For Fiscal Year 2018, the state of Indiana’s Medicaid budget was a whopping $11.8 billion. Despite its investment, Indiana struggles with its health outcomes: for example, it places 44th in the nation for adult smoking, and is 7th worst in the country for its rates of infant mortality.  These statistics have plagued Indiana in recent years and were recognized as a detriment to the future growth of the state.

Located in the heart of West Baltimore, Center for Urban Families (CFUF) serves an area that is beset with significant poverty, crime, and racial inequity. Founded in 1999 with a mission to “disrupt poverty,” CFUF has served more than 28,000 members, placed 3,779 members in full-time jobs from 2010 through 2016, and touched nearly 62,000 children whose parents were CFUF members. The organization has received national attention for its work, hosting President Barack Obama in 2013. During the visit, the President spoke about his upbringing without a father and lauded the fathers there for working with CFUF to change their lives. “For your sons to see you taking this path,” the President said, “that’s going to make all the difference in the world.”

Late one evening in January 2015, LIFT Founder and CEO Kirsten Lodal had just delivered a speech arguing that the organization was falling short of its mission of lifting people out of poverty permanently. From Lodal’s perspective, LIFT was largely serving as a safety net for people in crisis, helping to make poverty more bearable for the majority of those who walked through its doors. What LIFT needed to be instead was a sustainable springboard out of poverty. Lodal, and LIFT’s new CEO Michelle Rhone-Collins, believed LIFT needed to employ a two-generation approach and narrow its target population specifically to parents with young children to help people exit poverty for good. This would position them to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty at the transmission point. 

Founded in 1995, Catalyst Miami had a multi-pronged strategy to build capacity and resilience and advance social and economic mobility in low-wealth communities in Miami-Dade County. In 2017, in the midst of their strategic planning process, the organization faced a changing landscape and an important pivot point. In October of that year, Hurricane Irma avoided making a direct hit in Miami but triggered extensive evacuations and caused widespread flooding, power outages, and transportation issues that resulted in many people missing work for weeks. Tens of thousands of people living in Miami lined up outside local parks in sweltering heat, hoping to access post-disaster food stamps. This crisis highlighted the threat that climate change posed to Miami-Dade County’s low-wealth communities, the number of people combatting financial insecurity, and the need for an organization like Catalyst Miami.