Document Category: Practitioner Guide

Connecting College Students with Public Benefits Programs (2024)

Colleges and universities can support their most at-risk
students by providing pre-screening and application
assistance for public benefits as a campus resource.
Benefits coordination can have a big impact, but this type
of basic needs program is relatively rare: a recent analysis
of nearly 450 postsecondary institutions found that only
18 percent offered public benefits access facilitation.
This toolkit outlines key steps that institutions can take
to support their students in accessing public benefits.

A Guide for Implementation of the #RealCollege Survey (2024)

Basic needs security includes access to stable housing, healthy food, affordable childcare, reliable transportation, mental and physical health services, technology and internet, and other survival necessities. Meeting college students’ basic needs is essential to their well-being and ability to succeed in college. A key first step is assessing students’ basic needs security. The #RealCollege Survey was the nation’s first multi-institutional assessment of basic needs security among college students. When it was created in 2015, neither the federal government nor any state captured information on the topic. The goal of the survey is to equip colleges with the information needed to support their students holistically. It has been administered at more than 700 colleges and in many cases statewide. Numerous examples of reports using data from the survey are available in the #RealCollege Resource Library. The #RealCollege Survey has inspired the federal government, many states, and countless other researchers to examine and collect data on students’ basic needs. We are now making it freely available for use by postsecondary institutions, their partners, and states to understand students’ needs for support and the challenges they face in accessing help. This guide is intended to support administration, analysis, and dissemination of findings from the #RealCollege Survey. It provides key considerations for fielding the survey, including selecting participants, selecting the questions and modules to use, maximizing participation, minimizing bias, analyzing the data, and disseminating findings. An accompanying appendix lists the survey questions. Please acknowledge any use of this guide and/or questions in your reporting

Building Support for College Affordability: Messaging Resources for Advocates

Boosting broad support for college affordability and access for all in California is possible with the right messages and messengers.

As part of its work to help more low-income students and students of color attain a college degree, we have invested in new messaging research to build support for college access and affordability in California. Our goal is to help advocates develop communications that effectively win support and mobilize diverse audiences to take action.

Products of the research include a guide lifting up key messages and strategies to make a powerful case for college affordability, as well as a video catalog promoting the recommendations featuring students, parents, and a guidance counselor.

The Haas, Jr. Fund commissioned messaging experts Wonder: Strategies for Good and Goodwin-Simon Strategic Research to conduct this research based on input and guidance from a broad group of partner organizations. The findings are based on an online survey of 1,200 registered California voters, as well as a focus group of diverse Californians.

We invite our partners to use these materials to make a powerful and aligned case for action to create a debt-free pathway to and through college for more students in California and nationwide.

Community Colleges and Human Services Nonprofits BOOSTing Family Economic Success Through Organizational Policy and Practice (2023)

The BOOST initiative connects families with low incomes to critical human services supports and educational and career pathways to advance multigenerational family economic success. In six cities — Baltimore, Maryland; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Hartford, Connecticut; New York City (Queens); Portland, Oregon; and Syracuse, New York— community colleges and human services nonprofits have partnered to support the economic advancement of families as part of the BOOST initiative. The partners at these BOOST sites are guided by six core tenets that advance family social and economic success: partnership, learning, lifetime and springboard jobs, sustainability, racial equity, and the two-generation (2Gen) approach, also sometimes referred to as the whole-family approach, as defined by Ascend at the Aspen Institute.
BOOST partnerships place a particular emphasis on racial equity—both the process and outcome of seeking to understand and address the programmatic, institutional, and policy barriers families of color face in higher education and human services systems. Over time, BOOST partners have deepened their understanding of systemic racism and how it influences individual and organizational thinking and are now shifting their organizational practices to support more equitable outcomes.
This brief explores how community colleges and human services nonprofits can partner to advance multigenerational family economic success and how these partners can lean into their unique strengths as they seek to achieve this goal. It looks at how the six BOOST sites are working to change policies and access funding at the institutional, state, and federal levels to support their partnership goals. It also highlights practices and insights learned from the BOOST initiative, with the intent of aiding and accelerating other efforts to follow this collaborative path.

Staffing Student Basic Needs Centers (2021)

Though social workers are becoming more common on higher education campuses, they often have scarce resources and ballooning caseloads. In addition, they make as much as $65,000 annually. One-stop center concepts, like Amarillo College’s transformation into an Advocacy and Resource Center, are ideal for dealing with student basic needs and include one primary social worker, who supervises Master of Social Work students-in-training. However, not all colleges can make this happen from a budgetary and hiring standpoint. This is where the community healthcare worker could be the answer.