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Design Sprint for Social Change
To find out, we designed and tested the largest cash transfer experiment of its kind. In 2019, we gave up to $1,000 to gig workers experiencing unexpected emergency expenses.
Our goal: To gather evidence about how a cash benefit like this one could and would work best.
We weren't the only ones wondering then what would happen if workers had access to emergency cash. And we're not the only ones wondering now.
Today - when workers and organizations need it most - we want to share what we’ve learned with those who want to get cash to American workers devastated by COVID-19.
Whether you’re a policymaker, an elected official, donor, or organizer, we invite you to be part of a conversation about emergency cash and support for workers during this crisis and in the post-crisis world to come.
“Public policy solutions for low-earning workers rarely address the impact of short-term emergencies.”
On May 21, 2020, we held a briefing about the "do's and don'ts" we learned from our emergency cash pilots. Watch the recording of our findings.
We chose to explore emergency cash delivery with our Design Sprint because the U.S. social safety net is insufficient.
Wages have stagnated over the past 30 years. More than half (55 percent) of people live paycheck to paycheck.
Two-thirds of American workers would struggle to cover a $1,000 expense. Four in 10 adults would not have $400 for an unexpected bill.
Families that experience income volatility - whether a gain or loss - report lower financial well-being and less savings than those with stable income. A 25 percent fluctuation in income over a five-month period is commonplace for many U.S. workers.
Spring 2018
With financial and organizational leadership from The Rockefeller Foundation and Google.org, and The Prudential Foundation, we began our Design Sprint for Social Change. We conducted rapid prototyping to better understand the viability of providing emergency cash to gig workers.
Fall 2018 - Spring 2019
We executed a pre-pilot test of an emergency cash delivery website with 29 users to refine the marketing and technology. We worked with Steady, a gig work app, to introduce The Workers Strength Fund to its New York City and San Francisco members. Read the pre-pilot findings.
Summer - Fall 2019
Launched a full-scale pilot of the emergency cash delivery website, called The Workers Strength Fund. In this experiment, we provided $1,000 cash grants to 350 lower-income gig workers through both Steady and Drivers Benefits, a service supporting New York City drivers of Black Car services such as Uber, Lyft, Juno, Via, Juno, and Vital.
Early Spring 2020
As the coronavirus pandemic reached the U.S., we adapted the pilot framework into The Workers Fund COVID-19 Rapid Response.
Late Spring 2020
We released a 41-page report detailing how we conducted the pilot and what we learned. We held a virtual briefing to share best practices for how to get emergency cash to workers quickly in the era of COVID-19.
See our methodology and what we learned about the benefits of getting emergency cash to workers quickly - and without strings attached.
Email us: designsprint@theworkerslab.com