“THRIVE 2.0,” as the partners informally refer to the second iteration of the direct giving collaboration, is under way. This phase is focused on maintaining partnerships, sustaining the effort, conducting advocacy, expanding offerings, and helping guide other CBOs interested in direct cash transfers.

Sustaining the Effort and Maintaining Partnerships

On a tactical level, the future of THRIVE 2.0 depends on raising the large sums of money needed for meaningful direct giving. Because philanthropies are unlikely to maintain the high levels of giving they have engaged in during the pandemic, other compelling motivations for cash transfer—beyond crisis relief—must be clearly articulated.

To the project’s leaders, three strategies stand out:

• advocating for cash transfer as a public policy that can promote equity and alleviate financial hardship and stress for participants who have experienced structural discrimination for centuries
• using cash transfer to enhance the partner CBOs’ efforts around health care, child care, family support, and equitable development
• shifting THRIVE’s service focus from helping Ward 8 residents seek stability to advancing economic mobility and creating wealth for people of color

Conducting Advocacy

THRIVE is involved in advocating for a guaranteed income (regular payments that provide a minimum income to households with no strings attached) in DC and nationally. The partnership is called upon as an exemplar of how cash transfers could advance equity for people who live in disinvested neighborhoods (areas that were historically made up of people with low incomes and people of color and subject to redlining and whose residents have been increasingly displaced as a result of gentrification). Policymakers have requested that THRIVE share its expertise on cash transfers and how they can promote mobility and close the racial wealth gap.

TOOL: Testimony on using basic income to meet the needs of DC communities