Launching the Basic Income Pilot with Community

On a fall afternoon, The Harkin Institute staff members and Drake University students gathered in a room with a white board. Together they listed all the organizations who may be connected to addressing poverty and working within diverse communities in central Iowa. Soon the board was filled with names – more than 100 organizations – who represented a vast network addressing health and social issues.  

The brainstorm was part of a community-informed approach to designing and implementing UpLift – The Central Iowa Basic Income Pilot, a three-year community study that examines the impacts of 110 central Iowans receiving a $500 monthly basic income. Over several months prior to launch, the UpLift implementation team, housed at The Harkin Institute, had meetings with as many community stakeholders as possible. These discussions inspired changes to the pilot model, led to a broad reach in applicants, and built trust with diverse populations. Overall, the process demonstrated the value of building relationships when developing initiatives.

“One of the critical components of doing this was to be community focused, where we’re providing a possible solution to poverty reduction that is rooted in what community has said and what community needs,” said Ashley Ezzio, Senior Project Coordinator of UpLift. “It just made sense to make sure the experts that are already trying to address the effects of poverty are involved.”

“The key to this project is the relational approach with community-based organizations,” said Dr. Nalo Johnson, President and CEO of Mid-Iowa Health Foundation who led efforts to secure funding and partners to launch the pilot. “The implementation team has been intentional in building relationships with community-based organizations that have trust with community members and allow these organizations to come alongside and articulate what this project is and what it seeks to accomplish, so that community members see this as a legitimate opportunity for them to participate in.”

Defining the approach

When implementing a research study, those leading the project often consider the level at which to engage community in the process. UpLift was modeled off of similar projects elsewhere in the U.S.  The team intentionally wanted the project to be informed by community and to engage multiple stakeholders, thus following a community-based participatory research approach.

As a practicum project with Mid-Iowa Health Foundation to complete his master’s in public health, Michael Berger interviewed community-based organizations in Polk, Warren, and Dallas Counties. Through these discussions, he learned how the model might be more effectively implemented in central Iowa, including how to reach various populations through recruitment, what resources organizations needed to support the project, and what barriers might exist for people to participate.

The findings from these conversations led to hiring two project coordinators for UpLift, instead of one, recognizing the hands-on work needed to support participants and to provide consistent communications to the community. Funding was also set aside to support translation and interpretation needs and for organizations to help with the work.

In addition to hiring Berger as project coordinator, Ezzio joined UpLift with her own connections through initiatives she led at the Iowa Department of Public Health, including the Community-Based Doula Project. That project especially helped her build relationships with maternal health leaders who provide services within communities to address Black maternal health disparities.  

Because of these experiences, Ezzio and Berger entered conversations about UpLift with a recognition that the stakeholders they connected with had a level of trust and engagement with communities that they didn’t. In addition to sharing information about the basic income pilot, they wanted to know: What can we learn from community-based organizations and how can we most appropriately partner?

“Without those connections and the trust that community-based organizations had with low-income community members, this project was not going to go anywhere,” said Berger.

The team created a spreadsheet of everyone they wanted to meet with, which helped keep track of the conversations they were having and where there were gaps in who was being engaged. That list continued to grow as each meeting led to new connections.

“You had this multi-tiered approach,” said Ezzio. “When you have time, you can get to that level of detail, and then you can get feedback. We didn’t reach everyone, but we felt like we had a really good foundation of community engagement.”

Many stakeholders shared excitement for the pilot. Johnson, who had launched several initiatives with a community-informed approach in her previous role at the Iowa Department of Public Health, had already laid the groundwork in talking with partners about the importance of the study. Partners also had seen the impacts of cash transfer models during the pandemic.

“I think the timing was right,” said Berger. “People were ready to examine this new, innovative idea.”

Through these meetings, the UpLift team identified where various partners could add capacity to the project, such as providing space to meet with community members, sharing information with the individuals they served, translating information, and providing specific kinds of support to participants. These connections engaged individuals with specialized skills, like a graphic designer who could design materials in Burmese languages.

“I think a lot of leaders have already been thinking about concepts that were innovative, so they were receptive to the project,” said Ezzio. “Once they could ask us questions and we built their trust that we were going to take care of the communities we were targeting, then they were much more likely to say, ‘Let me help you get in contact with them.’”

Informing design

In a virtual meeting with Ezzio and Berger in late 2023, Zeb Beilke-McCallum, Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence Director of Housing and Economic Justice, expressed concern about the safety of individuals who would receive a basic income because it might harm someone in a domestic violence situation. As a result, UpLift refined its language to be clear that the money would be directed to the individual selected (not the household) to utilize how they saw best fit to meet their needs and considered how individuals could engage with the project in a confidential and safe manner.  

Conversations like this one represent the value of gathering perspectives across sectors. Beilke-McCallum recalls how when he worked on affordable housing issues, no one talked about domestic violence as a part of developing solutions, though stakeholders recognized the issue was prevalent.

“The fact that we had a planning conversation to talk through safety and needs and how folks might utilize the money was very exciting – even just the idea that they were thinking this might be an impacted population,” said Beilke-McCallum.

Other stakeholders also highlighted the importance of ensuring people felt safe and welcomed to participate no matter their identities. This informed how the application and intake form were created to allow for people to respond in multiple ways to questions about gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, and family make-up.

It also meant investing significant resources into translating not only recruitment materials, but also the application, and offering interpretation services when connecting with potential participants. Al Éxito translated documents, including recruitment materials, public benefit guides, and the pilot application, for Spanish-speaking audiences. EveryStep’s interpretation team also came alongside to support the process, with eight interpreters who spoke 15 languages. They translated recruitment materials into several languages (Burmese, Karen, Pashto, Swahili, Somali, Nepali, Arabic, and Vietnamese) and helped UpLift become one of the first basic income pilots in the country to offer an application survey in Burmese and Pashto.

Sammantha Ruiz-Yager, Interpretation Business Development at EveryStep, said the process involved translating information with a service and then going line-by-line with staff and the UpLift team to ensure the materials and questions flowed naturally. Aligning with the English application and then putting languages with different fonts and formats into the survey tool was challenging, but important.

The Interpretation Services team also attended outreach events with UpLift at libraries and organizations in communities across the three-county region to share information with those interested in applying while potential participants had access to computers to complete the application. Once participants were selected, EveryStep lined up an interpreter for families who needed one. Ongoing, each family who doesn’t speak English will have an interpreter they can directly work with throughout the project to complete study surveys and interviews.

This kind of partnership is important, says Ruiz-Yager, because interpreters often build trust with families and come from the communities they support. Families may reach out to them to help navigate systems, and they often advocate for families to get the support they need.

Ruiz-Yager is also excited to partner because of the diverse representation in the application pool and how that data can inform other programming in the community. Some questions gathered information that families may not openly share within their cultures.

“Hopefully it will pinpoint how cultures are different and how we need to help different cultures and their different needs,” she said.

The ability to provide information in ten languages was impressive, said Ezzio, because often projects don’t have enough time built in to do that level of work. “We proved to communities that we have you in mind,” said Ezzio, “and that built trust in the right way.”

Expanding recruitment

More than 6,000 eligible individuals applied to participate in UpLift. While only 110 individuals were selected to receive the $500 monthly intervention, the strong response demonstrates a need for support across central Iowa and that effective strategies were implemented to recruit people.

Community-based organizations were especially critical to that recruitment process as they shared information with individuals receiving their services and within their networks. The UpLift team offered organizations a variety of materials and social media messages. Ezzio and Berger also delivered presentations to staff to help them answer questions about the study and in locations where community members could easily connect with this information.

One of the most impactful strategies was a mailer sent through IMPACT Community Action Partnership to 10,000 individuals who had received their services. Using IMPACT’s logo on the envelopes and materials was “like a Good Housekeeping seal of approval,” said CEO Anne Bacon. “I think it provides a feeling of safety for families.”

Connecting with organizations already serving low-income individuals was important, said Joy Esposito, Assistant Director of DMACC's Evelyn K. Davis Center for Working Families, whose organization provided space and shared information. “This is a brand new project,” she said. “People were, I think, quite unsure what is a basic income pilot and what does that mean. We have a lot of folks who come into our building every day who potentially could be participants in the pilot, so it made sense for us to partner.”

Reaching rural communities in Dallas and Warren Counties also was important to ensure the pilot had a mix of metropolitan, micropolitan, and rural representation – the first pilot in the U.S. that encompasses all three geographical regions within one model. People may be more hesitant to receive information or apply to receive services in these areas, because there is a greater likelihood that people they know will notice, said Bacon, whose organization serves Polk and Warren Counties.

The 4 R Kids Early Childhood Iowa Board was especially helpful in engaging programs and providers in the early childhood sector to share information with families. As the longtime Director of 4 R Kids, Debra Schrader serves as a connector in Warren and Dallas Counties. She offered opportunities for UpLift to meet with the committees she manages and to engage organizations like Lutheran Services in Iowa and Short Years Partnership that provide home visiting services to families. She also shared a family support referral map with a list of other organizations to contact.

“I can’t imagine if they tried to do this on their own without involvement at the grassroots level,” said Schrader. “In order to sell this, trust has to be built.”

Building trust that the pilot was a legitimate opportunity and could help people also mattered to Zakiya Jenkins, Executive Director of Grace Fitness, an organization that coaches and inspires individuals within communities affected by health disparities to achieve better health. Living within the 50314 ZIP code, an area with a higher concentration of poverty, Jenkins understood how this opportunity could help people have resources to get to doctor’s visits, purchase nutritious foods, and make other healthy decisions. Jenkins worked with UpLift to share information about the basic income pilot on her Black Health Matters podcast and to record radio ads to run on KJMC, a local radio station targeting the Black community.

“They know that I’m out in the Black community doing what I can to improve health by any means necessary,” said Jenkins. “Our goal was to make sure we did everything we possibly could to let African Americans know this income pilot project was a no-strings-attached pilot that could really help them with some extra income.”

These are just some examples of the extensive ways in which the UpLift team spread information about the pilot. The direct mailing through IMPACT was the most common way people heard about the pilot, but all of the efforts combined allowed for “this overlap in information that really built trust,” said Ezzio. “People were like, ‘I’m hearing this from multiple sources.”

UpLift supported organizations with their participation by not only covering supplies, but also the time it took to share information and to follow up with individuals who asked questions. They provided training and support to ensure organizations could answer those questions.

“Keeping us 'whole' was very appreciated as it recognized that it takes our staff time and effort to do this type of outreach,” said Bacon.

Planning Onboarding

In discussing the potential barriers people may experience to participating in the basic income pilot, Ezzio and Berger discovered the complexities of the public benefits system and how a $500 monthly increase in income could cause someone to lose resources if they became ineligible for certain benefits.

Disability Rights Iowa's Work Incentives Planning & Assistance (WIPA team) stepped in to talk through the potential impacts that might keep people from participating and offered benefits counseling to those selected to participate. While their focus is often on social security benefits specifically, they consider themselves “investigators” who were able to consider the impacts to other benefits, such as food assistance, housing, and child care.

“Our goal was to help avoid any pitfalls of someone participating and then realizing it actually was not going to be financially beneficial,” said Jenny Lynes, CWIC.

“We can’t just cookie cutter ‘here’s what is going to happen,’” said Mistie Johnson, CWIC and Project Supervisor. “For each family, it depends on what their household make up looks like and how they are receiving benefits and how long they have received benefits. There are so many variables for each case.”

The fact that some participants chose not to participate can also inform the UpLift study, says the Disability Rights team, who has seen conversations within the benefits planning network nationally on how basic income projects impact public benefits. The team is not only staying connected with UpLift to provide counseling to participants as needed, but also is interested in conversations about what barriers need to be addressed within systems to ensure people can meet their basic needs.

Ongoing Connections

Many partners agree that there are opportunities for ongoing partnership with the pilot – both to support participants as well as to help tell the story of possible solutions to address poverty.

Esposito with the Evelyn K. Davis Center has been involved in informing the UpLift project from the beginning and has offered ongoing support to help participants who may ask for help with employment opportunities or financial coaching as additional funds allow them to make different choices.

“I think it’s important to make connections with organizations, because there are insights with who we serve,” Esposito said. “Once participants are chosen and they are in the project, we want to know how we can support them to continue to be successful and help them along on their journey as part of this additional income.”

Bacon views herself as a cheerleader for the project, talking about it when she presents about poverty in the community. “We are not going to have to convince families in the project that this is good,” she said. “We are going to have to convince people of means that this is a worthwhile strategy.”

Lessons learned

The ability to model UpLift off of other successful pilots in the U.S. was important, but the team knew from the start that they needed to tailor the model to the local landscape. Taking a community-informed approach was encouraged by the University of Pennsylvania, Center for Guaranteed Income Research, which is the lead research entity of UpLift.

“As an applied research center, we greatly value our partnerships with community-based organizations and government stakeholders,” said Dr. Allison Thompson, Executive Director of the Center. “These local partnerships are critical to ensuring that our study findings are both contextualized to individual sites as well as useful and relevant to informing policy decisions.”

In implementing a community-informed approach, the UpLift team identified these lessons learned:

Engage stakeholders up front: While UpLift already had a model in place to implement, they were able to connect with community-based organizations early enough to make adjustments that allowed the project to be more effective. Showing genuine interest in the conversation and being open to making changes fostered stronger relationships.

“It’s great to know that we were listened to,” said Beilke-McCallum. “It’s recognizing that when you do these community things, there is wisdom and knowledge and expertise you can learn and implement into your program design. They were so open to feedback and input. Things didn’t feel set yet.”

“There are some dynamics to working with income-constrained families that have to be taken into account,” said Bacon. “The UpLift team were very open to hearing that and understanding the approach must be a little more measured and thought out.”

Build in time for connection: Having a few months to meet with community-based partners before launching UpLift allowed the team to continue to set up meetings with many different entities and to use the feedback to make changes.

“If we didn’t have that much time, I don’t think the launch would have gone as successfully,” said Berger. “We needed the time to really solidify the supports we had in our community.”

Pay for work: Having a budget to pay community-based organizations to help with the pilot was critical. The team covered the costs for supplies and printing, as well as staff time to do the work. In particular, UpLift covered staff member time to answer questions after hearing from EMBARC that by promoting the opportunity, organizations like theirs would receive questions that they would have to help answer.  

“By providing these community-based organizations compensation for their expertise, we felt like we were being equitable in making sure they were compensated for the additional questions that were going to come after recruitment,” said Ezzio.

“The fact that they gave us money to do the work blew me away,” said Schrader. “It’s never happened in my 25 years of doing this for just being a good community partner and doing my job. We are very appreciative of those funds.”

Recognize strengths and capacity: Meeting with so many organizations allowed UpLift to identify and utilize people’s strengths while recognizing the capacity in which they could contribute. The team had to be flexible and ready to step in if an organization became overwhelmed by their own pressing needs and couldn’t contribute as much as they’d like.

Leading to Impact

The result of a community-informed approach was the ability to reach a significant portion of the population in central Iowa who qualified to participate in the Basic Income Pilot and to build partnerships that can support the project throughout the three-year period and beyond. The intentional outreach has also elevated the pilot regionally and on a national level.

“It has surprised me how much people recognize the pilot now,” said Berger.

Organizations will be invited to shape community conversations on topics related to poverty and basic needs issues, such as food insecurity, housing, and child care. These relationships will be important as the community considers what it can learn and advocate for to advance effective poverty reduction strategies.

While more than 6,000 applied and only 250 were accepted to participate (110 in the intervention group and 140 in the control group), UpLift highlights the importance of these efforts to inform the conversation about poverty in central Iowa.

“Those 6,000 people, by sharing their voice, they were brave and stood up and said, ‘We need more help,’” said Ezzio. “We want folks to feel like even if they were not selected, they are playing a really, really critical role in where this goes long term to inform the most effective poverty reduction strategies for our community.”

To learn more about the study and profile of participants, visit upliftiowa.org.