Family Independence Initiative
While public assistance programs alleviate crisis, their regulations often stifle resourcefulness and steps toward self-reliance, such as accumulating savings. The Family Independence Initiative (FII) seeks alternative approaches that would help families move out of poverty by investing in their success through market-like incentives, rather than doling out minimal aid based on needs and deficits. Casey backed FII as a "bet" on its creator, Maurice Lim Miller, who had been respected by staff for many years. The Foundation also was attracted by the focus on family strengths and leadership, social networks, asset-building, and eventual systems reform that would shift dollars to front-end supports. Grants totaling $1 million over about five years helped underwrite the cost of initial demonstration projects to test FII ideas, including incentives paid to participating families.
- Within a year after they had participated in the two-year FII pilot, families had increased their income by 40% and had nearly tripled their net worth. A number of the original families have become homeowners and several have started or expanded businesses. Subsequent demonstrations have shown similar positive effects for participants and a “ripple effect,” in which other families are encouraged by participants’ success to become involved themselves.
- As yet, FII results are at too small a scale to have led to changes in mainstream policy and practice. Nonetheless, it has successfully challenged the belief that low-income people cannot be trusted to make wise decisions, which has been a barrier to significant change in social welfare programs. FII's results are sufficiently intriguing that they are attracting broader interest within philanthropy and at all levels of government, including being cited by the White House as the type of program which the federal Social Innovation Fund will seek to inspire and replicate. In December 2010, President Obama appointed Miller to the new White House Council for Community Solutions.
- In addition to Casey funding, the FII pilot received substantial support from the state of California, Oakland and Alameda County. Most public funding was lost, though, when the state faced a budget crisis, although the City of San Francisco has contributed for several years to the demonstration effort there. Offsetting the loss of most public funds has been growing support from a wide variety of foundations. Looking beyond demonstrations, if FII continues to show that families can be trusted to use incentives in ways that have long-term benefits for themselves and their communities, it is hoped that policy reform will make such incentives routinely available to low-income people, just as benefits like the mortgage deduction are available to those with middle and upper incomes.
For more information, read the full Family Investment Initiative Program Profile, which includes background on the program, why this was of interest to the Casey Foundation, and our return on investment.
Contact:
Family Independence Initiative
www.fiinet.org