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Some upcoming changes at Alluma

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Greetings community,

I wanted to share some updates about changes that we’re making here at Alluma.

To get a better understanding of how our organization is making an impact, our team conducted assessments that have led to some hard, but necessary, decisions about the development and viability of our enrollment and eligibility solutions. While plans had long been in place to sunset our legacy product, One-e-App (OeA), we’ve decided to also halt further development of One-x-Connection (OxC), and restructure and reduce our workforce accordingly. 

We absolutely still see opportunities to innovate in the public benefits space so it better serves low-income individuals and families, and we’re excited to pursue them with a different strategy in the future. While we are sunsetting our current eligibility and enrollment solutions, we’ve decided to focus on where we can have the greatest impact for the communities we serve. One Degree, our public-facing community resource and referral platform, remains the trusted and equity-centered solution for communities to address social determinants of health. Since 2012, One Degree has provided access to life-changing resources for individuals and families to achieve social and economic mobility. We continue to support our community to enroll in benefit programs through our Common App tool, and we are exploring innovation in benefits access by building on the One Degree platform. 

Unfortunately this means that we will no longer be offering OxC and OeA to new clients and will wind these programs down in partnership with our current clients to ensure they can continue serving their communities effectively. We are already working closely with impacted clients to ensure a smooth transition for the individuals and families our solutions serve. 

These last few weeks have been heavy-hearted as we’ve said goodbye to friends and colleagues leaving our team. As we move forward, I’m even more committed to being transparent about our challenges and successes, so please expect to hear from the Alluma team and me very soon. Despite the difficult decisions we’ve made in the last six weeks, I’m looking forward to Alluma’s new direction as it will enable us to drive systemic change, create a more equity-centered social opportunity system, and ultimately make more impact on low-income individuals and families.

Rey Faustino

Interim CEO

Tagged alluma, Common App, Eligibility & enrollment, One Degree, One-e-app, One-x-Connection

Centering Equity With One Degree

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When Alluma created the first public benefits application with an online signature in 1999, we were safety net pioneers in a much simpler time. Flip phones, physical bookstores, and paper applications were the norm. 

Despite vast technological advancement over the last two decades, the social service sector lags behind. Billions of dollars in public benefits go unused every year while families and individuals in need struggle to get the support they deserve. 

Unlike Prime 2-day shipping, a seamless and dignified social safety net is still a distant dream. Even though we have comparable technologies in the commercial sector, and progressive policies in place, we’re still lacking the will and incentives to innovate the safety net. 

For-profits addressing the safety net, which are increasingly saturating the sector, are beholden to profit over people. This greatly disincentivizes them from building in partnership with community members, collaborating with other organizations in the sector, prioritizing race, gender and class equity and questioning the system itself. Our governmental systems similarly lack the pressure to innovate and invest in modern technology as the sole provider of benefit programs.

Recently, however, I’ve been seeing bright spots: more philanthropies are joining the call to innovate the safety net. One of our collaborators, Stupski Foundation, is a great example. They are supporting Alluma’s equity work and have been a strong supporter of One Degree since 2016 – deep gratitude Stupski!

And we’re going to need a lot more funding for nonprofits in this space to provide a community-driven, equity-centered, and not-for-profit perspective. Otherwise, we’ll continue to tinker at the margins.

That’s why I’m excited about Alluma’s focus on building an equity-centered community resource system through our core program, One Degree. In the coming months, you’ll hear more about how our One Degree program prioritizes our community as we implement new concepts of community governance, ownership, and power-sharing. 

I invite you to learn more about the One Degree program and how it can make a difference for your communities. Contact us at connect@alluma.org and check out one of my recent talks with Health Leads.

Thanks for partnering and thinking with us about how to make the safety net work better for people who need it the most.

Tagged Equity, One Degree

Who has the power?

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Technology-driven social determinants of health (SDOH) interventions, such as resource and referral platforms, have become an $18.5 billion industry in the last decade. And with that, a major power imbalance was created alongside this new industry.

As a nonprofit organization running one of these tech-driven interventions (One Degree), Alluma has a unique, community-oriented perspective. That’s why we’re diving headfirst into conversations about this power imbalance alongside other leaders in this space, and we’re starting to wonder if SDOH interventions across the country are centering equity and truly making an impact on the people we serve.

At the 211 San Diego CIE Summit, I facilitated a workshop with fellow colleagues Artair Rogers and Stacey Thomas from Health Leads to explore how power flows in the SDOH landscape. With dozens of participants from across the country, we discussed how current SDOH interventions both obstruct and promote anti-racism and equity advancement, and reflected on whether the implementations in the field are facilitating liberation for oppressed communities. 

You can read the full report here


There was an acknowledgment in this group that the power flow is inequitable, and we need to authentically include the voices of the people and our communities in the solutions to achieve greater impact: 

…By having [community members] be a part of institutions [and] meetings, they can share power with those folks and have a say in the decisions that are being made so that [they] are more informed by the community. Another outcome of sharing power is that the decisions that are being made are owned by the community members dictating how their needs are being addressed.

To achieve race and class equity, we must seek opportunities for community ownership of SDOH interventions (especially because in our current landscape, for-profit corporations are extracting and profiting off of our community members’ data in extreme ways). 

Check out the full report, and let us know your thoughts on how power flows in this landscape. We’re also convening another set of follow-up conversations to the workshop. If you’d like to join, send me a reply. Thank you for being in this work with us.

Rey Faustino, Interim CEO

Tagged CIE, One Degree, sdoh, Technology

Co-creating with the Fair Futures Coalition to bring One Degree NYC to life

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Rey Faustino, Interim CEO

I’d like to share more about how One Degree got started in NYC through deep community partnerships with the Fair Futures coalition. (Last month I announced how we expanded One Degree to provide over 5,500 resources to New Yorkers.)

Fair Futures is a youth-led advocacy movement and coalition of 100+ organizations and foundations advocating for all young people in New York City’s foster care system to have access to the long-term, comprehensive support they need to achieve their potential.

To reach their collectively identified goals, such as high school graduation and

affordable housing access, Fair Futures realized that they needed a way to coordinate community resources to support over 450 staff at 26 different CBOs across five boroughs and nearly 3,000 young people. According to Fair Futures co-director Katie Napolitano, “We initially considered a custom-built directory, but quickly realized One Degree had the right expertise to build and maintain all the community resource and referral information Fair Futures needed to provide to all our young people and the professionals who support them.”

While the One Degree platform is not a child welfare specific tool, we seek to meet our community where they’re at, and we provide local resource information and referral support to communities with diverse goals across the social sector. We began our work by having conversations with a diverse set of community members working across the Fair Futures ecosystem. We learned that, while NYC has a rich landscape of quality high school, post-secondary, and workforce programs for young people, there was no key tool or resource to search for and evaluate all of these opportunities in one place. Rather, folks were using a combination of Google searches, word of mouth, two different printable PDFs, and a few excel spreadsheets.

In 2020, One Degree NYC launched with a set of 470 high-quality internship, job readiness, and vocational/sector-based training programs. Later that year, The City University of New York (CUNY) became an official partner, and the One Degree Resource Management team added 300 CUNY certificate programs. In spring 2021, several hundred more CUNY internship and upskilling programs were added. In total, nearly 1,500 searchable academic and career opportunities for the Fair Futures community are now available on One Degree!

And we know we’re just one part of the larger system of necessary support to ensure young people succeed in NYC. Connect with me if you’re interested in going deeper with us in NYC (or our other key regions in Los Angeles or San Francisco Bay Area). We look forward to giving families across the five boroughs access to thousands of resources they need and to resources they didn’t even know existed.

Tagged chapter, expansion, new york, nyc, One Degree

Celebrating Five Years of One Degree Los Angeles

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We’re celebrating five years of One Degree in Los Angeles County! Our work in LA began in 2017 through a partnership with the LA County Department of Health Services’ Whole Person Care initiative and has blossomed into authentic community building, deep partnerships, and integrations with agencies in the region.


Since 2017, over 300,000 people have relied on One Degree to access life-changing resources all across the county, from Santa Monica to Claremont, and from Long Beach to Lancaster! In fact, the number of unique people using One Degree in LA increased 367% since launch.


We’re also seeing some truly deep engagement with service providers in LA: over 25% of organizations in the region have one or more staff members using One Degree. In all, we have over 3,200 pro members (nonprofit, healthcare, and government workers) in LA out of 1,870 organizations. It’s not an understatement when I say that our community partners across LA rely on One Degree every single day.
 

“One Degree es una organización que apoya de forma humana. De corazón agradezco infinitamente la ayuda que me están brindando.”

“One Degree is an organization that supports in a humane way. From my heart, I thank you infinitely for the help you are giving me.”

-Carlos, One Degree community member


Cecilia also trained Susana, a community advocate in San Gabriel Valley, to use One Degree through a program called Promotoras. Promotoras train community members in mental health topics such as anxiety, depression and domestic violence so they can educate their community. As a Promotora, Susana has helped families navigate concerns about Public Charge, finding childcare, food and counseling services. In addition to finding great resources for her neighbors, Susana has also applied to affordable housing opportunities for herself on One Degree. Susana says, “I think people should know about One Degree because of all the benefits that are listed. It’s bilingual, and accessible for any person, and easy to use.”

Supporting our Community

Over the last five years, our Community Success team has delivered hundreds of hours of support and training to partners and conducted outreach and engagement across all eight service planning areas in LA, with a focus on underserved individuals and communities. Below are two stories about how our team has supported our community.

Our LA Community Navigator Cecilia Mejia recently supported a community member, Carlos, who was facing a crisis. Carlos had lost his job and was unable to apply for unemployment benefits because of his immigration status. Within minutes, Cecilia connected him to meal distributions, groceries, and crisis relief. A few days later, Carlos reported back that after waiting on the phone for five hours with a nonprofit, the line abruptly disconnected. Carlos was understandably distraught, but Cecilia encouraged him to keep calling back. In the meantime, she found and connected him to another financial support resource. When Cecilia checked in with Carlos a few days later, he told her that he received both the crisis relief and financial support.

Deep Partnership Roots in Los Angeles

We’re excited about continuing to build deep and diverse community partnerships, like the following:

  • One Degree is the closed loop referral partner for the LA-ACEs Network of Care and their network of 12 LA DHS Health Centers and 29 CBO partners.
  • We are also the closed-loop referral partner for San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center and their network of six CBOs. 
  • Launching later this fall, One Degree LA will be the resource directory partner for The Los Angeles County Homeless Initiative, and their 16 lead service providers and more than 100+ SPA service providers.
  • Alluma’s One-e-App has been the system of record for LA’s MyHealthLA program, which in the last two years on average enabled over 225,000 of the most vulnerable Angelenos to get healthcare.
  • We also powered the county’s COVID-19 Testing Sites search engine. So millions of people who were looking for testing locations in LA used our platform!

The last five years of serving the Los Angeles community are just the start. There is still more work to do, particularly as many families recover from the challenges of the pandemic. And we look forward to helping more people in need while building a more equity-centered safety net.

Connect with me if you’re interested in learning more about how we’re centering equity in our work in LA.

Tagged chapter, expansion, LA, Los Angeles, One Degree

Happy 10 Years, One Degree Bay Area!

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I recently celebrated 2 big anniversaries: 10 years since founding One Degree and 10 years since meeting my now-husband.

Since my entrepreneurial journey with One Degree and my partnership journey with my husband are so deeply intertwined, these two anniversaries reminded me about how important it is to have a support network — how significant it is to know that someone has your back, like my husband has had mine for the last decade.

When I started One Degree in 2012, “social determinants of health” was hardly on the radar, but frontline workers at nonprofit, healthcare, and government agencies all knew there was a problem with the system because their clients were struggling to get even their basic needs met.

I experienced this first hand when I worked at the frontlines of an education nonprofit. Everyday, our students and families faced new challenges from food insecurity to homelessness. How could I expect my students to focus on SAT tutoring if they hadn’t eaten a meal that day?

So I started One Degree to provide a support network for our community — the way that my husband has supported me through the years. In fact, when we first met, I was couch-surfing at friends’ homes to make ends meet, and I wouldn’t have been able to make it through if it weren’t for their support.
 

One Degree Bay Area Accomplishments

And it’s amazing to think back over the last decade to see the support network that One Degree created in the Bay Area:

  • We have over 35,000 pro members (nonprofit, healthcare, and government workers) in the Bay Area.
  • Over 22% of organizations in the Bay Area have one or more staff members using and affiliated with One Degree. 
  • More than 1.5 million unique people have used One Degree to access 10,776 life-changing social services across the Bay Area’s nine counties. 
  • The number of unique people using One Degree Bay Area has increased 3,684% since launch.

We’re also partnering with a variety of initiatives throughout the Bay, like supporting adolescent development as part of the Mo’Magic program of the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, working to prevent homelessness with the All Home coalition, and reimagining the role of information and referral systems (like 2-1-1’s) with the Connect Bay Area Network, which includes our friends at the United Way Bay Area, Eden I&R and Contra Costa Crisis Center, to name a few.


Building on a Foundation of Trust

Ten years later, I can easily say that we’ve achieved much of the early vision for One Degree. But just like my relationship with my partner has changed in the last decade, One Degree has to evolve to meet the moment.

Unlike the tech companies targeting the safety net, building technology on top of broken systems, and exploiting communities, One Degree starts by building a foundation of trust in the communities we serve and then working to identify and address the root causes of racism and poverty.

In the next 10 years, you will see more of our work on shifting power to low-income communities. Because we are a non-profit startup led by people who have both used and worked in social services, we are committed to not only making services simpler to find, but reshaping the industry to be more equitable and dignified for the people who need it most.
 

Connect with me if you’re interested in being part of One Degree’s support network in the Bay Area or beyond. And special thanks to all of the amazing supporters who have helped us create something special for our communities over the last decade.

Tagged Bay Area, One Degree