The year was 2005, and two nonprofit foundations, the California HealthCare Foundation and The California Endowment, were poised to change the way individuals accessed health and social services in California. They established the Center to Promote HealthCare Access, an institution dedicated to the development and implementation of technology aimed at providing efficient access to vital services.

One Degree is proud to share the following interview with Samantha Masannat, inaugural AmeriCorps Fellow, who has joined One Degree as part of our partnership with the AmeriCorps Volunteer Infrastructure Project (VIP). Samantha began her journey with us in March 2023 and has focused on the development and expansion of our volunteer program to enhance community engagement across Los Angeles County. With the support of our AmeriCorps Supervising Organization, Foothill Unity Center, Inc., we aim to strengthen One Degree’s capacity to support community members and increase ongoing volunteer recruitment across our organization. As Samantha approaches the end of her 900-hour service term, she continues to engage community members and recruit volunteers to lay the foundation for a high-impact volunteer program.

We recently sat down with Samantha, who generously shared her thoughts about her One Degree journey:

Can you tell us about your background and what led you to join AmeriCorps and One Degree?

After graduating from college with a degree in Public Health in 2021, I began my career in community outreach, assisting low-income individuals primarily by providing them access to free cell phones. But I quickly realized I was seeking something more sustainable and impactful. I knew about AmeriCorps and decided to apply, believing it could be a rewarding experience. I’ve always been drawn to the nonprofit sector as I love working and interacting with people. In a world that often feels disconnected, I wanted to contribute to building stronger communities.

What are your hopes for the Los Angeles community?

My main hope is that we can provide necessary resources to low income individuals in our diverse LA County. I was introduced to Foothill Unity Center by my mother, where I became inspired by volunteer work and the ongoing need for community outreach. During my initial months, I worked alongside other AmeriCorps fellows, assisting low-income residents in Pasadena and Monrovia through food drives and administration duties. I’d like to see well-resourced outreach and assistance programs operating in every community in LA, so that people can find help quickly and services organizations and volunteers are regularly collaborating to close gaps in the safety net.

Can you share a little about your current responsibilities at One Degree?

At the moment, my primary focus is establishing a robust volunteer program in Los Angeles. We are developing volunteer descriptions, a dedicated website for volunteer support, and conducting volunteer outreach. We’ve published volunteer roles on platforms like VolunteerMatch and our One Degree website covering areas such as outreach and social media. My goal is to enhance our team’s capacity, allowing us to reach out to more community organizations and increase our presence in local spaces. We have new volunteer support joining us this month, specifically to attend Los Angeles events and help share resources with our community members. We are excited to expand from there and see what we are able to accomplish together.

What makes volunteering with One Degree an exciting opportunity?

Volunteering with One Degree is very exciting. Here, you’re not just a volunteer—you’re part of a team that cares deeply about helping people and finding new ways to bring resources to those who need it. I’ve been able to sharpen a number of skills, meet incredible people, and contribute to a community-based mission. Their goal of strengthening the social safety net and working day in and out to bring equitable support to all members of our community, it’s very satisfying. I feel proud of this work, knowing that when people learn about resources and find out there is help available, especially when having a hard time, there can be a ripple of positive change in someone’s life.

***

As Samantha continues to serve her term at One Degree, she will concentrate her efforts on fulfilling the Volunteer Development standard, a commitment completed within the first year of service. This involves the creation of a recruitment plan, defining clear roles, formulating retention and recognition strategies, and establishing a productive feedback process for our volunteers. Her work aims to establish a sustainable volunteer program in Los Angeles County that emphasizes utilization, involvement, and effective management. 

We look forward to witnessing the positive impact of Samantha’s volunteer work and encourage anyone interested in contributing to the One Degree mission and community to consider applying for our open volunteer roles. We are immensely grateful for Samantha’s achievements as well as the dedication and efforts of every volunteer who joins us in expanding access to social services in Los Angeles and beyond.

The year was 2005, and two nonprofit foundations, the California HealthCare Foundation and The California Endowment, were poised to change the way individuals accessed health and social services in California. They established the Center to Promote HealthCare Access, an institution dedicated to the development and implementation of technology aimed at providing efficient access to vital services.

Their breakthrough product was the One-e-App (OeA), an innovative web-based system enabling families to connect with an array of publicly funded health and human service programs. It was the first of its kind, trailblazing a path for a future where health coverage, food and nutrition benefits, utility and cash assistance were just a few clicks away. The story of One-e-App is the story of the organization that became Solution Interest Solutions and, today, lives on as One Degree.

Before 2005, most people still went to insurance agents to fill out dozens of pages of applications for their health coverage needs. However, with the birth of the OeA system, a significant shift began that improved resource access for low-income communities. Healthcare administrators within clinics and community-based organizations started to enroll their clients online, changing the landscape of how health insurance screening and eligibility were administered. During this era, legacy systems across industries were being replaced with innovative online platforms, including the shift from paper applications to the online Common App for college admissions and the surge of web-based document storage and sharing solutions such as Dropbox. It was the OeA team that stood at the forefront of this transformation in social services.

The organization’s longest employee and lead engineer, Naresh Ravuri, shared his experience of launching OeA nearly twenty years ago. “Reflecting on my journey with this technology, I feel truly blessed. I joined the team in 2007, although the project started in 2005. From that moment, it was a whirlwind of rapid, intense work striving to scale up OeA to meet the needs of our partners and their communities. Knowing that we were developing something that could potentially help millions of people gave us the drive to keep pushing forward.”

A crucial aspect of the OeA development team’s approach was forging deep, authentic relationships with clients—including San Mateo County, the County of Alameda, Los Angeles Department of Health Services, and Maryland’s Department of Health. This allowed them to more fully comprehend the unique needs of service providers and the communities they served. The team gained particular insight into a significant gap in safety net healthcare programs: the enrollment of individuals who, due to immigration status or other reasons, didn’t qualify for comprehensive Medi-Cal coverage. Partnering closely with their clients, the team quickly developed OeA to help enroll the highest need and poorest community members into much-needed healthcare services. While initially embraced primarily by community-based organizations, OeA usage evolved to encompass county and state health departments. This expansion led to the screening of over 9 million people across four states—California, Arizona, Indiana, and Maryland—and processing upwards of 12 million benefit program applications. 

Beyond facilitating enrollment in safety net programs, OeA served to reduce duplicative administrative procedures. In the past, healthcare administrators who worked directly with communities faced the burdensome task of filling out screening and eligibility paperwork for multiple systems. OeA, however, simplified the process. Functioning as a one-stop system to determine whether individuals qualified for Medi-Cal/Medicaid or other safety net programs, OeA saved providers considerable time and resources.

Ravuri reflected on how OeA enhanced accessibility, stating, “Our application was a breath of fresh air—straightforward and intuitive. With the aid of a helper, individuals could easily fill out the application, which put all the required information at their fingertips. Unlike paper forms that often didn’t capture enough information, our application provided all the necessary details, enabling us to do accurate eligibility calculations and promptly provide the results to our clients. We also introduced kiosks to access the platform in certain areas. The kiosk proved invaluable, especially for those who didn’t have online access at home. They could simply go to a county office and apply using our web-based application, a far cry from the lengthy and daunting paper forms of the past.”

In the early days of OeA, no other nonprofits or commercial vendors were involved in similar work. The team truly pioneered the use of technology to improve access to services and benefits. Aiming to deliver on its mission to promote healthcare access, the team recognized that Web 2.0 technology created an unprecedented opportunity to provide people with faster and easier access to healthcare resources and opportunities. Over the next decade, OeA became a tailored solution, adapting to respond to changing benefits policies and serving different agencies at the local, county, and state levels. Simultaneously, OeA became a blueprint and case study that other companies used to scale up similar technology solutions for benefits access. Today, every state in the country uses a system that, at its core, was modeled off the very first online application for benefits—OeA.

In the last 10 years, few industries have been left untouched by the Web 2.0 revolution, and the benefits and social services field has been no different. Many governmental agencies now have advanced even further to deploy robust, federally and/or state funded enrollment systems, like Covered California, that have reduced the need for OeA, a powerful technology for its time. However, One Degree knows that much more can be done.

Steve Spiker, Chief of Programs and Technology, shared, “Even though electronic applications have now become commonplace, there are still significant barriers to low-income people being able to easily access healthcare benefits and social programs. Despite the digital revolution, the enrollment process can often seem like a black box, where people can be rejected for unknown reasons and spend months or years in appeals or reapplications. The system pressures many people to give up. We are excited that some things have improved over time—for instance, renewals are now just a text message away—but the struggle to access and maintain benefits is still all too real for many. Developing technology and reforming administrative systems that offer universal access, transparency, and referrals to multiple service providers is where we currently see the greatest need.”

Recent changes in California state policy and the Governor’s budget have expanded and strengthened benefits eligibility for low-income families and undocumented individuals. As a result, many original programs that used OeA are being phased out, with families being transferred to MediCal. One Degree applauds this transition, seeing it as a positive step towards ensuring high quality healthcare and reducing administrative burdens. Consequently, One Degree is gradually sunsetting OeA and channeling resources towards what it perceives is the next evolution in social services—integrated eligibility and enrollment for benefits and services through an open resource and referral platform.

One Degree CEO Rey Faustino expressed, “We are immensely grateful to the original team of visionaries who conceived, developed, and launched OeA, as well as the unwavering support of our state, county, and CBO partners throughout the years. OeA has not only facilitated the enrollment of individuals into vital benefits, but it has also had a profound and far-reaching impact on countless lives, creating a ripple effect of positive change. Today, we are redirecting our focus towards addressing the evolving needs of the communities we serve. We are committed to finding innovative, equity-centered solutions and working with community partners to achieve our goals.”

“With One Degree, our priority lies in the next frontier of social service and benefits access,” he continued, “Ensuring that the technology infrastructure actually improves people’s lives. Equally significant is the robust foundation our past work has built, which has allowed us to foster invaluable relationships with key partners and clients, spanning from Los Angeles and San Francisco to the wider reaches of California. Even as we begin to phase-out OeA, the legacy of this pioneering technology system continues to inspire and guide our work.” 

The sunsetting process for OeA begins this month and is projected to run until spring 2024. In reflecting on his experience with OeA, Ravuri shared, “It’s sad to close an application that has served millions of people and fulfilled their needs for so long, but it’s comforting to know that people today can access the benefits they need through many alternatives like Covered California. I’m proud of our work at One Degree and with OeA,” he continued, “where we prioritize people and their needs and build solutions from there. Our impact has been wide. And as we move forward, we continue to leverage our history, our experiences, and our legacy to deliver the technology that people truly need.”

Over the last three years during the COVID-19 pandemic, California increased the benefit amounts for CalFresh, the federal program formerly known as food stamps. Despite skyrocketing inflation and untenable increases in basic food costs, this temporary boost in benefits ended in early April. Now, a $500 million per month reduction in CalFresh benefits is precipitating a hunger crisis in California, affecting 5 million families across the state.

With $82 less in their pockets each month, more and more families are scrambling to figure out how to make ends meet. On the One Degree platform, we observed a 10% increase in searches for food-related resources in March, just before the California benefits increase expired. 

Unfortunately, another benefits cliff is approaching for college students. 

Last year, California expanded CalFresh eligibility to meet a growing need for vital food assistance among students. But this expansion is about to end due to the rollback of the pandemic emergency. College students have until June 10th to be considered for CalFresh benefits under the pandemic-era guidelines, enabling those who are eligible to receive $281 per month for food and groceries. However, if they miss this deadline, their need will be determined under pre-pandemic guidelines that are much narrower and offer much lower benefit amounts.

The biggest challenge is that many eligible students are unaware of the upcoming changes and the June 10th deadline. 

On the bright side, college students across communities are taking outreach into their own hands. They are holding events and raising awareness to find those who need assistance, letting them know that help is available, and supporting the application process. This grassroots effort reminds me of how One Degree began.

In the coming weeks, we will be reaching out to our student community as well, reminding them of the June 10th deadline before time runs out.

At the same time, we want to speak to the need for the future to be different. Every student ought to be able to study without scrambling for food, housing, or healthcare. But to create this future, we need to raise awareness of this issue and create a more comprehensive and coordinated support system.

Let’s join forces to make this vision a reality by increasing our advocacy, raising awareness about food insecurity, and supporting the development of innovative infrastructure that can deliver vital support to people who need it most.

If you’d like to learn more, check out the resources below. We want to hear your thoughts on how One Degree—and our community—can collectively respond to the hunger crisis before us.

Learning Links

Learn more about the California hunger crisis, including the devastating impact that CalFresh benefits reductions are expected to have on college students and families. By sharing these resources, we hope to inspire both advocacy and action.   

• “California is Facing a Hunger Crisis in 2023” (California Food Bank Association)
   
• “A Quick Guide To Changes To College Student Eligibility For CalFresh” (LAist)
   
• “As CalFresh College Eligibility Narrows In June, Students Are Stepping Up To Help Peers Navigate The Enrollment” (LAist)
   
• “Increase of Families in Need After CalFresh Ends Emergency Benefits” (NBC Los Angeles)
   
• “Hunger crisis expected in California as end of COVID-19 emergency prompts cuts to food security programs” (FOX5, KSWB San Diego)
   
• “Food insecurity worsens among low-income Angelenos as emergency boost to CalFresh program expires” (USC News)
   
• “California’s Nutrition Safety Net” (Public Policy Institute of California)

Would you like to share ideas or convene with One Degree about how we can respond to the hunger crisis as a community? If so, we want to hear from you! Send us a message here with the subject “Responding to Hunger.”

Oakland, CA. April 26, 2023 – One Degree is thrilled to announce that Zhen Liu, a Senior Manager at The Bridgespan Group, has joined One Degree’s Board of Directors. Liu boasts an impressive track of shaping social impact initiatives to enhance access to education, public transit, and healthcare. 

“We are incredibly fortunate to welcome Zhen Liu to our team,” expressed One Degree CEO Rey Faustino. “His far-reaching experience collaborating with diverse stakeholders is rooted in a strong commitment to fostering equity and social mobility. This combination equips him with an innate understanding of One Degree’s vision and the expertise to help guide our organization.”

Prior to joining Bridgespan in 2022, Liu collaborated with local governments, nonprofits, corporations, higher education institutions, and multilateral organizations to address various needs, such as strategy, operating model design, and performance improvement. His work has taken him across the US and the world, including stints in China, India, and Southern Africa. He held leadership roles at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Agency and Bain & Company, and had worked with TechnoServe and the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office. He had served on City Year DC’s associate board for six years before moving to the Bay Area last summer.

Liu shared his enthusiasm for joining the One Degree team, stating, “One Degree is putting life-changing services and benefits within reach of millions of people seeking help. As a child of an immigrant single mother, I understand the importance of getting such help when you most need it. I have been impressed by the One Degree team, not only for the community resource platform they built and are actively enhancing, but also for their passion and commitment to their work.”

“With their current efforts to deepen One Degree’s partnerships within LA County,” Liu continued, “It’s evident that the organization plays a differentiated role in demonstrating how equitable safety net infrastructure can be developed. I’m thrilled to be part of their journey forward.”   

Zhen Liu becomes the sixth member of One Degree’s esteemed board that is helping the organization move closer to its goal of building a social safety net that works for all.

One Degree and ACES-LA Renew Partnership to Strengthen Social Care Referrals in Los Angeles

Los Angeles, CA. April 5, 2023 – One Degree, a tech-for-good nonprofit that builds equity-centered technology, has announced the renewal of its contract with ACES-LA, a network of organizations committed to addressing Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). The ongoing partnership enables One Degree to further strengthen a closed-loop referral network, developed with ACES-LA and managed by the Los Angeles Department of Health Services (LADHS), aimed to help at-risk families get the resources they need.

One Degree built the technology infrastructure for the referral network, using its database of 8,000 nonprofit and social service resources in Los Angeles County. Comprising 31 community-based organizations (CBOs) linked to clinical settings within LADHS and the UCLA Olive View and Harbor Clinics, the network streamlines the client referral process from health agencies to CBOs, enabling clients to benefit from a diverse range of support services.

“Our work with ACES-LA highlights the immense importance of a connected referral network, inspiring us to pursue county-wide expansion,” expressed One Degree CEO Rey Faustino. “Especially with the expiration of LA County’s pandemic emergency declaration and related tenant protections, we want to expand the CBO network that can bridge the gaps. We are also raising awareness about 1degree.org, which provides a direct gateway to resources for people who need help.”

To grow the referral network, One Degree is conducting outreach to CBOs across Los Angeles County. “We are committed to developing equity-centered infrastructure and know that listening to the experiences of frontline providers and the communities they serve is critical to getting this right,” Faustino explained.

One Degree also has plans to invest in its data analytics and reporting interface to facilitate better insights into the partnership’s impact. Chief of Programs & Technology Steve Spiker stated, “Enhanced data reporting will empower CBOs to better demonstrate the needs of their communities and attract investment to the programs and services that address these needs most deeply.”

The partnership between One Degree and ACES-LA aligns with CalAIM: California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal, which aims to offer a more equitable, coordinated, and person-centered approach to improving the health and life trajectory of California’s most vulnerable residents.

Media inquiries: press@1degree.org.

Link to the official press release . . .

Did you know that last year, 806,738 people used One Degree to find services and benefits? It’s exciting that we continue to reach so many, and I’m simultaneously humbled by the massive need that our community continues to face.

Every year, I look forward to reflecting on how well we are serving our community. For those of you who have been following our newsletter closely, you know that 2022 was a year of big transitions for our organization. Despite that, our program has continued to grow stronger.

I’m very excited to share our Impact Report 2021-2022, so you can read more about our work—community outreach, building partnerships, and deepening our impact with community-centered technology. I’m so proud of the work of our team, along with the collective efforts and contributions of our partners, supporters, and community members.

Check out some of the results, and send us a note with any feedback, kudos, or questions you have. In dialogue, we can continually improve our efforts to get people the help they need!

In community,
Rey Faustino, CEO

Hoy, Alluma anunció que cambiará su marca a One Degree para que la organización conecte a – personas con recursos críticos de una manera más efectiva. One Degree amplía el acceso a los servicios y beneficios sociales a través de su plataforma de recursos comunitarios (1degree.org) y se enfoca en desarrollar sistemas y herramientas de referencia personalizados para colaboradores  y clientes. Con más de medio millón de usuarios en 2022 y un número creciente de proveedores de servicios que utilizan la plataforma One Degree, este cambio de marca reenfoca a la organización en el camino hacia un mayor impacto en las comunidades necesitadas.

Además de este emocionante cambio de marca, la Junta ha nombrado oficialmente a Rey Faustino como Director Ejecutivo de One Degree. Rey se ha desempeñado como director ejecutivo provisional de Alluma este año para administrar la transición de la organización e implementar un nuevo camino estratégico a seguir para la organización.

El presidente de la junta, James Yocum, declaró: “Rey ha sido un visionario dentro de nuestra industria y un líder dentro de esta organización durante años, y One Degree se beneficiará enormemente de su experiencia continua. Rey asumió el cargo de CEO provisional durante un momento muy desafiante de transiciones internas y externas significativas. Mostró un liderazgo increíble y, a través de la colaboración con el personal, personas de apoyo y amigos, ayudó a la organización a navegar estos cambios con gracia, habilidad y perseverancia”.

Los productos y programas de One Degree continuarán atendiendo  la creciente necesidad de llegar a las personas marginadas y vulnerables a través de un software nuevo e innovador. La misión de la organización sigue siendo la misma: brindar servicios sociales que cambian la vida a millones de personas de bajos ingresos que buscan ayuda todos los días,  desde vivienda hasta atención médica y más. One Degree esta haciendo cambios encima de su larga historia, dirigido por personas que han utilizado y trabajan en servicios sociales.

Rey Faustino, el recién nombrado Director Ejecutivo de One Degree, dijo: “Nuestro increíble y diverso equipo, dedicado a una misión que es fundamental para la vida de tantas personas, continúa trabajando arduamente para aumentar el acceso a los servicios sociales para millones de personas que buscan ayuda todos los días. Aunque la plataforma One Degree ha ayudado a más de 3,3 millones de personas, seguimos totalmente comprometidos con remodelar el panorama de los servicios sociales para que sea más equitativo y digno para todos. Seguimos profundamente comprometidos con nuestra misión. Y seguimos profundamente comprometidos con las personas, los socios y las comunidades a las que servimos”.Para obtener más información sobre One Degree, su misión, su trabajo y su equipo, visite: about.1degree.org

Today Alluma announced that it is rebranding to One Degree to allow the organization to more effectively connect people to the critical resources they need. One Degree expands access to social services and benefits through its community resource platform (1degree.org), and focuses on developing customized referral systems and tools for partners and clients. With over half a million users in 2022 and a growing number of service providers using the One Degree platform, this rebranding refocuses the organization on a path toward making a greater impact on communities in need.

The Board has officially named Rey Faustino the Chief Executive Officer of One Degree. Rey has been serving as interim CEO of Alluma this year to manage the organization’s transition and implement a new strategic path forward for the organization.

The Chairman of the Board, James Yocum stated, “Rey has been a visionary within our industry and a leader within this organization for years, and One Degree will benefit greatly from his continued expertise. Rey took on the role of Interim CEO during a highly challenging time of significant internal and external transitions. He displayed incredible leadership, and through collaboration with staff, supporters and friends, he has helped the organization navigate these shifts with grace, skill and perseverance.”

One Degree’s products and programs will continue to address the growing need to reach marginalized and vulnerable people through new and innovative software. The organization’s mission remains the same, to bring life-changing social services to millions of low-income people seeking help everyday, providing access to everything from housing to healthcare and beyond. One Degree is building on its decades-long track record of change led by people who have both used and worked in social services.

Rey Faustino, the newly appointed CEO of One Degree said, “Our amazing and diverse team, dedicated to a mission that’s critical to so many people’s lives, continues to work hard at increasing access to social services for millions of people seeking help every day. Although the One Degree platform has helped well over 3.3 million people, we remain thoroughly committed to reshaping the social services landscape to be more equitable and dignified for everyone. We remain deeply invested in our mission. And we remain deeply committed to the people, partners, and communities we serve.”

To learn more about One Degree, its mission, their work and their team, please visit: about.1degree.org

One Degree’s Rey Faustino: The tech world shows us it’s possible to dream big and innovate. It’s past time that we use these tools to imagine a safety net for the future.

Imagine the store of the future. You walk into an immaculate, brightly lit room stocked from floor to ceiling with the freshest food on glossy shelves. Instead of the typical store cashier checking out your kale chips and kombucha, the store is dotted with technology to track you.

Weight sensors are in the shelves to track products, cameras eye your every movement, and each item you pick up and put into your bag or backpack is automatically scanned. And then you walk out and instantaneously get billed for the exact items you selected.

This may sound like a distant future, but this is happening now. Automation is here. And it is inevitably going to create significant job displacement — a 2017 report from McKinsey Global Institute warned automation could eliminate 73 million jobs in the United States by 2030.

Last month, I visited one of the two Amazon Go mini-marts in San Francisco. The 800-square-foot stores are the internet giant’s new foray into the brick-and-mortar convenience-store space. It was missing something pretty glaring: cashiers.

Cashierless technology is already spreading. When I shop at my local Safeway grocery store, I usually use the self-checkout line. But while people are talking about how automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning have begun to threaten the jobs and livelihoods of low-skill workers, there aren’t many discussions about how this will affect our social safety net.

Frankly, our safety net is not ready for this deluge of worker displacement. At One Degree, the nonprofit organization I founded seven years ago, we’re leveraging technology to make accessing social services easier. This is imperative because we need infrastructure that meets the size of the problem. The benefits and services that compose the social safety net are scattered among thousands of governmental (food assistance, welfare, health care) and nonprofit programs (homeless shelters, child care, legal services). Navigating these disparate services can be grueling.

When the safety net was introduced in the 1930s, it was innovative social insurance that we know now as Social Security. As a society, we have since created more safety net innovations, such as food stamps and unemployment benefits, to prevent individuals from falling into poverty.

But the safety net has become cumbersome and confusing to navigate. In the Bay Area, 62 percent of people who are hungry, or don’t know where their next meal is coming from, do not qualify for food stamps. They’re stitching together services to feed their families. A One Degree member uses Women, Infants, and Children food service (known as WIC), a food pantry, and a free meals program at a local community center to feed her family of four. Low-income families routinely use a dozen services to make ends meet. Doing so takes hours of time to navigate.

There is hope, though, as innovations in corners of the safety net are popping up. For example, Social Interest Solutions, a national nonprofit organization in Oakland, rolled out One-e-App in 2009, one of the first electronic applications for government benefits, such as Medicaid. Now One-e-App is used as the online application of record for government benefits in Arizona and other states.

At One Degree, we developed mobile applications to make it easier for vulnerable communities to access the social safety net in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County. In the past, people spent hours using paper binders to find resources. Now they’re able to find services right in the palm of their hands. For instance, another One Degree member, a single mother of two in Oakland, would have used a full day traveling across Alameda County to find help with her job search. Using the One Degree mobile app, she was was able to locate and apply to an employment agency immediately.

We need commensurate innovation in the safety net to help people bounce back from job displacement. Contrary to the general stereotypes, roughly 7 in 10 low-income adults own a smartphone with internet access. At One Degree, where over half the people we serve have experienced or are currently experiencing homelessness, we saw a 100 percent increase in mobile smartphone usage over the past four years. Clearly more and more people from vulnerable communities are accessing the internet and expecting the same kinds of innovations in other parts of their lives.

Automation. Artificial intelligence. Big data. These aren’t just buzzwords in the tech world. Imagine using real-time social service data to route people to the right services at the right time before they fall into poverty. Or using AI to automatically qualify people into preventive health care when they apply for food assistance.

The tech world shows us it’s possible to dream big and innovate. It’s past time that we use these tools to imagine a safety net for the future.

Rey Faustino is the founder of One Degree, a tech platform for social services and benefits . He was nominated in 2015 as a Chronicle visionary of the year. To comment, submit your letter to the editor at SFChronicle.com/letters

By  

Rachel Alexander

 and 

Rey Faustino

Originally appeared in New America.org

What do you think of when you hear the term “safety net?”

Maybe it conjures the image of a tightrope walker, and the web of netting beneath them. It’s this netting that allows these aerial artists the freedom to perform, even from such risky heights.

For other people, “safety net” might evoke the nets that firefighters place beneath burning buildings. These nets are insurance for the worst case scenario, for the fires that burn too fast for rescue, for people whose only escape is to jump.

As humans we do a lot of falling. As soon as we learn to walk we begin collecting bumped heads and skinned knees. As we get older the falls change, as do their repercussions. For some of us a fall might be the new venture we throw ourselves into but that never quite gets its wings. For others of us it is the health emergency that drains our bank accounts, or the eviction in the tightest of housing markets.

When we fall– because we all do– the question is: what will be there to catch us? Our savings accounts, or those of our family members? What catches those of us who have neither of these things? When we fall, the question is: do we deserve to be caught?

These were the issues we wrestled with at “Tech for the Safety Net,” a discussion in which Rey Faustino and Nicolas Colin shared their thoughts about the future of the social safety net, and the role that technology has to play in supporting it. Key topics included:

• Social service fragmentation: The government and nonprofit sectors operate in a fragmented way that can feel frustrating, but that was partially by design. Leaders like George H.W. Bush, with his “thousand points of light,” ushered in an era where the obligation for solving social problems fell primarily on under-resourced local service providers, vs. a more standardized “big government” approach. This also means that any given person trying to access help may need to stitch together these “thousand points” to make ends meet. This creates room for technologies to play a critical infrastructure role in social service systems, both in coordinating these services and in helping track and measure the impact of services on users’ lives.
• The stigma around accessing services: Nicolas noted that this is particularly American and less true in countries where it is widely acknowledged that all people benefit from government services. Rey agreed, arguing that this American “bootstrap mentality” is largely a myth, with opportunity and luck as important as hard work in giving people the environments in which they can grow, experiment and take the risks that enable social and economic mobility.
• The pros and cons of a Universal Basic Income (UBI): Nicolas argued against UBI based on his policymaking experience, in which he was always skeptical of single interventions that promised they could solve for a variety of social ills. Rey, on the other hand, thought there might be a place for UBI as one element of a thriving safety net, but agreed that there can be no one “silver bullet” approach.

The panelists wrapped the conversation with calls to action. For tech executives: to engage in discussions and actions that support safety net innovation, so that community members can thrive and so tech leaders themselves can stem the increasing backlash against their companies. For interested community members: to assess who is missing from conversations about the safety net, and to pull those people in as co-creators of solutions.

Our social safety net is supposed to provide a minimum baseline of survival beyond which people cannot drop. There is much work to do to bring our current reality into alignment with that aspiration. But imagine even one step better: building a safety net so robust that it serves as a trampoline, allowing people to bounce back up and out of poverty. The “fail fast, fail often” mentality that has fueled so many Silicon Valley startups is often available only to those with their own personal safety nets — the wealth, networks, and social insurance to bounce back after a potential fall. Imagine how many more entrepreneurs would take risks if everyone knew they were guaranteed a path back to safety when they needed it.

Want more? Click here to listen to our conversation with Rey and Nicolas, moderated by New America CA Director Autumn McDonald.

Jonathan Weiss / Shutterstock.com

By  

Rey Faustino

April 4, 2019

Earlier this year, my organization went on one of its quarterly team retreats. But it wasn’t your average off-site retreat to a board room. We went very far off site—to Montgomery, Alabama, to visit the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

The memorial sits atop a hill overlooking downtown Montgomery. It’s a visually stunning installation of steel and concrete, and is dedicated to the many thousands of black Americans who were lynched between the Civil War and the mid-20th century civil rights movement. As we walked by the dark, rusted columns, we felt swallowed up by the sheer size and magnitude of the structures, and also engulfed by the horror of the racial terrorism that had occurred.

One of my takeaways from the visit was that social justice moves at a glacial pace—but more so that it takes tremendous perseverance and an expansive vision to fuel that movement.

Yet when I look at the work of social justice—especially poverty alleviation—in the United States today, I’m frustrated by our collective obsession with silver bullets. Philanthropy, in particular, seems to be preoccupied by the hottest, newest solutions, even though this narrow focus on silver-bullet solutions won’t solve the complex, stubborn problems of poverty at scale.

If big philanthropy wants a safety net that works, it’s key to support a comprehensive solution. In other words, the safety net of services must actually be a safety network: Every low-income family and individual should have their own network of social services that makes sense for them and their needs.

Understanding the stakes of this issue requires looking briefly at the current state of philanthropy. The way philanthropic funding flows to nonprofit providers is piecemeal and ad hoc. Philanthropy can be fickle—grant-makers may fund an organization one year but not the next year because their interests have changed, which makes financial sustainability difficult for organizations. In addition, grant-makers overwhelmingly prefer to fund the delivery of programs, which often leaves out organizations’ operational costs. And with the advent of social media, more grant-makers are implementing popularity-based grants, which require nonprofits to compete to get the most votes or “likes” in order to win funding. I’d argue that these popularity-based grants are an inefficient use of time for nonprofit grant-seekers, and that they only perpetuate nonprofits’ competing with one another for limited resources.

As a result of these practices, nonprofits struggle to make critical investments in infrastructure and are prone to working in silos. Put another way, this approach creates a social safety net that will always be splintered, which is harmful to people who have to navigate that fragmentation.

But if we think comprehensively, it’s possible to address the wider range of needs of low-income and at-risk families.

To see what this could look like, consider the fact that some government agencies, mostly in the healthcare arena, have already started embracing a more comprehensive approach. In 2016, the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services launched the Whole Person Care initiative, a program that aims to ensure that L.A. County’s highest-need patients are connected to a broad but necessary range of services. By coordinating health and social-service agencies, vulnerable and marginalized residents can more easily secure access to the complex system of services that were created to support them in the first place. Indeed, what better way to obtain services like food, shelter, and legal help than by accessing them during a visit to the hospital?

L.A. County is giving us a glimpse of a coordinated future—one that makes life better for low-income families.

But while the healthcare sector is coalescing around building coordinated efforts, philanthropy has been much slower to make the shift. And families don’t have time to waste.

Data from my organization, One Degree, shows that low-income people use a variety of resources to climb the ladder of opportunity. More than two-thirds of low-income families using One Degree search for services in very disparate categories. One mother, for instance, was looking for healthcare, food stamps, groceries, and divorce law. On average, low-income families use up to 12 nonprofit services to make ends meet. But too often, these families get lost in a never-ending scramble: What agency should I visit? What paperwork do I need to fill out? How will I make sure that my family is taken care in the time that it takes to do all of this?

To address poverty—to achieve even some semblance of social justice for low-income families—it’s necessary to go broad, and train our attention on the full range of support people need. It’s not that other, more individual solutions—like food stamps and charter schools—aren’t important. It’s that philanthropic organizations would benefit from zooming out and thinking about more inclusive solutions, rather than jumping from one silver-bullet fad to the next.

Crucially, I’m not saying that there aren’t any philanthropists thinking collectively. In fact, there’s a burgeoning movement called “collective impact,” which is supported by philanthropy, that aims to get community-based organizations, foundations, and schools on the same page when it comes to promoting specific educational outcomes for low-income youth. Still, while the model has inspired similar work elsewhere in the country, it’s limited to youth intervention.

Social change takes time. But if we already know that low-income families take a holistic approach to solving their day-to-day challenges, philanthropic organizations should bring their work in line with these families. If they truly want to end poverty—or at least significantly chip away at it—they need to invest in a comprehensive safety network.

Written by: Diana Hembree

Originally published at www.careinnovations.org, July 8, 2019

The Northeast Valley Health Corporation (NEVHC) is a healthcare powerhouse. It consists of 15 licensed health centers located in Los Angeles County’s San Fernando and Santa Clarita Valleys, both areas struggling with chronic illness and poverty.

…

NEVHC executives knew they had to deal with those factors – known as “social determinants of health” (SDOH) – to give their patients the best shot at a healthy life. They handed out referrals along with a sheaf of papers. The question was, how could they more effectively link up their patients with potentially life-saving services?

Read the full article at www.careinnovations.org.

Information about vital social services that are open and available to the public is now available on 1degree.org for community members who have been adversely affected both medically and financially by COVID-19 (Coronavirus). 

With many nonprofit organizations, schools, and workplaces closed and communities in lockdown, low-income and marginalized communities are struggling to know where to turn to for help. In collaboration with nonprofit organizations throughout California, One Degree has created a Dynamic Resource Guide with a comprehensive list of free or low-cost resources available for the public to access today. The link to the resource guide can be found at 1degree.org/covid-19. 

The guide includes resources such as food, financial, and childcare resources for people who are experiencing the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and is updated in real time to provide the most reliable information. Additional resources for those dealing with COVID-19 are available on www.1degree.org and free to access by anyone at any time.

Aside from needing to get medical care to those who are actually showing symptoms of the virus, community members are starting to feel the downstream effects from closures of schools and workplaces, such as lack of food, need for childcare, and reduced wages.

“I have been in contact with over 50 other leaders from California nonprofit organizations, and a common need I kept hearing was for reliable information about what resources are available right now, especially since nonprofit organizations are closing their doors and limiting their services,”  said One Degree founder and CEO Rey Faustino. 

“In this time of uncertainty, we are seeing the nonprofit community pull together to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable members of our community. One Degree is a conduit for that collaborative spirit.”

At this time One Degree invites all nonprofits and healthcare providers in the Bay Area and Los Angeles County to collaborate and share information with One Degree so that our community members have up-to-the-minute information on resources in their community. 

About One Degree (www.1degree.org)

One Degree is a technology-driven nonprofit organization that helps individuals and families access the resources they need to improve their lives and achieve social and economic mobility. 

The One Degree platform has become the go-to tool for help-seekers – and the people who support them, such as case managers and social workers – throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County in California, and in Gainesville, Florida.

One Degree currently operates three major products: 1degree.org and Android and iOS apps. Thousands of people in the Bay Area and Los Angeles rely on One Degree’s platform to access health care, food banks, employment services, and much more.

Every so often, I get invited to speak on panels about our work, and I usually find myself being the odd person out. The panelists that I’m speaking alongside are usually operating from a completely different context than our world at Alluma, where we are used to working in partnership with our communities. I recently joined a panel organized by the Los Angeles Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) coalition, and, once again, had this same experience. My co-panelists were the other main “vendors” of social referral tools in Los Angeles: founders and leaders at Unite Us, Aunt Bertha, and NowPow.

Reflecting back on the experience, I wanted to take some time to share my thoughts, paint the picture, and create the context that is necessary if we, as a community, intend to address social determinants of health. In my opinion, social determinants of health are really just coded language for addressing race equity. Here are four lessons from my experience.

1. For-profit companies are not incentivized to collaborate, and this leads to failure

When I got the briefing for this event, I learned that the group wanted to dig into the pain points that health care systems are facing with the implementations of referral tools including: interoperability, collaboration among vendors, data standardization, and roles and responsibilities between vendors and clients.

While I think these issues are relevant, I challenged the group to see the bigger picture: Are we building and perpetuating systems of oppression that continue to exploit communities of color, immigrant communities, and low-income communities?

I explained that healthcare institutions are using broken procurement processes to invest in technology systems that have major impacts on the community without using an equity lens. The for-profit companies that they are investing millions of dollars in are also built on a corporate structure that prioritizes profits for shareholders over long-term improvement and the well-being of the community.

Ultimately, the profit motive means the system doesn’t work for those who need it. There’s fragmentation in the space as demonstrated by the very panel itself, where four different social referral platforms are operating within multiple systems in Los Angeles County. There’s fragmentation among community-based organizations (CBOs) — and then you add the layer of confusion with health systems asking those CBOs to use multiple referral platforms (without adequate incentives).

This system is failing because the for-profit companies in this space do not have the incentive to collaborate and build a better system together. In fact, their corporate structure incentivizes them to NOT collaborate with others, which is why, after almost a decade of working in this space, none of these companies can point to meaningful collaborations amongst their peers. While we continue to be invited to speak on panels, the for-profit companies continue spouting off the same scripted marketing language.

My main point during this panel was that in order to truly build equitable solutions that create health and well-being for our communities, we need to intentionally center our work on racial equity, not on profits. Centering the work on race equity also means building not just “for people” but also with and by the people, who may be open to screening for social needs but have no expectation that a provider will solve their social needs problems.

2. The dominant white lens means these companies completely miss the point

Meanwhile, we’re all still going through a pandemic that completely upended the healthcare industry, killed over 500,000 people, and disproportionately killed black and brown people, and Filipino-American nurses.

Which is why I do not have the patience to stand by and listen to empty promises and meaningless marketing jargon from companies that talk about their work as if it’s just another day at the office. For me, there’s a real, visceral, personal urgency to fix this problem because my communities are being decimated and are dying. So when we have the CEOs and founders of the leading social referral platforms in a panel together and the primary themes put on the table are data standardization and interoperability, please excuse me while I wave my red flag. How can we go through an international crisis that is continuing to gut-punch the healthcare industry, yet still be unable to talk about the real problem of race equity? This is the white dominant lens at play.

3. These companies profit by taking advantage of misconceptions

The companies that are exploiting the market and profiting off of the pain of our communities are taking advantage of some misconceptions that emerge in the healthcare industry as a result of the white dominant lens.

Misconception #1: “The experts will create the right standards”

One thing that all of the panelists agreed on is that the technical problems are actually all solvable. All of the technical solutions we provide are similarly specced. Problems like standardization of terminology and developing interoperability have all been solved in other industries and can be done in ours.

However, there’s an assumption that the standards that a group of for-profit companies creates are going to be the right standards for our communities. And yet, big tech and social media companies show us what happens when you leave the development of standards to for-profit companies unchecked and without accountability. Just look at the problematic data and privacy concerns that social media companies are muddling through.

I would not and do not trust standards that this group of for-profit companies creates unless they specifically outline and pledge a commitment toward racial equity. Beyond that, we fall into a similar problem of trusting that because they’re “experts” in the field, they’ll know what’s best for our communities. In fact, our communities know what’s best for their communities. And any standards created that will affect the community should have involvement from community representatives.

Furthermore, I actually think that the conversation around data standardization and interoperability is a red herring. As I mentioned, we know this is a solvable problem, but the challenge is that there is no incentive in the for-profit corporate structure to invest time and resources in co-developing standards. For-profit companies simply don’t have the financial incentive to do this.

Meanwhile, the bigger challenge that we need to address is investing in nonprofit organizations that can act as intermediaries that incentivize and get the for-profit companies to agree to centering their work around race equity, rather than referrals.

Misconception #2: “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

I know that the work of systems change can feel daunting. If you’re one person working in one community benefits department, how do you dismantle white supremacy in the beast that is the healthcare industry?

But I reminded this audience of healthcare professionals that they have more power than they think they do. The coalition building they are doing together is a great start to grow more power. The fact that this loose coalition was created organically to think critically about major implementation challenges in the referrals platform space is a signal to me that the space is beginning to mature.

I recommended to the audience that we need to broaden the coalition to include nonprofit organizations that serve our community as well as the nonprofit and for-profit organizations that are delivering the referral platforms.

With a broad, multi-sector coalition, we can co-create shared goals that help us address the main challenges of race equity and health equity. And co-creating these goals with for-profit stakeholders will help hold them accountable to other metrics beyond profit for shareholders.

These kinds of collective impact models have been successfully implemented throughout the country in the education sector and are a viable option for the healthcare space.

Misconception #3: “Race equity and problems with capitalism are just philosophical musings.”

One of the panelists tried to dismiss my emphasis on race equity by saying that it was just “philosophical musing.” At first I was offended, but remembered that a common tactic of white supremacy is downplaying the voices of people of color. This is how they steamroll a group into their white dominant perspective.

I can understand that for this white male CEO, who started his company because he wanted to do good and make money while doing it, this particular context is challenging. It challenges the very incentive structure that has resources coming to his company. And I can see why someone would believe that my call to center our work on race equity was just “philosophical musing” if they have never been at the blunt end of the penalties of this incentive structure.

While it might sound like philosophical flight of fancy to some, questioning the systems that we’re operating under is a necessary step in creating justice for people who have been left out of care. Just like the criminal justice system is facing a reckoning with its inherently racist structures, the healthcare system has to be held accountable for its own part in perpetuating cycles of racial oppression. We see this every day during the pandemic as people of color are disproportionately getting sick and dying.

I mentioned on the panel that I’m not disparaging their for-profit companies, and this is not a judgment on capitalism. This is a reality check on us for relying on capitalism to save the day. Capitalism is not going to save us.

4. We must center our work on race equity

I think the audience and panelists are seeing that all of the panelists (Alluma included) share a lot of similarities in the technology that we’re providing. The key difference is that we, at Alluma, have a very clear community-based point of view on how to affect change. We must center our work on race equity. Otherwise we risk perpetuating the systems of oppression that are currently hurting our communities.

In contrast the for-profit companies also have a strong point of view on the work, and it’s a very strong perspective around scale, market domination, and profit for shareholders. We can’t wait for the for-profit vendors to provide the systems change that we need because they’re not incentivized to center their work on race equity. It’s up to us to create the counter-narrative, a perspective that is based on the voices of the people and communities that we serve.