Emergency Support, with a Human Touch (2024)
Faculty and Students Together (FAST) Funds offer emergency aid to students. From bus passes and groceries to textbooks and rent, FAST Funds jump in to help keep students on track. The first FAST Fund was started seven years ago by AFT Local 212 at Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC). That first year, the fund helped about 26 students with around $7,000 of emergency aid. Growth has been tremendous, especially in the last few years. In July and August 2023 alone, MATC’s FAST Fund helped 433 students with $105,000 in aid. (For a short case study describing how the Local 212/MATC FAST Fund got started and how quickly it has grown, see go.aft.org/30a.)
We sat down with Liz Franczyk, director of the Local 212/MATC FAST Fund, to learn how the fund meets students’ needs and how more AFT unions can start their own FAST Funds.