Frontdoor Benefits - a first newsletter
News and notes from Charlotte and Ben
Hi — this is Charlotte Weiner. If you’re reading this, we’ve chatted sometime in the last few years about America’s social safety net. Specifically, I’ve probably told you this: that the thing I care about most in the world is making it easy for low-income Americans to access the government benefits they’re eligible for and deserve. And I know you care about the core of what I care about — about making the world a happier, healthier, more fair place. I’m setting up this newsletter with my co-founder Ben (more on that below!) for us to share news and reflections on the work that’s grown out of your support. Feel free to tune in, feel free to unsubscribe, feel free to share with other folks who might be interested, and as they say – more soon!
If you’re reading this, you’ve probably heard me say some version of these words: the thing I care about most is making it easy for low-income Americans to access the government benefits they deserve. And you’ve probably heard some version of this pitch:
Last year, over $100B in public benefits for low-income families went unclaimed. I want to unlock the private sector’s stake in benefits access – because, for instance, $20B in unclaimed SNAP (i.e. food stamps) hurts grocery stores and the EBT retailers where people spend their SNAP. Health plans should pay for people to get enrolled in Medicaid, utility companies should pay for families to get enrolled in utility assistance. We’ve left social service delivery to government and frequently under-funded and over-stretched non-profits and community-based organizations to fill in the gap. For a long time now, I’ve wanted to build a business where we get paid when families get benefits, that unlocks the private sector’s stake in safety net innovation.
Here’s the news – it’s happening! I wrapped up my MBA last June and started working on Frontdoor Benefits with the support of the Stanford Impact Founder Award. Over the last nine months, I’ve been building with my co-founder Ben Sheldon, who recently joined me to work full-time. Frontdoor Benefits is a Public Benefit Corporation, whose charter starts slow and ends strong:
“The Corporation shall be a public benefit corporation … that it is intended to operate in a responsible and sustainable manner and to produce a public benefit or benefits, and is to be managed in a manner that balances the stockholders' pecuniary interests, the best interests of those materially affected by the corporation's conduct and the public benefit or benefits identified in this certificate of incorporation…. The specific public benefit purpose of the Corporation is to support economic opportunity for low-income Americans and strengthen America's social safety net.”
When I left the Connecticut Governor’s Office / CT Department of Social Services to go to Stanford GSB, with the intent of having two years to build and launch Frontdoor, I promised my old boss Peter (now Deputy Commissioner at CT DSS) that the first product we’d build would be for families in Connecticut. So that’s what we’ve done. We launched our first product this fall: a simplified SNAP application for Connecticut. So far, we’ve unlocked over $38,000 in SNAP for families in Connecticut.*
A bit more about Frontdoor Benefits: we’re building a business where we get paid when families get the benefits they deserve. Ben and I don’t care about how many applications we submit, or how many “clients we serve.” We care about how many clients get enrolled. How many people successfully use their benefits. Our work is about social service delivery. Dollars in hand, food on the table, benefits delivered. For SNAP, this means that the first set of business partners we’re working with are grocery stores and food delivery services.
With that in mind, an ask as we build our pipeline in CT and across states: Do you have contacts at grocery stores or food delivery services who we should connect with? Let us know!
I’ll hand it over to Ben – for now, shoot us an email if this update prompts any questions or ideas, and share with anyone else you think would be interested in staying in the loop. And I’ll leave you with a screenshot from one of our texts with clients, this one from a single mom in Norwalk, CT. This is what the actual process of trying to access benefits is like. It’s why ~50% of people who apply for SNAP get denied for avoidable reasons (because of missing paperwork, or a missed phone interview). It’s a process that over 40M Americans have to navigate every year, for SNAP alone. This is why we do the work.
* That number (“dollars unlocked”) is the monthly SNAP benefit award amount multiplied by the benefit enrollment period. On average, households get $230/month in SNAP, and typically, folks get approved for 6 months at a time. For instance, one of our clients got approved earlier this week for $148/month for six months. So, for that client, we unlocked $148 x 6 = $888 in SNAP benefits.
This is Ben. I’m now three weeks into working full-time on Frontdoor Benefits. It’s going great! It also feels like a second rodeo to me: having spent five years working on Code for America’s GetCalFresh, taking a three year “break” to work in B2B SaaS, and now getting back on this rodeo-metaphor’s horse of benefits delivery.
Already Charlotte and I have built out a simplified digital SNAP application to sit at the top of our support funnel, and the new work is thinking deeply about what to build to support people within the middle of the funnel and beyond.
What this has meant concretely is thinking about how to bring together conversational SMS tooling for immediate support, telephone conferencing and callback tooling for assisting and shadowing clients during SNAP interviews, and ways to improve accuracy of verification documents to reduce back-and-forth between clients and caseworkers. We’re supporting people through approval and beyond and I’m imagining that will require some a closely integrated communications and CRM system.
Are there tools you’re using or systems you’ve built that remind you of this that you have thoughts (or feelings!) about? Email me at ben@openfrontdoor.com — I’d love to chat.
About this newsletter: We are using this to share news and notes about Frontdoor Benefits. If there is something that makes you curious or you wonder how we’re thinking about or approaching something, please ask! We’re at team@openfrontdoor.com.
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