approach that includes a continuum of care, hundreds of new supportive permanent housing units and rental assistance can put them on the path to ending homelessness by 2024, said Chelsea Haring-Cozzi, the executive director of the Coalition for Homelessness Prevention and Intervention.
While many cities have traditionally focused on short- to medium-term solutions that focus on stabilizing housing within a 12- to 24-month time period, the Indianapolis Continuum of Care (CoC), a coalition of public and private organizations and individuals, has shifted the focus on more permanent solutions for homeless people in Indianapolis, Haring-Cozzi said.
As part of that plan, the CoC recently announced plans to build 96 permanent housing solutions with a $37 million grant awarded by the state of Indiana. The Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority (IHCDA) has chosen three supportive housing developments in Indianapolis for this year’s round of Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC). The three local developments will create 96 new units of permanent supportive housing for individuals experiencing homelessness in Indianapolis.
The projects include:
Hanna Commons, 2800-2910 E. Hanna Ave., Indianapolis, Ind., 46227. Awarded $1.2 million annually for 10 years to provide 50 supportive housing units for individuals experiencing homelessness.
St. Lucas Lofts, 2810 E. New York St., Indianapolis, Ind., 46201. Awarded $1.08 million annually for 10 years to provide 50 affordable housing units for youth experiencing homelessness.
Compass on Washington Street, 1033 East Washington St., Indianapolis, Ind., 46202, awarded $1.2 million annually for 10 years and $900,000 in Housing Trust Funds to develop 36 supportive housing units for individuals experiencing homelessness.
Construction on all three housing developments is expected to start later this year with an anticipated completion date by the end of 2022. All three developments qualify for Indianapolis Housing Authority vouchers. These projects bring the city of Indianapolis and the CoC closer to its goal of developing 500 new supportive housing units by 2024. Currently, there are 360 supportive housing units under development in the city.
The plan is also focused on preventing homelessness. Haring-Cozzi noted that the pandemic, as of yet, has not contributed to a noticeable uptick in the number of homeless people in Indianapolis as some people had feared.
“When counts were analyzed in January 2021, compared to last January, Indianapolis didn’t see much of a change,” she said. “Even before COVID, Indianapolis was among the few communities nationwide that wasn’t seeing the same type of uptick in homelessness.”
However, the impact of COVID-19 may still need to be realized, she said. The next few months may reveal how if there will be any sustainable fallout caused by the pandemic. “We’re hopeful eviction moratoriums have curbed the impact of the loss of housing and the loss of income, along with people getting rental assistance,” she said.
Poverty in America. It’s a problem that has been analyzed and dissected by many sources. It’s been the subject of books, TV documentaries and combatted by a host of social services agencies.
But do we really understand the ins and outs of poverty?
A complete answer likely remains elusive, but a local university and a national nonprofit have been working together to get a better grip on the changing needs of America’s poor.
The resulting product is the annual Human Needs Index (HNI), a multidimensional report that stems from a partnership between IUPUI’s Lilly School of Philanthropy and Salvation Army USA. The index is a more comprehensive in-depth look at our nation’s poor, according to Una Osili, the Lilly School’s assistant dean for research and international programs.
Traditionally, poverty has been measured in a narrow vein: income level based on government figures. The HNI goes beyond that and uses data the Salvation Army has been collecting on its own since 2004 based on the services it provides.
The first HNI was released in 2015, but the project was seeded four years prior, when the Virginia-based Salvation Army invited the Lilly School to a conversation at its headquarters. While reading the latest U.S. poverty statistics in USA Today in 2011, one of the agency’s board members recognized that the Salvation Army had more up-to-date data on poverty than what he was reading, and together with the entire board, suggested a potential partnership with the Lilly School.
The meeting led to the partnership where both entities benefit: the Lilly School is able to disseminate information helpful to the nonprofit sector, and the Salvation Army gets validation that its data and work are valuable tools to better serve the public.
While often associated with urban work, the Salvation Army’s safety net programs have a presence in every ZIP code, including mobile outreach in rural areas. For years, the organization had amassed data from more than 7,000 sites. Four statisticians oversee the collection of its data, one for each territory. Most of Indiana is part of the Central Territory, which covers 11 states and has 2,342 operations centers; the exceptions are the seven counties that comprise Indiana’s northern border.
The HNI tracks need in seven areas: meals, groceries, housing costs, clothing, furniture, medical bills and energy bills. The need is also compiled seasonally. A score is assigned to the nation as a whole in addition to scores for different regions. Scores were assigned retroactively back to 2004. Upward and downward movements in the scores often reflect economic conditions such as a recession or even natural disasters.
When first approached by the Salvation Army, Osili said the School of Philanthropy was intrigued but it was too early to tell whether the data was relevant.
First the university conducted a validation process, doing a rigorous analysis comparison of Salvation Army data with other local, state and national figures on poverty. In addition, multiple calls with the territorial statisticians helped the Lilly team understand the story behind the data. Working alongside the Salvation Army, the Lilly team better understood its collection process and had the opportunity to raise lots of questions.
“I’ll give you one example. We noticed that energy orders that the Salvation Army was providing spiked in March, April and May. That was a bit of a surprise to us, because you would have expected that people would have needed assistance in the winter, not needing energy in the spring when temperatures tend to be more moderate,” said Osili.
What they learned, through conversations with the Salvation Army’s team, was that many cities and municipalities have ordinances that prevent winter heat shutoffs for low income or elderly residents. Even with unpaid balances, the heat stays on. But come March when temperatures were more moderate, the needs inflate, resulting in higher assistance requests from the Salvation Army.
“We wouldn’t have found that out on our own. Salvation Army had the data, and so that’s why the collaboration and the partnership made a lot of sense. Clearly, they were the content experts. It was basically taking all that information and then distilling into what we thought were the basic aspects of human needs,” Osili said.
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Sharing the knowledge
Filling an information void about local safety net programs, the Human Needs Index can be more just a cool data visualization tool or source of information inquiry into the measurement of need.
It can model how communities and philanthropy might collect, share, and use data to improve outcomes for clients, organizations, and community residents.
To that end, the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy has begun to share the lessons of HNI through workshops and webinars.
And while encouraging, Osili cautions that an organization needs to have a process to validate the data, and compare to other figures in order to establish a benchmark.
Another challenge for some nonprofits is that some are just present in rural areas but not in urban.
“The other big lesson that nonprofits can take away is kind of the power of collaboration. We’re used to thinking about universities doing one thing, and national and local nonprofits doing another,” said Osili.
She said this is an example of how you can actually bring together different sectors together. Nonprofits don’t always have the expertise in-house.
“So it’s thinking about all of our resources whether it’s our own data as an asset or community around us as far as the power of collaboration.”
“I think it would be great to also do something locally, so that our local nonprofits here can better understand,” said Osili.
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Natural disasters, like Hurricane Katrina, were another example. It wasn’t just the communities where the disaster occurred that needed assistance, but extended well beyond Louisiana, into Texas and Arkansas. With its boots on the ground, the Salvation Army was able to provide a detailed picture of needs, and expand the geographical need beyond the disaster.
Osili agreed that we tend to look at poverty based on income. But that changed when Angus Deaton, the 2015 Nobel Prize-winning economist, noted that to understand poverty, it needed to also be looked at through a consumption lens.
“Basically that is, what are people having trouble with, where are families struggling, what kinds of areas are they needing assistance,” said Osili. “Because the HNI views things more through a vulnerability lens, you can actually see how households struggle to meet energy needs, get assistance in health care or access to clothing. Those are things that are general poverty and statistics aren’t really going to tell us.”
The tool can be useful both at the local, state and national levels to help determine if poverty is improving and how needs and access to services are changing.
Locally, Susan Solomon, the Salvation Army’s divisional social services director, believes the index helps to give a broad picture of what is happening.
“There may be some things that we may miss in a given community, and then when we look at it collectively and have discussion, it raises awareness.”
Solomon said the Salvation Army, founded in 1865 in London, is a large old organization, and it is easy to continue to offer services because of tradition. With the reality of fewer dollars available, reviewing the data challenges the nonprofit to look at particular services to determine if they are still needed or perhaps duplicated by another agency. The result, hopefully, is to collectively meet more needs, she said.
“Has it had a fairly radical effect on the services we offer? I cannot say that’s happened, but it does raise our awareness of what do we do and do well and where needs are not being met as we plan and move forward,” said Solomon.
Spearheaded and funded by dollars raised by the Salvation Army USA’s board, the initial cost was designing and creating the infrastructure, and the annual upkeep is not as expensive. After each territory applies its checks and balances, the Lilly School receives quarterly data, releasing the HNI once a year.
Osili said while it would be easier to only report if the needs went up or down, the project teams decided to investigate more deeply to include what specifically was different in each wave of the data collection and to ask new questions. For this year’s index, they posed: What were the vulnerabilities that rural households were facing and how did the solution differ?
This year’s HNI has illustrated persistent pockets of poverty in rural America that might not have been apparent from traditional government measures like unemployment data, SNAP usage and the U.S. Census Bureau’s Poverty Report. Osili said things like Indiana’s low unemployment or what economists call full employment can mask poverty. For example, the state’s opioid epidemic has contributed and changed the levels of assistance and needs.
“How does that show up in the Salvation Army data? What we see is that even though other measures like unemployment are showing declining patterns, we also see that they’re starting to show up in health care needs. People are coming to Salvation Army for assistance with substance abuse and drug treatment facilities. What you can actually unpack is the particular challenges that households are facing,” she said.
Osili believes the HNI has been a bit of an inspiration for many organizations, leading many nonprofits wondering if they could do something similar. And while many nonprofits are starting to collect this type of data, not many have the comprehensive, historical and geographical reach of the Salvation Army USA, said Osili. Two — Catholic Charities and Feeding America — are starting to look at their own data footprint.
“I think there are a lot of lessons to learn. The first one is that nonprofits are often consumers of data and use data in making decisions, but they can also be part of the leadership on what data is collected and how we share that information. Data can be really powerful in helping to shape decision-making and then for policy makers, too, to better understand very complex issues facing a given community.
“The second take away is that nonprofits can be part of shaping how society understands the problem. You know just beyond the service delivery side, you can also be part of the generating new insight and knowledge,” she said.
By Andrew Keatts, Kinder Institute for Urban Research for The HuffPost Impact |
For all the resources and attention paid to combating poverty, the whole endeavor suffers from relatively limited data.
A new measure that debuted this fall aims to correct that problem.
Researchers at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy partnered with Salvation Army to develop the Human Needs Index, a real-time measure of poverty that they hope will better inform both policy makers and service providers of the true on-the-ground needs of poor Americans.
As researchers have searched for ways to explain the childhood obesity epidemic in the U.S., many have posited that a child’s race or ethnicity alone can put them at greater risk of becoming overweight or obese.
Kim Eagle, a professor of internal medicine and health management and policy at the University of Michigan, was skeptical of this thinking. His hunch was that poverty was a much more important part of the equation.
And he saw an opportunity to parse the connections between childhood obesity, poverty and race in Massachusetts, where public health officials have been collecting race, body mass index and other data on about 112,000 students from about 70 of the state’s school districts. Eagle and colleagues decided to compare those data to students’ eligibility for free school lunch programs, an indicator of poverty, to find out what predicts whether a child might become overweight or obese.
