This Pandemic-Era Fund Made its First Grants to Support Workers—and Patch the Safety Net
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Protecting gig workers is one focus of the Families and Workers Fund’s initial grants. Sundry Photography/shutterstock
The Families and Workers Fund first got off the ground in 2020 as a short-term, rapid-response effort to support workers sidelined by COVID, quickly putting cash in the hands of 215,000 of the hardest hit.
By the fall of 2021, it had launched a five-year, $51 million pooled fund pursuing two paths toward an equitable recovery. First, the fund aimed to secure a better future for American workers by helping them succeed in good jobs with growth potential. Second, it would help reimagine an accessible public benefits system, one built to assist marginalized people, including women, people of color, immigrants and informal workers. Initially launched by the Ford Foundation and Schmidt Futures, the effort went on to rally some of the nation’s largest foundations and mega-donors.
The fund recently announced its first round of grants, directing nearly $13 million toward a goal of creating 1 million good jobs in the U.S. over the next five years, and creating a more equitable and effective public benefits system to meet the 21st century.
Bottom-up and across
The Families and Workers Fund launched with a boost of immediate credibility, thanks to leadership from Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, and Eric Braverman, CEO of Schmidt Futures. While the project was a clear fit for Ford, with its foundation-wide mission to combat inequality, it was interesting to see Schmidt in such a leading role. As we noted at the time, it was more of a focus on labor than we’d typically seen from the philanthropy of Eric and Wendy Schmidt, perhaps set into motion by the vulnerabilities exposed by the pandemic. (Be sure to read our recent deep dive into Schmidt philanthropy.)
Not long after, other heavy hitters like Open Society Foundations and the Rockefeller and Skoll foundations rounded out the executive committee, and major donors like Jack Dorsey and MacKenzie Scott, institutional funders like Robin Hood and W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and corporations like Amalgamated Bank and Morgan Stanley came on board.
Much was made of its “bottom-up and across” approach to the equity agenda, which involved even non-traditional partners like corporations in its “build back better” theory of change. Even today, the fund steers clear of top-down strategies that fail to incorporate the people it aims to serve.
Quality over quantity
The contours of the recovery have changed since the fund was created. At the time, a full 80% of the nearly 10 million jobs that were lost belonged to the bottom quartile of wage earners, and the rebound was slow in coming. Now, with job numbers climbing past unemployment levels, much of the jobs work will focus less on creation, and more on improving the quality of existing opportunities.
“The great challenge facing the U.S. economy today is not simply producing more jobs — current job openings actually outnumber unemployed people — but rather, producing enough quality jobs that sustain and uplift workers and families,” said Rachel Korberg, the fund’s executive director.
One of the seven grants made to help workers “recover up” through quality roles went to the Better Builder Initiative by Workers Defense Project, an advocacy nonprofit that works to boost the quality of jobs for immigrant construction workers in Texas. Program goals include aligning the quality of jobs in the industry with a set of standards designed by low-income immigrant construction workers. The Families and Workers Fund reports the initiative has already delivered 35,000 jobs and impacted $2 billion in construction deals, serving as a “powerful model for the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.”
Another partner, Resilience Force, has been helping disaster relief workers since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. It rewrites the rules of recovery with community leaders, training the workers who rebuild local communities to become key assets in sustainable adaptation, particularly where climate is concerned.
The Worker Financial Wellness Initiative, a partnership between PayPal and three nonprofits, Just Capital, the Good Jobs Institute, and Financial Health Network, demonstrates the rewards of including employer perspectives. It has seen a rapidly growing coalition of large employers strengthen the links between employee financial wellness and business performance, with implications for a half-million workers so far.
Another grantee partner is Results for America, a nonprofit organization that helps ensure that nearly $7 trillion in relief and recovery funding appropriations connect state and local workers to good jobs that sustain families and lift local communities.
Two more share main goals: Funding for the Equitable Food Initiative works to scale good jobs in the agriculture industry, while the National Domestic Workers Alliance does the same for workers in home settings.
Benefits for the 21st century
Four grants are aimed at reimagining and repairing the public benefits systems to meet modern needs. Besides acknowledging the reality of the way people work, they support the introduction of new technologies and ways of delivering efficient, easy-to-access systems that hope to put an end to racial, gender and other gaps.
Funding places a particular emphasis on unemployment insurance, and the swaths of workers who fell outside of program parameters during COVID, like gig workers.
For example, Korberg said, “Our grantee partner The Workers Lab has partnered with the tech company Steady and a state government to help create a novel ‘Income Passport’ innovation to help gig workers apply for benefits and government agencies assess their eligibility.”
Two grants target more equitable unemployment benefits. New America shares best practices on delivering federal funding for unemployment insurance, while U.S. Digital Response taps the talents of pro-bono technology experts to cut through red tape at the state level.
Another initiative focuses on equity. Unemployment Insurance Equity Open Call helps state and community-based nonprofits leverage $260 million in public funding to improve equity in the unemployment insurance system.
The numbers already show a degree of progress. Korberg said the fund estimates that combined, new grants will impact “at least a half-million jobs — if not more,” toward the greater goal of 1 million.
