University Place

The UW Institute for Research on Poverty

[Tom Zinnen, Outreach Specialist, Biotechnology Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison]

Welcome everyone to Wednesday Nite @ The Lab. I’m Tom Zinnen, I work here at the U.W.-Madison Biotechnology Center. I also work for U.W.-Extension, Cooperative Extension, and on behalf of those folks and our other co-organizers, Wisconsin Public Television, the Wisconsin Alumni Association, and the U.W.-Madison Science Alliance, thanks again for coming to Wednesday Nite @ The Lab. We do this every Wednesday night, 50 times a year.

Tonight, it’s my pleasure to introduce to you, Hilary Shager. She’s the associate director here on campus of the Institute for Research on Poverty. She was born in San Antonio, Texas, and then moved up to Wisconsin, and went to high school at Mosinee, came here to U.W.-Madison to study secondary education, with emphases in English and psychology. And she got her master’s in public affairs at the La Follette School and got her PhD in public policy at the La Follette School. And what is the difference between a public affair and a public policy?

[Hilary Shager, Associate Director, Programs and Management, University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty – off stage]

Academic nomenclature, people wanting to name things their own thing [laughs], no difference.

[laughter]

[Tom Zinnen]

Now, there’s a lot more opportunities to doing that.

[Hilary laughs]

[Tom Zinnen, on camera]

Then, she was at the La Follette School for many years, and then in March 2018 went over to the Institute for Research on Poverty, where she is the Associate Director of the Institute for Research on Poverty. It’s in the College of Letters here at U.W.-Madison.

Tonight, she’s going to talk with us about reducing poverty by researcher, practitioner, and community partnerships. Please join me in welcoming Hilary Shager to Wednesday Nite @ The Lab.

[applause]

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

Thank you – Thank you so much, Tom, and thank you everyone for coming. I’m so thrilled to be here and to talk with you about the Institute for Research on Poverty, and I just want to talk about my title for a minute. So, we’re so excited about all the resources that the university brings to bear, but when we’re talking about poverty, this is not an ivory tower-only endeavor. So, I’m going to talk about what we do at I.R.P., but how we work with the community, how we work with researchers, how we work with practitioners and policy makers, and the public to try to make a difference.

So, just to start right in, what is the Institute for Research on Poverty? So, this is a picture.

[slide titled – What is The Institute for Research on Poverty? – featuring an aerial photo of the Social Science Building behind the Carilion Tower on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and containing the following bulleted list. Established in 1966 during the War on Poverty; Functions as independent, multi-disciplinary center within the College of Letters & Science at U.W.-Madison; Core infrastructure funding from U.W.-Madison and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; more than $20 million in research project funding from foundations, state, and federal agencies]

We’re located in the Social Science Building on campus. We were established in 1966 as part of the War on Poverty, and I’ll talk a little bit about the history there. We function as an independent and multidisciplinary center. We’re located, as Tom said, in the College of Letters at U.W.-Madison. We don’t grant degrees. We’re a – an interdisciplinary research unit, but we do have opportunities for students and training, which I’ll talk about as well.

Our core infrastructure funding is primarily through U.W.-Madison, but also the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’ll talk a little bit about – we are the only federally-funded –

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

– poverty research center in the country at the moment, and we have a cooperative agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services, and we also administer about $29 million in research projects, and that’s funding from foundations, from state and federal agencies, and different local organizations.

So, just to give you a little bit of history about how I.R.P. – Ill – I’ll call us I.R.P. from now on – was created. So, U.W.-Madison has a very long history going way, way back into the early 1900s of having expertise in the – what was then the new field of social science. So, there was a group of economists that were part of something called the Wisconsin School, and they did a lot of applied work, which was somewhat controversial. There was concern, like, How could you not just do pure academic work? Why would you want to work on real-world problems? But here economists at U.W. worked on things like and helped develop workers comp, unemployment compensation, the state income tax. They worked on Roosevelt’s Committee on Economic Security, Social Security, the National Labor Relations Act, so these were some of the early pioneers like Edwin Witte and those type of folks.

And then, Robert Lampman, so he was really the first director and founder –

[slide titled – We need a RAND for poverty – featuring a black and white photo of Robert Lampman reading a journal outside the Social Sciences building with a cigarette in his right hand and containing the following bulleted list – The War on Poverty; Council of Economic Advisors (Kennedy, Johnson); Independent research center to demonstrate impact of new programs and policies; Concern that analysis of government programs would take away from more serious academic work]

– of I.R.P. That’s a picture of him there. This is when basically the Council of Economic Advisors under Kennedy and then later under Johnson, said, We want to wage a war on poverty. How do we do that? And somebody there told them, Well, you need RAND. You need a RAND for poverty. You need a group of people who can tell you what works and who aren’t going to be embedded in the sort of the – the political machine and structure, who can really try to go at it –

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

– from that more objective research sort of framework. So, I.R.P. was established as an independent research center to try to do some program evaluation and see the impact of policies over time. Again, this was somewhat controversial at the time because it was looked at as not academic, you know that this was more applied research, but as we know, at U.W. we have something called the Wisconsin Idea where what we do here is for the good of – of the world. And so, it was embraced here at U.W., and we’ve been around ever since.

So, how do we realize the Wisconsin Idea? I just want to talk a little bit about our mission. It’s multi-pronged, so we are a research institute, and that is first and foremost what we do, but also to really make this work and make an impact; we have parts of our work that involves training scholars, that we engage actively with policy makers and practitioners, and we’re also very interested in making sure that our research and our work is disseminated widely.

And again, our vision, or the goal that we’re working toward is that we try to have policies and practice that are informed by evidence and lead to the reduction of poverty and inequality in the U.S.

And so, how we do this? What, you know, what do we actually do day-to-day at I.R.P.? So, we’re explicitly trying to connect all these pieces, the research, the training, the policy, and the practice. So –

[slide titled – How Do We Accomplish Our Mission? – and featuring the following bulleted list – Explicitly connect research, training, policy, practice; Leverage multi-disciplinary, multi-method knowledge, skills, and ongoing activities of 25 staff and 200 affiliates; Oversee over $20 million in research grant funding annually; Develop and maintain ongoing collaborative relationships with policymakers and practitioners; Train and support a diverse, multi-disciplinary corps of poverty researchers]

– we have about 25 staff, anywhere from 25 to 30 depending on how many projects we’re working on at one time, and we have about 200 affiliates, so those are scholars and practitioners, about 100 on campus and 100 throughout the country, and we work with them and support them. As I said, we oversee over $20 million of research grants annually. We have very close relationships with policy makers and practitioners, which I’ll talk about a little bit more. And then, another piece of our work is trying to train and support a diverse and multidisciplinary –

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

– corps of poverty researchers.

So, like I said, this is not an ivory tower-only endeavor; so, we have a logic of collaboration. We can’t do this –

[slide titled – What is Our Logic of Collaboration – featuring the statement that Collaboration Supports Policy Development and Academic Research – and featuring two red circular arrows that flow from the I.R.P at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (using University resources, Technical expertise, and long-time horizon funding) to Local, State, Federal Agencies and Other Partners (creating Policy issues, Innovative programs, Real-world experiences, data, and funding) and then back to the I.R.P.]

– without the help of local, state, federal agencies, and other partners. They help us understand what policy issues are important. They talk to us about innovative programs. They share their experience that we need to learn from, and we need to see on the ground how things are working. They provide us with data to do research, and they sometimes provide us with funding.

And then what we bring to bear again is our wonderful corps of researchers and staff, our technical expertise. We have sort of the long-term horizon that maybe legislators can’t enjoy who have to –

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

– vote the next – the next day, and we also provide funding for different aspects of the work.

This is our current leadership. Just really quickly, I want to give a shout out to our fantastic director, Lonnie Berger –

[slide titled – Who We Are: Current Leadership – and featuring photographic head shots of the four members of the Leadership team – Lawrence (Lonnie) Berger, Director, Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Social Work; Hilary Shager, Associate Director, Programs and Management, Researcher; Jeffery Smith, Associate Director, Research and Training, Paul T. Heyne Distinguished Chair in Economics and Richard A. Meese Chair in Applied Economics; Rebecca (Becca) Schwei, Policy and Research Coordinator, Researcher]

– who is a social work professor. So, the institute is run by a faculty member. That’s a rotating position. And then myself, and Becca Schwei, we are staff positions, so we’re there, Jeff, another associate director who runs – runs the graduate research fellows program.

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

And this, not for you to see every name, but what I just want to point out in terms of our executive committee is that it’s very multidisciplinary, so you’ll see faculty there from social work, from economics –

[slide titled – Who We Are: Executive Committee – and featuring two columns of members of the committee – on the right – Lawrence Berger (Chair), IRP Director, Social Work; Hilary Shager, IRP Associate Director for Programs and Management, Researcher; Jeff Smith, IRP Associate Director for Research and Training, Economics; Judith Bartfeld, Consumer Science; Tonya Brito, Law; Maria Cancian, Public Affairs, Social Work; Marcia Carlson, Sociology, Center for Demography and Human Ecology (Director); Jane Collins, Community and Environmental Sociology, Womens Studies; J. Michael Collins, Consumer Science, Public Affairs.. Center for Financial Security (Director); Mariah Curtis, Social Work. On the left column – Jason Fletcher, Public Affairs, Sociology, Center for Demography of Health and Aging (Director); Sarah Halpern-Meekin, Human Development and Family Studies; Robert Haveman, Economics, Public Affairs; Katherine Magnuson, Social Work; Michael Massoglia, Sociology; Daniel Meyer, Social Work; James Raymo, Sociology; Timothy Smeeding, Public Affairs, Economics; Christopher Taber, Economics; Barbara Wolfe, Economics, Public Affairs, Population Health Sciences]

– from the School of Human Ecology, sociology, public affairs. So, we are very intent – law – on making sure that we have that interdisciplinary perspective because a problem like poverty, you can’t come at it from just one angle.

[new slide titled – IRP Organizational Chart – featuring said chart for the organization]

And our org chart, again, not so interesting to look at all the little boxes, but just to let you know the type of people and – and positions that we have at I.R.P. So, we have a group of people that are working on dissemination, who are editors, or doing podcasts, different things like that.

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

We have a set of researchers. We have different students who are working for us and all kinds of folks working together, data programmers who run our administrative data corps, and again, very interdisciplinary kind of place with a lot of exciting mix of skills.

Another thing is that we are the leader of something called the U.S. Collaborative Poverty Centers, or the C.P.C., and this is fairly new, but this is the collaborative of nine poverty centers throughout the country.

[slide titled – U.S. Collaborative of (9) Poverty Centers and 5 Thematic Research Networks – featuring a black and white map of the contiguous United States with states that have poverty centers highlighted in grey – Wisconsin – I.R.P. U.W.-Madison; Michigan – Poverty Solutions, University of Michigan; New York – Center on Poverty and Social Policy, Columbia University; District of Columbia – Center on Race and Wealth, Howard University; Kentucky – Center for Poverty Research, University of Kentucky; Washington (State) – West Coast Poverty Center, University of Washington; California (3) Center for Poverty Research, U.C.-Davis – Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, Stanford University – Economic Self-Sufficiency Policy Research Institute, U.C.-Irvine. At the bottom of the slide is a list of the Thematic Networks – Poverty and geography; Poverty and family functioning; Poverty, employment, and self-sufficiency; Poverty and the transition to adulthood; Poverty and tax policy]

Yeah, you can see the – the different schools that are represented there, and we work together to try to set a research agenda, to support each other in different programming, to come together to do publications, different kinds of things like that. And we also have put – put together a series of thematic networks, so these are thematic research networks that focus on issues like poverty and geography, family functioning, employment self-sufficiency, transition to adulthood, and tax policy. So again, this is trying to have this sort of national impact –

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

– and learn from each other and give each other opportunities for training, funding, and enriching research.

So, moving into a little bit about how we work with the federal government in our role as the National Poverty Research Center. As I said, we’re the only federally-funded research center in the country. Right now, we’re in the middle of a five-year cooperative agreement with A.S.P.E., the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services. So, we’ve had this role in the past. Sometimes it’s been – sometimes they fund several regional centers, so we’ve been one of five centers that were funded. Sometimes it’s only one, but the last grant that was put out was for one, and – and we currently hold it. And the overall goal there again, is, you know, again to increase the effectiveness of our research by coming together to working directly with the federal government to identify, you know, What are some of the things they want to know about? We help them, Here’s some of the things we think you should know about. And working to – to – to both work with them directly on some requests and then also to support our role as a leader in the country doing poverty research.

And again, there are these three areas that we do work in, so research, dissemination, and then training and mentoring.

So, I’m going to go through a little bit of each, just highlight a few things that we do in each of those areas. So, some of our research activities, like I said, some of these are, you know, we might get some questions about, you know, What – what can you tell us about numbers regarding the opioid crisis? Can you do some lit reviews on that kind of thing? So, we have some, you know, quarterly memos, different things that we do directly. We have topics that we say, Hey, we have some great experts here. We’d love to come talk with you about this topic. So, we might, we spend a lot of time in D.C. working with that. We have several grant competitions that we support, and that is trying to help scholars throughout the country. Some of them are targeted at more senior scholars, some at more junior scholars. And then we have other research activities, workshops that we do, and different kinds of policy volumes that we put together, so just a lot going on all the time.

And then we also do complementary research activities. So, these are things that are not directly funded by A.S.P.E. Though its – it’s research that our affiliates are doing that’s being administered through the center, but certainly is supported by our role and our leadership – our leadership role throughout the country.

So, one I want to talk about is something called Baby’s First Years, and this is a really, really exciting research project. The person, Professor Katherine Magnuson, is the I.R.P. affiliate who is associated with this project, but there are several scholars throughout the country who are. And essentially this is a randomized control trial that will be really one of the first studies to explore whether income level actually has a causative effect on brain development. So, you may think, Well don’t we know that poverty is bad for children? Well, yeah, we think that’s the case, right, but we don’t know have a lot of empirical research that says directly that just income has a causal effect on how the brain develops going from birth.

So, what they’re doing is they have a randomized control trial. They have a – a treatment group of mothers who are under the federal poverty line. They’re going to be receiving a card that has $333 per month on it that they get to spend however they want. There’s no rules about the spending, it’s just a card. And then that’ll be compared to a treatment group that gets, I can’t remember if it’s $10 or $20. And so, essentially about $4,000 a year that the treatment group will be getting, and we’ll see is there a difference. There’s going to be brain imaging. They’ll be going different kinds of surveys, different kinds of, different tests. There will be a qualitative component where they go and talk to families. So, this has been in the making for about six years, and we’re really excited. It’s just starting, so I don’t have any results for you yet, but certainly the hypothesis is that income, having more income, would be helpful.

Another really exciting program that we have is brand-new and funded by the J.P.B. Foundation, and this is trying to build – it has a – a terrible long name [laughs] but – but the – the important piece of it is that we have researcher-practitioner partnerships. So, this, again, is really trying to produce policy-relevant and policy-important research. So, trying to work with people who are collecting data, who have data, but dont – organizations that don’t necessarily have the capacity to use it. And so, this is trying to provide some academic supports behind that. So, the first two projects that we funded, one is actually in Wisconsin, in Milwaukee, called, Does the Labor Market Give Credit for Learning Online? There’s been an incredible increase in the use of online learning in high schools in Milwaukee, and there’s a question as to whether, does that really translate to good learning? So, it seems that there are more credits, ’cause students are getting more credits. They may be graduating, but are they learning things that are going to be useful to them in, for example, the labor market and long-term outcomes? Hasn’t really been tested yet. And there’s concern because these kinds of courses are particularly taken by students of color. And, you know, is this helping reduce the achievement gap, or could it be exacerbating the achievement gap? So, that’s one.

Another, so that’s a partnership between researchers and the Milwaukee School District. And then leveraging administrative data to increase take-up of SNAP and the earned-income tax credit. So, that is actually an experiment. It’s actually two different studies in California. One, where they’re using some behavioral economics, so things, maybe you’ve heard the word nudge, you know where they – can we do little low-cost things to help people sign up for that earned-income tax credit and get that earned-income tax credit, which research shows seems to be very helpful to families.

And then with SNAP, one of the issues that we have studied in a lot of different public programs, is how do people, so if people are eligible for a program, how do they actually take it up? Is there administrative burden that makes it difficult? Is there a lot of churning kind of on and off of the benefits and how does that impact families? So, the – the SNAP eligibility study looks at counties in California that have made it easier to stay on SNAP in terms of not having to do as much paperwork or giving a certain time limit or something like that, that they’re rolling out gradually so it kind of creates this incredible opportunity for researchers to look at counties that are doing that versus counties that aren’t. So, those are few examples of – of some of the exciting research that we’re doing right now.

Another thing that we do at times is our faculty are asked to put together things like collections or special editions of journals. So, this was a very recent journal put together –

[slide titled – The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences – with the subheading – Anti-poverty Policy Innovations for the United States, Vol. 4, No. 2&3, Feb. 2018 (https://www.rsfjournal.org.loi/rsf ) Editors: Lawrence M. Berger, Maria Cancian, Katherine Magnuson – and the following bulleted list of topics – Universal Child allowance; Cash for Kids (universal child benefit); Minimum benefit plan for elderly; Single-parent family policy reforms; Reconstructing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); Renters tax credit; Rainy Day component of Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC); Minimum wage and making work pay via the tax system; Federal job guarantee; National subsidized employment; Race to the Top in public higher education; Postsecondary pathways out of poverty; Two-generation human capital (Head Start + community colleges); Long lasting reversible contraceptives]

– two volumes of a journal actually, looking at anti-poverty policy innovations for the U.S. So, if you want to read sort of what do we think works? What does the research say on how we do this across a lot of different policy areas, here’s your bedtime reading for the next few – few weeks.

[new slide titled – ASPE-Supported Dissemination Activities – with the following headers and their associated activities – Internal Memoranda – Quarterly Poverty Policy Research, Memoranda to ASPE Leadership; Rapid Response Technical Assistance Memoranda – Convenings – Quarterly IRP-ASPE Learning Exchange; Thematic Research Workshops; Annual Poverty Research and Policy Forum; Research Network Meetings; Topical Events – Seminars and Lectures – IRP UW Seminar Series; New Perspectives in Social Policy; Robert Lampman Memorial Lecture – Publications – Focus and Focus+; Fast Focus Research/Policy Brief; Poverty Fact Sheets – Electronic Media – Podcasts and Webinars – Electronic Communications Dissemination – Website; Twitter, Facebook, YouTube; Electronic Mailing Lists – Public Information – Personalized Response]

Okay. Dissemination, so this is great. If you do all this high-quality research, but if nobody knows about it, not so helpful. [laughs] So, we put forth a lot of effort to try to make sure that the research is getting into the hands of the people that can actually take action, right, and do something with it. And I want to say something really important about dissemination, though, it’s not just –

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

– handing a report to a policy maker. It’s really about translating the research, talking to the policy maker, and listening to the policy maker about what is it that I can do with this, or Here’s what I need, here’s the question I still have that I need you to go answer. Here’s what’s going to happen when I hand this to you, the people on the street. So, I – I started my career as actually a – a middle school and high school teacher, and when I went back to policy school and started, you know, hearing about all these great experiments. I was like, Have you ever been a teacher? You know, have you spent time, a – a day in a classroom in thinking about how this works? So, I.R.P. is really full of people who do think about that, do care about that a lot, and that’s why the – the research really works.

So, these are some of the dissemination –

[return to the previous slide titled. – ASPE-Supported Dissemination Activities – described above]

– activities that we do. We really do try to bring researchers and practitioners together whenever we can because again, we learn a lot of important things as an institute from practitioners and policy makers, in addition to we think we have a lot of helpful information that, you know, could definitely improve and inform policies as well.

[new slide featuring a screenshot of the webpage of the I.R.P.s Seminar Calendar for Spring of 2019 featuring photos and descriptions of the presenters and their seminar subjects. The slide also contains information about the Seminars – Weekly, Thursdays from 12:15 to 1:30pm Room 8417 Social Sciences, 1180 Observatory Drive and the website – https://www.irp.wisc.edu/events/ ]

So, I know you can’t see all the pictures, but I wanted to take the opportunity that if you didn’t know, I wanted to invite you to our weekly seminar that we have on Thursday afternoons. This is in the Social Science Building; so, we have different speakers every week on any variety of topics. Some are from U.W., some are from different places across the country, so please check that out. We also have something called the Lampman Lecture, after our founder, once a year. This year, it’s Bruce Western, who’s going to be talking about corrections policy, and then we have a New Perspectives lecture –

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

– where we try to really highlight some cutting-edge research or research that, you know, we haven’t thought about as connected to poverty before. And this year, we’re looking at sort of how are on-the-ground non-profits and organizations using information to inform their practice and try to reduce policy – ah – poverty?

So, this is just a look at some of the different resources that we put out from the institute.

[slide titled – Complementary Dissemination Activities – featuring a screenshot of the IRP podcast page, and photos of three of the IRPs publications, Focus and Fast Focus along with their resource website – https://www.irp.wisc.edu/resources ]

So, we have several publications. We have Focus and Fast Focus, so those are quarterly and monthly publications that highlight a topic of interest. We have the wonderful Dave Chancellor puts together podcasts for us. Here I’ve highlighted one where we talked to some folks at the Department of Public Instruction and some professors at U.W. talking about their partnership. We have a Frequently Asked Questions section where we try to provide information to a lot of the questions that we get. And again, I encourage you to check out our resources page and take a look.

[new slide titled – ASPE-Supported Training Activities – with the subheading – Train and support a diverse corps of poverty researchers along with the following headers and their associated activities – Undergraduate Students – Poverty and Policy Careers activities; Media and Publications; Multidisciplinary Courses; Morgridge Center for Public Service Internship Program – Graduate Students – Graduate Research Fellows Program; Dissertation Fellowships; Research Assistantships; Multidisciplinary Seminars; Dissertation Proposal Workshop for Underrepresented Graduate Students; Participation in IRP Activities – Promising Scholars – National Poverty Fellows Program; Scholar-in-Residence Programs; IRP Summer Research Workshop – Faculty – Extramural and Intramural Small Research Grant Competitions; Mentoring Technical Assistance and Workshops; Teaching Poverty 101 Workshop]

So, the third arm of our work, again, is training and mentoring, and also increasingly we’re really trying to work on the diversity of our poverty scholar corps. So, a lot of efforts, and diversity means a lot of things – so, racial and ethnic diversity, diversity in age, diversity in region, diversity in methodology, diversity in –

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

– all sorts of things. So, we do have training opportunities for anywhere from undergraduate students to grad students and faculty, and something that I really enjoyed earlier this fall as we worked with our – we have quite a few opportunities on this campus, people who are working on mentoring. So, we did a great mentoring workshop for faculty. We have a National Poverty Fellows Program, which works with the federal government where we have folks, young scholars who maybe are still trying to decide, Do I want to go into academia or am I more interested in government or something else? – spending some time at a federal agency and doing research and evaluation there for a few years before they make that decision. So, lots of different opportunities, our Graduate Research Fellows Program, also, that supports U.W. grad students. It’s a wonderful program I’m a graduate of myself, that brings together interdisciplinary, so you can be from the School of Education, Human Ecology, Engineering, Economics. It’s just a great discussion and way for students to – to learn from each other.

And this is an example of something that is supported by our federal grant that we’re really excited about, so we’ve done for two years now. It’s a Dissertation Proposal Workshop for Underrepresented –

[slide titled – Dissertation Proposal Workshop for Underrepresented Graduate Students – featuring a photo of the 21 members of the workshop with members of the IRP and the bullets – May 2017 & 2018 at Howard University; Staffed by IRP and Howard University faculty]

– Students. We work with Howard University in Washington, D.C., and so the first round I think we had 12 or 14 scholars, then it was – the next year we got like 95 applicants, so we upped it to about, I think there were 21. It’s been a really popular program, a great opportunity for us and for them.

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

Again, complementary training activities, so this is not funded by our federal grants but funded by J.P.B. is an Emerging Scholars Fellowships. So, we have our first three –

[slide titled – Complementary Training Activities – with the bullet point – IRP/JPB Emerging Scholars Fellowships for promising junior faculty from underrepresented populations and featuring the photo headshots of the following scholars – Stephanie L. Canizales, Jacob William Faber, and Jamila Michener. A second bullet point is – Shepard Higher Education Consortium on Poverty – Collaborative summer internship integrated with course work and community engagement opportunities during the academic school year]

– this – this year, Stephanie Canizales, Jacob Faber, and Jamila Michener. And we’re really excited. Essentially, this fellowship says here is $20,000 for professional development, and it’s not tied to a particular research project. It’s what do you need –

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

– to get somewhere in your career, and that’s not a common opportunity for a young scholar. We also pair the scholar with a mentor. So, this may be somebody at U.W. Actual – actually, I think most of our mentors are from our partner poverty centers, but again, this is helping – these are scholars who are interested in doing applied kind of work, doing poverty research even if it’s not the cool thing to do in your sociology department, and you may not have peers at your university. So, we’re lucky here at U.W. We do applied research; we have great interdisciplinary opportunities. The walls are really low between colleges and schools, but that’s not the case for a lot of scholars across the country. So, this is a wonderful opportunity. And on the other end, at the undergraduate level, a new program that we’ve just become involved with is the Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty, and this is trying to give undergrads an opportunity to learn about poverty by taking courses throughout the campus and then having a really high-quality internship experience in the summer. So, we’re just starting with our first cohort this year, and I’m really excited to see what happens.

So, the – the next thing I want to talk about is the work that the institute does with Wisconsin state agencies specifically. So, we have a very long history of about 30 years of working with state agencies like the Department of Children and Families, which is another place that I worked before I came to the university. So again, that’s a great opportunity and – and shows an investment in I.R.P. and sort of hiring people and working with people who have worked in agencies, which is great. But we have a philosophy, and the philosophy is when we work together, it’s yours, mine, and ours. So, theres some – there are some questions, there’s some things that we do that are yours. You just asked us to do it. We don’t have the capacity to do it. We can help you do it, and because we’re good partners, we will do that. Some of these things are mine. I’m an academic, I have a question that I theoretically have, maybe it’s about theory. I’m going to publish it in a journal. You’re probably not going to be super, super interested in it, but this is important to me, and we’re good partners, so we do it. A lot of our work is ours, so these are the kinds of questions that are policy-relevant that are – are going to be both interesting to academics and have implications for theory and generalization and other programs, but they also have really direct and interesting implications for the department or the agency and people you’re working with. So, we mostly work in that “our” circle, but we also have these other two circles, and that’s what makes the relationship work.

So, we do a lot of working with agencies to set a shared research agenda. We provide technical assistance and have research contracts. Again, sometimes we partner in seeking federal money. We have learning exchanges; so, this is one of my favorite things to do is to go to the agencies quarterly, and we share research, and we get feedback on, Ooh yeah, yeah, that’s not actually how it works. [laughs], or, you know, You used that data wrong, or something like that. So that’s actually really helpful, or we can really use this. Outreach to local and state governments, and then, you know, we act as advisors when we’re asked on different kinds of committees and boards.

And then another really important thing, and this is, you know, such an enriching opportunity that we have in Wisconsin that’s really unique, is that we have this incredible linked administrative data system. So, we have something called the Wisconsin Administrative Data Corps. Again, something that’s been built over, you know, building –

[slide titled – The Wisconsin Administrative Data Core – featuring an illustration of four overlapping circles – one large and in purple labelled CARES: TANF, SNAP, Child Care, and Medicaid; a medium sized one in blue labelled KIDS: Child Support Orders, CS payments, CS receipts, Paternity Establishment, and Divorce; a smaller green one labelled Child Welfare and a peach oblong one that is labelled DOC: State incarceration]

– trusting relationships between the university and these state agencies where they have shared their data, of course, in a way that’s safe and de-identified and – and letting, helping us come up with some shared research questions that are again going to be policy-relevant. But we have linked data, from, you know, very siloed data systems, so Child Welfare, Child Support, Department of Corrections, TANF, and Welfare, and Medicaid, wage records from Unemployment Insurance. So, we have programmers who have figured out a way to match all that data and do it longitudinally so that researchers can do some really great policy-relevant studies. So, we have, we think at Wisconsin –

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

– one of the richest data collections in the country to be able to do this, and again, this is something that has – has been built through that partnership, and we really relish that opportunity.

So, some other examples of the research that we do with that linked administrative data corps, and with these partnerships that we’ve built with agencies, child support is one of the major areas where we’ve done work for a long time. So, we’ve done some studies that suggest, for example, if you – so, a lot of times families who are poor may, for example, when they owe child support are also basically billed say for a Medicaid birth, and they owe money not only to the family, to their child, but also back payment to the state. Well, it turns out that when they fall behind or are in arrears that if you pass through, if you forgive that money to the state, they’re more likely to actually give money to the family. So, that’s – thats an example where that’s had implications. That research has had implications throughout the country. A lot of states have changed their policies around that.

Families Forward was a project that I worked on when I was graduate student, and that was looking at again, for noncustodial parents who have fallen way behind in child support. Again, perhaps through barriers to employment or for whatever reason. How do we get them paying again? How do we get them involved with their families again? And this was an opportunity to look at, you know, what if we forgave some of that state debt, or what if even custodial parents were willing to forgive some debt. If they agreed to that, like for every dollar paid, can we forgive 50 cents of debt? So, that’s another opportunity. And that did show positive results. That did bring people back into the system.

We’ve also looked at things like interactions between child support and child welfare. So, same kind of thing, that if a child is placed in foster care, the noncustodial parent may be paying for that – for those state costs, and it turns out that that’s actually not good for kids. It takes longer for kids to be reunited with their families if that’s the case. So, interaction between two policy areas you didn’t even really think about, so how do we – how do we think about that?

And the last bullet point here, the Child Support –

[slide titled – Examples from Child Support – with the following bulleted list – Child Support Demonstration Evaluation, pass-through policy; Families Forward (child support debt forgiveness program); Interaction between child support and child welfare; Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration (CSPED)]

– Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration, that is a randomized control trial. It’s been in eight states. It’s been going on for, oh, I think we’re in our sixth year now, but that’s looking at again, for parents who are having trouble paying child support, what if we sort of changed the focus of the child support office into helping with employment, –

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

– helping with parenting, and really taking, you know, a kind of a client-centered focus on child support as opposed to just a collections or, you know, sort of a – a – a more criminal justice kind of focus on it. And so, that’s being studied right now, is what if we really changed the culture of an organization like that, does that help to bring forth more child support, better employment outcomes, and better outcomes for families?

Another thing that we collaborate on is something called the Wisconsin Poverty Report. So, Professor Tim Smeeding from I.R.P. is the lead author on this, has been for many years –

[slide titled – WI Poverty Report – featuring the cover of the report on the left-hand side and the following bulleted list on the right – Wisconsin Poverty Measure based on Federal Supplementary Poverty Measure, reflecting expenditures on food, clothing, shelter, and transportation adjusted for cost of living differences between WI and rest of U.S. and considering noncash benefits and taxes, including refundable tax credits; Latest report found stalled progress in poverty rate reduction (10.8%), despite growing economy; Milwaukee Co. race and ethnicity supplement finds higher rates of poverty for Blacks and Hispanics]

– and this puts forth – so, the official poverty measure, right, is – is something that’s kind of old, and it’s, you know, got a very specific definition, and this is trying to come up with a poverty measure that really takes a little bit more into account and tries to give us better answers about how policies are impacting the poverty rates in – in different counties in Wisconsin. So, the latest report found stalled progress. So, basically povertys been – has been going down over – over the last few years, but this year was slightly up. And by this year, I should say the 2018 publication, but this is 2016 data. There’s always a lag in how clean the data is, right? So, there’s kind of a stall there, and it’s a question of, you know, why is this happening if we have sort of a booming economy? And you know, what can we do about it? So, there’s, you know, one hypothesis is, Well, yes, unemployment is down but wages aren’t up as maybe as high as we would expect given the tight labor market. Another is that, you know, maybe unemployment is, you know, is low, but there’s still a group of potential workers that are not able to access this – this good labor market. So, what do we do specifically for that group? So, putting forth questions like that and working with – with Wisconsin policy makers about that.

This last year, Tim also did a supplement where he was looking specialty about race and ethnic disparities in poverty, and in Milwaukee finds much higher rates of poverty for blacks and Hispanics.

Okay, now I want to talk about a project, a really exciting project that I’m working on, that’s really kind of a new direction for the Institute for Research on Poverty. So, we were approached, kind of a cold call to U.W., from an organization called Schmidt Futures. And Schmidt Futures identifies itself as a venture facility for public benefit, not a foundation, but don’t ask me exactly what that means. I’m just using their language cause I have permission to. And it’s headed by Eric Schmidt, who you may recognize as the former C.E.O. of Google. They’ve done a lot of work in – with –

[slide labelled – The Alliance for the American Dream – with the following bulleted list – Funded by Schmidt Futures – Venture facility for public benefit; headed by Eric Schmidt, former C.E.O. of Google – U.W.-Madison chosen as 1 of 4 inaugural Alliance partners. A the bottom of the slide are the university logos for all 4 inaugural partners, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Ohio State University, Arizona State University, and the University of Utah]

– science fellowships and – and technology funding, and now they’re getting into the kind of philanthropy where they’re looking at economic prosperity. So, we were very excited. Basically, Eric Schmidt or someone from his organization called the chancellor and said, We’re thinking about putting together this challenge called The Alliance for the American Dream, and we want to increase the income of folks in the middle class, and –

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

– you know, do you think U.W. can help with that? Do you think they can do that? And Chancellor Blank said, I know just the folks for you. I know people who can do applied policy research and get out there in the community, and brought it to the Institute for Research on Poverty, and we were really proud and excited –

[return to the slide labelled – The Alliance for the American Dream, described above]

– to be one of the four inaugural partners. You can see the other three there.

So, to tell you a little bit about – we have rebranded our own local version of this challenge as an – an opportunity called DreamUp –

[slide titled – DreamUp Wisconsin – featuring a photo of a multicultural group of people standing arm-in-arm at the bottom of the slide and this question above them – How can we raise the income of 10,000 middle class Dane County families by 10% by 2020?]

– Wisconsin, and the specific challenge we were given by Schmidt Futures is how do we raise the income of 10,000 middle-class, Dane County families by 10% by the year 2020? So, it is an audacious challenge, and I just want to play a quick video for you to show you how we’re approaching it.

[DreamUp Wisconsin video plays]

[peaceful music over an aerial video of the isthmus and Wisconsin Capitol with the title DreamUp Wisconsin]

[Announcer]

Dane County has beautiful landscapes,

[Shot of downtown Waunakee with traffic]

– vibrant communities, a strong economy,

[shot of a worker in a factory]

– and a thriving labor market –

[shot of workers in a warehouse]
– but many families find –

[shot of traffic on the Beltline Highway]

– themselves strapped and struggling to make ends meet.

[shot of an Black woman at her kitchen table going through the Classified Ads with a marker]

Increases in the cost of housing, childcare, –

[shot of childrens feet entering onto a School bus]

– and education stretch family budgets,

[aerial shot of Madison suburbs]

– while wages for some seem stuck.

[a graph of Median Household Income for Black, Latino, and Whites appears]

These struggles are especially prominent for people of color –

[the graph animates on the figure $30,400 for Black Median Household Income]

– who have unemployment rates that are often double, –

[the graph animates on the figure $40,000 for Latino Median Household Income]

– and median household incomes that are substantially lower than those of –

[the graph animates on the figure $69,000 for White Median Household Income]

– white people in Dane County. Opportunities also vary by –

[shot of a farm field with wind turbines on it]

– education level and geography, –

[shot of a park shelter]

– leaving too many people in our county –

[shot of Middleton street with construction traffic]

– out of the middle class –

[shot of the Welcome sign for the William Street/Marquette Neighborhood next to the bike path]

– but think of how much stronger –

[shot of a plane landing at the Dane County airport]

– our community would be –

[shot of the population sign for Mazomanie]

– if we could expand –

[shot of the Memorial Union Terrace in the summer]

– Dane County’s middle class. DreamUp Wisconsin –

[shot of the exterior of Sun Prairie High School]

– aims to do this by building on current efforts, –

[shot of rural housing taken from a moving car]

– combining university and –

[aerial shot of the Social Sciences building and Carilion Tower]

– community partners and using funding from Schmidt Futures to find ways –

[shot of a worker in a warehouse]

-to boost the incomes of –

[shot of traffic on the Beltline Highway]

– 10,000 Dane County families –

[shot of a Black family enjoying pizza al fresco]

– by 10% or –

[shot of a tractor plowing a field]

– around $4,000.

[J. Michael Collins, U.W.-Madison Center for Financial Security]

That’s $40 million dollars a year that we’re going to see ripple through our economy. That’s spending in local businesses, that’s people saving, people investing.

[Rebecca Blank, Chancellor, U.W.-Madison]

What does it mean to be middle class, and what can we do in this project to expand the number of middle-class families here in Dane County are – are just fascinating questions and deeply, deeply important for our community.

[shot of a Madison Metro bus turning onto a street]

[shot of a worker working in a factory]

[Cassie Crocket, Schmidt Futures, Manager of Strategy and Planning]

We’re excited to learn from you about what the ideas are that’ll help the middle class here and elsewhere.

[Dr. Ruben Anthony, Jr., C.E.O. and President, Urban League of Greater Madison]

The strategies used here in Dane County are scalable, and scalable particularly if you’re tied to industry partnerships.

[Cassie Crocket]

And we’re excited to support those ideas and – and hopefully give them access to the market and the capital that they need to thrive.

[Renee Moe, C.E.O. and President, United Way of Dane County]

I hope there is a more cohesive, collaborative community vision for who we want to be and how we’re going to get there.

[J. Michael Collins]

We’re really trying to start by listening to the community. We’re going to listen. We’re going to work with faith-based organizations –

[shot of a church steeple]

– with local business, with policy makers –

[aerial shot of the Isthmus]

– with teachers,

[shot of the Monona Grove High School sign]

– with unions, with everybody in the county –

[shot of a man washing bourbon barrels]

– who’s worried about the issues of the middle class.

[Karen Menendez Coller, Executive Director, Centro Hispano]

The community already has a lot of answers and systems in place about how to make things work. Now, I think our role as a – as a whole city is to make sure that those voices are heard, and those solutions are amplified.

[shot of two Black residents talking at a coffee shop]

[J. Michael Collins]

That’s the sort of the miracle of the middle class is that they can become the engine that really drives growth in our community.

[Renee Moe]

So, I think to be able to pull this together quickly and then go, it’s going to feel very different in Dane County, but I’m personally very –

[shot of students in a study hall]

– excited about that. I think we’ll get some new energy. I think we’ll get some great ideas.

[shot of students having a discussion in a library]

[Cassie Crocket]

This is a community with one of the longest histories of research into what interventions actually work when it comes to –

[shot of carpenters working on building a new home]

– building a strong middle class and supporting distressed communities.

[Rebecca Blank]

When the goal is finding better ways to stabilize and expand the middle class, the stakes are particularly high.

[Renee Moe]

I think that the energy’s here in this community, the will is here in this community, the smarts are in this community, and to get people together in new and innovative ways to think differently and to learn quicker, and to try things faster, that’s going to be what really gets us from here to there, and that’s what we need.

[graphic with the title – How to Get Involved]

[Announcer]

We want you to get involved.

[Graphic – Come to a Forum animates in]

Come to a community forum.

[Graphic – Submit an idea animates in]

Submit your ideas,

[Graphic – Join a team animates in]

– join a team.

[new graphic titled Timeline with the months June through December of 2019 animates over a graphic of the State of Wisconsin with Dane County highlighted]

We will help build at least 10 teams –

[June to September animates a bracket labelled Submit Your Ideas]

– from members –

[September to November animates a bracket labelled 10 Teams will be developed]

– of the community and campus around the strongest ideas.

[In December, the words 3 will be nominated animates in]

One of these ideas will receive additional funding from –

[at the end of December, the words 1 will be selected animates in]

– Schmidt Futures in 2019.

[aerial shot of the northside of Madison and the Little League diamonds]

To learn more and share your ideas –

[the DreamUp Wisconsin logo animates in over the above shot with the website dreamup.wisc.edu and email [email protected] ]

– visit our website.

[uplifting music]

[end of video]

[return to the slide labelled – DreamUp Wisconsin – described before the video]

[[Hilary Shager, on camera]

So, there’s the audacious challenge. So, we actually received the funding at the end of April, kicked it off in May. We had to narrow it down to three ideas by this week, that we have three full proposals that are into Schmidt Futures that are going to be pitching their ideas in Arizona at the end of this month. So, it was really a challenge and to – to get things together that fast, and I can tell you that this is not how academia works [laughs] usually. Any of you who are involved or have been or have friends who are. So, it has put us outside our comfort zone, but it’s been a really, really great thing.

So, what we’re looking for, the strongest solutions that Schmidt Futures was looking for is to include some – I should say this is a combination. Schmidt Futures put out and said, Okay, you know, we want ideas that are going to benefit, come from and benefit a diverse set of people, that they’re interdisciplinary and multi-sector, that they’re evidence-based, that they use technology. But we also absolutely, absolutely required that it be a university-community partnership. So, we have no teams and no proposals that are just from faculty or just from the community, that that was part of what we were going to build here is that partnership.

And the other thing is that we wanted to make sure that we are dealing with proposals and ideas that are going to be responsive specifically to the needs in Dane County. So, what does that mean? The first thing we did is we went and put together a fact sheet and tried to learn more about the population of Dane County.

[slide featuring a screenshot of the .pdf of the Fact Sheet about Dane County – Population – 536,416; Families – 213,519; Age Distribution – 12% over 65, 67% 18-64, 21% 0-17; Disparities – Unemployment Rate – Black=10%, Latinx=7%, White=4% – 4 year High School Graduation Rate – Black=59%, Latinx=74%, White=90%; Median Household Income – Black=$30,400, Latinx=$40,000, White=$69,000; 1 in 4 families make less than $50,000/year; 31% of homeowners and 52% of renters (including students) spend more than 1/3 of their income on housing; Rural areas often lack access to good jobs and public transportation; 28% of families are headed by a single parent; 8% of adults and 4% of children dont have health insurance; 8% of families dont own a vehicle; 1 in 3 schoolchildren qualify for free/reduced school meals; 1 in 3 families lack enough savings to pay their bills for 3 months if they lost their income; 40% of families with young children are unable to pay for full-time childcare and fewer than 1,500 families receive state childcare subsidies]

And what we noticed right away is that Dane County, if you look at all our averages, we look great. We are a prosperous county, but I don’t know if anything jumps out at you here, but definitely what jumped out to us and was highlighted in the video is that there are some really, really troubling disparities when it comes to income, when it comes to educational outcomes, employment, disparities by race in this county. So, we know from other community organizations, the Race to Equity report, you know, this is a problem here. So, we needed to attach our challenge and our way to address the challenge to make sure that we were thinking about this as well. And so, one of the first things that people in the community, when we first started talking about this, like, Well you can’t say middle class and expect communities of color –

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

– to be excited about this because you’re leaving out a lot of people if you say that. If you’re defining middle class as like $50,000 a year, that’s not even the median income for some of these populations, right? So, we started talking about, there’s a missing middle class in Dane County. There’s an emerging middle class in Dane County; that there are people, there’s a fragile middle class in Dane County. People are doing just fine today. They have a house, a job, and a car, but car breaks down, I get laid off, I have a medical incident, and suddenly you go from, you know, pretty stable to being potentially in a very dire, spiraling situation. So, we tended to focus – Schmidt Futures did not say you have to choose a particular income point. Some other schools did it that way. Some other schools decided that they were going to use different catchment areas. Some other schools decided we’re going to have faculty-led groups, but we really felt it was important that we pay attention to what the data were telling us, and that we pay attention to the community and make sure that ideas were community-led.

So, the other thing that we did is we went out and talked to people, and I shouldn’t say we, I should say our fabulous graduate students, who went to grocery stores, to libraries, to bus stops, to all the many wonderful, exciting festivals that we have in Dane County, and talked to folks and said, you know, What is holding your family back?, What costs a lot? What’s hard for you to afford? And you can see that some –

[slide with an image of the second page of the .pdf Fact Sheet on Dane County – It starts with the question – What makes it difficult for families to get ahead financially? and is followed by 6 answers each with their own graphic 1)(dollar sign) Cost of Living – Unaffordable housing; food; utilities; health insurance; taxes 2) (worker in a hard hat) Job, Market and Wages – Difficult to find a job; wages not increasing with the cost of living 3) (babys face) Childcare – Hard to find affordable service with flexible scheduling 4) (stop sign) Racial Discrimination – Systematically affects housing security, job access, healthcare and education for people of color 5) (a stack of 3 books) Education Costs – Post-secondary education and training (e.g. for learning trades) cost are too high 6) (cross in a circle) Social Benefits – Strict income limits and requirements make it difficult to qualify for benefits. Below this question are three other columns. The first is Interviewee Annual Household Income – 48% $0-$40,000, 28% – $40,001-$80,000, 23% over $80,000 .01% No answer. The second column asks the question – What could help families decrease their expenses? – and is followed by 5 answers each with their own graphic 1) (house) Affordable Housing – Lower rent, housing subsidies, rent controlled, and constructing more affordable housing 2) (3 dollar bills) Higher Wages – increase minimum wage, better job opportunities, and paying higher wages 3) (piggy bank) Smarter Spending – Limit spending to essential needs, learn to budget, and buy used items 4) (doctor) Lower Health Care Costs – Universal health care, affordable insurance that covers all medical needs, reduced copays and fees 5) (stack of 3 books) Affordable Education – Scholarships for low-income and returning students, free post-secondary education and training, education about available resources. The last column asks the question – What could help families increase their incomes? – and is followed by 5 answers each with their own graphic 1) (3 dollar bills) Raise the Minimum Wage – increase wages and raise mandatory minimum wage 2) (three stacked books) Increase Access to Education and Training – Affordable and flexible education and training 3) (piggy bank) Budgeting Skills – Increase financial literacy and budgeting skills 4) (worker in hard hat) More Employment Opportunities – More advancement options for those not experiencing professional growth 5) (question mark) Dont Know – People feel like they do everything they can to increase their income and reduce their expenses and are looking for new ideas]

– of things that they talked about were things like childcare, racial discrimination, benefits, education, so these are the things that as we were brainstorming and putting together a proposal process that – that we were thinking about.

So, essentially, we put out a wide call –

[slide labelled – Public Outreach]

– and we said –

[the slide animates on a photo of someone from the IRP in front of a podium talking to a crowded room]

– We’re going to have an ideation process. That’s what Schmidt Futures has asked us to lead. So, put out an open call for ideas, had a public kickoff –

[a second photo of people at a forum having small group discussions animates on]

– with organizations. We had a kickoff on campus with faculty, where we had over 100 faculty show up to learn about it –

[a third photo animates on the slide of a diverse group of people meeting around a meeting table]

– and then throughout this summer, we held office hours, both on campus and also at the U.W. South Madison Partnership Building over by Urban League, and we talked with a lot of people from the community –

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

– about ideas that they had, things that they were doing in trying to create partnerships where there hadn’t been or to foster existing partnerships to come up with ideas that would meet this challenge.

So, we got 47 proposals to start with, at the end of August. We narrowed that down to 11 proposals, and then we narrowed it down to three, and I’m going to tell you a little bit about our three finalists who will be traveling to Schmidt Futures, or to Phoenix to pitch their ideas in front of a board put together by Schmidt Futures in just two weeks.

So, the first team is called LIFT Dane –

[slide titled – LIFT (Legal Interventions for Transforming) Dane – featuring a photo of the eight members of the LIFT team and then the following information – A suite of free legal services using data and technology-driven approach to eliminate barriers to employment and opportunity. Partners – Legal Action of Wisconsin, U.W. Law School, Employment and Training Association of Dane County]

– a clever acronym there, Legal Interventions for Transforming Dane. So, this is a partnership between Legal Action of Wisconsin, the U.W. Law School, and the Employment and Training Association of Dane County. And essentially, what they’re trying to do is use data and technology to help people overcome their civil-legal barriers. They look at things like expungement of corrections records, not having a driver’s license, having child support –

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

– orders and arrears that are too high, that they can’t pay or arrears, all sorts of different civil, legal issues, but issues that they say are fixable, right, like these are things that if you had a lawyer, you probably could get some help doing. Now, if you’re very low income, you might have access to free legal aid, but there’s a gap. There’s, you know, a group that are not eligible for free legal aid, but they’re not, you know, well-off enough to have a lawyer on retainer. And this is trying to extend some of the services, for example, that Legal Action, you know, people that they work with to that group. It’s very clever, it’s – its trying to come up with basically a – a legal checkup where we can use public data, you can look up, you know, kind of type in your information. They can look up, use public data to say, Okay, here are some of the things that we could help you with. Can we help make you an appointment with, you know, a lawyer, or can we, you know, help point you to a different service here. So, it has the opportunity, you know, to both create employment – reduce barriers to employment, and also empower people to kind of do their – do their own work and have access to the same kind of things that people with more money would have access to.

The second group is called We Care for Dane Kids. So, this is a partnership –

[slide titled – We Care for Dane Kids – featuring a photo of the team members of that group and the following information – A multi-pronged approach to transforming the early childhood and after school care sectors that would supplement income for workers and child care costs, reduce operating expenses for facilities, and create a child care benefit program – Partners: Wi Early Childhood Association, Reach Dane, the U.W. Schools of Social Work and Education, the City of Madison, and Madison Out-of-School Time]

– with the, the Wisconsin Early Childhood Educa – Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, Reach Dane, several faculty from U.W., the City of Madison, and Madison Out-of-School Time. So, this is a group that’s really trying to help parents, but also help workers in the childcare sector. So, they look at the issue of childcare. Childcare is very costly, but also –

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

– childcare workers are still very poorly paid. So, there’s a supply and a demand problem here. And so, they have four-pronged approach. One is trying to get businesses to help families who are interested in looking at dependent care accounts and taking advantage of that and trying to get more families to use that. And get businesses potentially to help support those. Trying to get more families who are eligible for childcare subsidies, signed up for those subsidies. There’s a very low take-up rate of those. And then, on the workers’ side, trying to help, you know, most childcare centers are actually small businesses, and there are potential efficiencies that if they could work together, if they had a cooperative for some of their back-office services or trying to buy supplies, trying to have substitutes for when people are sick or want to go on vacation, so trying to bring a shared services network together that would help support those local businesses. And, also, to help supplement worker wages, ’cause the bottom line is that most childcare providers, like I said, are very – very low paid. So, it’s – its a four-piece puzzle that really tries to address it as the complicated system that it is.

And then the third finalist is called EARNdane Digital Transformation Initiative. So, this is a partnership –

[slide titled – EARNdane Digital Transformation Initiative – featuring a photo of the members of that team who are presenting and the information – A digital transformation of the workforce development system led by the Dane County Employment and Training Network that will connect, enhance, and expand services to help employees advance in their jobs. Partners: Urban League of Greater Madison, United Way of Dane County, Latino Academy of Workforce Development, Dane County Human Services, Workforce Development Board of South Central Wisconsin, Common Wealth Development, American Family Insurance, the City of Madison, and the U.W. Center for Financial Security]

– with way too many groups for me to name all of them, but this is the, as a consortium, you can kind of think of them as the Dane County Employment and Training Network. So, this is an amazing group of people and organizations that have worked together for a long time but also trying to create some new partnerships with the university and with the private sector as well. And essentially – so – so, they’ve had programs in the past of getting workers a job, so getting the unemployed employed. Now, it’s how –

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

– do we move people up the ladder, so up the ladder into the middle class to their next job. What are the barriers, what are the mentoring and coaching and different kinds of professional development opportunities that they could have? And then, how can we use technology to communicate with each other so that we’re more efficient in providing – providing services, so we can provide more services to more people, and so we can – and help the workers that we’re working with. You know, they need to be able to use technology as well. So, and it’s also using things like behavioral science where, you know, workers are signing up for a training program. They might get a text from a peer, you know that little nudge like, Oh, you did great in class or don’t forget to come to class tomorrow, you know, things like that. So, again, just a really exciting opportunity for Dane County.

So, this initiative, like I said, has taken I.R.P. into sort of a new direction. This is, we – we have a long-standing role as a federal poverty center in working with state agencies, and this has really given us an opportunity to go more local, and we couldn’t be more excited by what we’re doing with the community right now.

So, our long-term goals here are again, you know, improving the lives of families, fostering and – and building new infrastructure that helps to solve local problems, and really engaging researchers in this community work, and hopefully impressing Schmidt Futures so they want to continue to support our efforts in the future. And, I should say that we are, like I said, we’re at the, we’ve picked three finalists now who get to go pitch their idea. At least one of them, possibly two, will move to the next round of competition, which means that in June they will get to compete for a large bucket of capital funding. We don’t have an exact dollar amount, but we’re talking like a million or more. So, we’re very, very excited about that –

[slide titled – Public Engagement – with the following bulleted list – Participate in DreamUp Wisconsin – join our listserv: dreamup.wisc.edu ; Attend Thursday seminars and other events; Help us spread the word by reading and sharing our publications and other resources; How else can we work with you?]

– but we’re also excited about the portfolio that we’ve built, so even all the ideas that don’t get funded by Schmidt Futures. We also are excited because there’s a round two of this challenge. We don’t know exactly what the challenge is yet. [laughs] We don’t have the –

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

– 10,000 by 10% by 2020 exact numbers. We’re talking with Schmidt about that, but we should have that announcement in February.

So, I just want to end the talk here. And I’m really excited to take your questions, with just reminding you that, you know, poverty is one of our thorniest problems, you know, that we have in the United States and in Wisconsin, and it takes efforts from everybody. So, we really welcome public engagement with I.R.P. I hope that you’re excited, as excited about DreamUp Wisconsin as I am. If you had never heard about it before, I encourage you to visit our website –

[return to the slide labelled – Public Engagement – described above]

– and join our listserv, where you will get lots of news. Please come to our seminars, help us spread the work – the word by reading and sharing our publications, and you know, let us know how else we can work with you. You know, one thing we’ve learned with DreamUp is that there’s a lot of –

[Hilary Shager, on camera]

– amazing work going on in this community, so we’re excited to hear about it as well. And with that, I’d love some questions.

[applause]