Shoshana Marder, the newly appointed Executive Director of Leap Fund, joins Gregory J. Morris, CEO of NYCETC, for a discussion on her professional journey and the tools, policy initiatives, and advocacy efforts addressing benefits cliffs.
Gregory J Morris, NYCETC: Tell us about the work. And tell us about your journey, too.
Shoshana Marder, Leap Fund: At the Leap Fund, our sole focus is tackling benefits cliffs – earning a dollar or two more an hour results in losing public benefits that are worth a lot more than that. Our founders were part of the Blue Ridge Labs’ Fellowship at Robin Hood. The task was to create technology and tools for low-income New Yorkers. During that time, the founders, Karen Schoellkopf and Caroline McAndrews, talked to low-income New Yorkers and learned about a benefits cliff and that people were making financially conservative decisions, like not taking a job, not taking a raise, and not taking more hours at work out of fear of losing critical public benefits. This is not the fault of people who receive public benefits. This is a policy failure. Failure allows cliffs to exist, creating a mystery around benefits and income, how they interact with each other, and how benefits interact with each other. Leap Fund addresses this lack of transparency. How can we inform folks so they don’t need to make fear-based decisions around their life and income while also collecting the data and stories to influence that policy-level change required to eliminate benefits cliffs?
Morris: When you talk about the benefits, we’re talking about that moment when if I take this opportunity or I make this wage or I hit this income level, I lose access to my security or my support that has helped me. What kind of levels are we talking about in terms of income, and where does this benefits cliff kick in?
Marder: That question is part of the challenge: eligibility for benefits is so individualized on a person’s income and household situation. It’s really hard to pin down that moment. There’s so much misinformation, rumor, and fear in this space. It could also happen more than once. So as they’re getting those jobs, those incremental raises, there could be multiple points where they might lose the benefit and net gain, like it doesn’t make sense, or they lose out by taking that raise. Let’s say you have this person named Tonya. She’s working at a restaurant. She earns around $15 an hour and receives a childcare subsidy, which, in New York, could be $900. She’s doing great work. Her boss offers her a raise from $15 to $16 an hour. It’s just one more dollar an hour. But if she accepts that raise, she’ll lose her childcare subsidy. Math-wise, she’s had a net loss. That one more dollar an hour is not worth that $900. And very practically, that was her childcare subsidy. What is she going to do now? There’s this math piece and this practical piece of benefits, which also offer support for people. It’s a difficult decision for someone to make when they have the information. Even more difficult when Tonya has yet to learn what that raise will be doing.
Morris: Part of your work is about clarifying for the individual and having a policy impact so we can understand how the system works or is not working. Is that right?
Marder: There needs to be more transparency on an individual level. It’s not because people need help to figure it out, it’s because they are not provided with any of the resources. No one’s telling them. The government isn’t telling them how these changes are going to impact all their different benefits. How do we build the benefits in a way that provides this transparency and doesn’t have these cliffs because nobody wants this. This doesn’t benefit anyone, no matter what your political beliefs are.
Our main goal at Leap Fund is to tackle these benefits cliffs. And we are engaging and have engaged lots of different stakeholders in that conversation because benefits cliffs are relevant to everyone. In Tonya’s case, if Tonya can’t accept that raise, promotion, or job, that also impacts an employer’s ability to attract and retain talent. There are so many different stakeholders when we talk about benefit cliffs. One area that we have been very focused on has been our Benefits Coaching program, where we’re working with nonprofits and community-based organizations and training their staff in how to have these conversations with clients. That way, clients can move away from these fear-based decisions that they’re forced to make and move towards data-driven decision-making. There are four main parts of the program – coach training, a benefits cliff calculator, resources like scripts and test cases to help guide these conversations, and non-personally identifying data on how an organization’s clients are impacted by benefits cliffs. The first part is training and professional development. All coaches and users who join our platform get this asynchronous training around what benefits cliffs are, how that might come up in conversation with the client, and how our tools can be helpful. We also have ongoing optional professional development opportunities.
Organizations and coaches are busy, so training is asynchronous. People do it at their own pace and time, but it should take around 45 minutes. That’s mandatory. And then there’s lots of optional professional development, especially for people looking for that face-to-face time. Once you finish that, you get access to our platform. That includes our benefits cliff calculator, which can show how a change in income or household will impact the benefits that someone is receiving.
Morris: Tell me both about the calculator part of this and the coaching aspect of this.
Marder: To bring it back to Tonya, if she’s weighing this promotion, she wants to see how this raise will impact her benefits. She would meet with a coach who has access to the platform. They’d walk through the intake, put Tonya’s basic information in, and then they’d be able to see the full picture of Tonya’s financial situation. How will this $1 raise impact her benefits? But also, what will that next raise look like? How does that $17 raise impact her benefits and $18? You can see not just this immediate decision but get that full picture of what someone’s finances can look like and how this might fit into their goals and ambitions. Our goal is to provide as much information in a succinct, user-friendly way as possible so that people like Tonya can make the choices that make the most sense for them…
We know benefits cliffs already impact people’s decision-making, so let’s talk about it—for real, with some real numbers.
The calculator is there to provide numbers, visuals, and predictions. But we know for coaches, these could be intimidating conversations; it’s impossible to be an expert on everything. We also know how important these conversations are to have, so we provide the resources to open up that conversation. We have a guidebook that includes sample scripts and test cases, so if you’re looking for more information on a topic, like if you’re not an expert in disability benefits but it’s relevant to your client, you can learn the language and the basic next steps to learn more.
Through the calculator, we collect non-personalized identifying information on clients that we share with organizations. This data includes how many times the calculator is used. Were people aware of benefits cliffs before, and had they made decisions in the past out of the fear of hitting a benefits cliff? What percentage of clients are predicted to hit a benefits cliff after using our calculator? And what was the impact? How did this impact people’s decision-making?
The ultimate goal here is to leverage this for policy-level change, which we’re hopeful that the data and stories we’re collecting across our partners nationally can be helpful for. Also, on an organizational level, depending on capacity, organizations can use this data for their own policy and advocacy efforts.
Morris: Where is this happening now? We know some pieces are happening here in New York City. How many folks, users, and organizations are gaining an understanding of this tool?
Marder: We’ve been running this program for four years. We started in 2020 as a pilot with ten organizations and expanded that to 40 organizations in 2021. We have run our updated platform for the past two years with nearly 50 organizations nationally. We’ve trained close to 500 coaches and reached close to 1,000 clients. We’re working with many groups and are looking to find ways to get this into the hands of more people and reach more people where it can be helpful and relevant.
As an example, we’re partnering with many organizations in Louisville and thinking of how we can engage an entire community and bring an entire community around this conversation for benefits. How can we reach more people through our coaching program?
We’ve had a chance to speak to Congress and conduct research, like our work with the Financial Health Network, Neighborhood Trust Financial Partners, and ICA Group to assess mandated wage increases for home health aides.
States are also starting to consider benefits cliffs. Kentucky passed legislation creating a Benefits Cliff Task Force to learn more about benefits cliffs. Things are happening in Ohio, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Many of these pilots are focused on how we can bridge benefits cliffs for people. So, if you are going to hit a cliff, what funds can we provide to smooth that cliff out so that it makes sense for you to take that job? How will that benefit people in the long run? How can we start adjusting the policy and regulations so that benefits cliffs don’t exist?
Morris: You’re the leader of the organization now. I know that you’ve grown within the organization, too.
Marder: When I joined at the end of 2019, it was part-time, ten weeks as a program associate. I heard about benefits cliffs and was honestly shocked that they existed. There are plenty of broken systems out there. It felt particularly shocking to me. It was a universally ridiculous problem to be having and also a really overwhelming problem to fix. I fell in love with Leap Fund and how we’ve taken this complicated problem and broken it down to how we can use user-centered, people-centered technology and programs to begin to tackle this in a way that’s real and helpful on the individual level. Even for this coaching program, yes, policy level is the ultimate goal, but on the way to building and collecting that data for that policy level change, how can we support people on the ground while we wait and push for higher level change?
I’ve grown a lot with Leap Fund. When I started, we were focused on the employer and how to engage the employer in this conversation. The pandemic hit, and employers shifted… Karen and I got together and started this coaching program. On the data side (we thought), how can we utilize the data we’re collecting? How many people are impacted by benefits cliffs? This transition is a testament to Karen’s work, that we have built a calculator, built our coaching program, and proven successful, and that we can continue the important work we’re doing.
Morris: What’s next now that you’ve stepped in? How are you thinking about the future?
Marder: I’ve been focusing a lot on our coaching program, which is our signature program that we’ve been focused on over the past four years. We’ll continue exploring what industries benefits cliffs can come up the most in… For example, in workforce development, that’s an obvious place where these benefits cliffs are coming up as people are training and looking for new jobs and anticipating new salary bands. We’re seeing it come up in financial coaching and social work. We’re seeing it come up in guaranteed income pilots as people are giving these cash infusions, thinking about how it might also impact people’s public benefits. We’ll also continue exploring how we can engage with place-based initiatives, like the work we’re doing in Louisville through the Reconstruct Challenge with the Louisville Urban League, Neighbor Network, and ChooseWell.
Morris: How would you like us to become active and motivated to support the work ahead? Certainly, it should be valuable to the community we’re connected to.
Marder: If you are part of an organization and work with folks who might be receiving public benefits or might be hitting these benefits, we would love to find a way to support the work you’re doing to make your job easier and provide transparency for the folks you’re serving and working with.
On the policy level, there’s momentum around the benefits cliff. When we first started, we were doing a lot of education on the basics, and that shifted. There is more pilot work research and many more organizations that are addressing benefits cliffs. This is a moment where change is possible. There’s a question of where we focus and what’s the best way to start pushing for change. There are so many ways we could start providing this transparency, bridging this cliff for folks, and adjusting and changing the policies themselves to mitigate and eliminate cliffs. I’m excited. I’m optimistic.
Editor’s note: This interview was edited and condensed based on the conversation on October 1, 2024. Watch the full 28-minute conversation on NYCETC’s YouTube channel.