The National Plan to End Poverty

A volunteer assignment delivering meals to his neighbors living in poverty changed the course of Mark Bergel’s life. Inspired by the hospitality of those he met, who were living in virtually empty apartments and struggling to get by, Mark founded the nonprofit organization A Wider Circle in 2001. In the years since, A Wider Circle has served more than 260,000 children and adults across the greater Washington, D.C. region. Mark now leads a team of nearly 70 dedicated staff. His efforts have led to his selection as a CNN Hero, Washingtonian of the Year, and as one of People Magazine’s “All-Stars Among Us.” But, for Mark, success means truly ending poverty. This unyielding commitment led him to conceptualize and, more recently, spearhead the National Plan to End Poverty - an interactive platform for engagement, the next chapter of his life’s mission, and a vehicle for truly impactful change.

The United States has the resources necessary to end poverty. It is a solvable crisis if we are committed enough, armed with knowledge, and provided with immediate, feasible, and proven steps to create change. Amid growing recognition of inequality, individuals and communities are looking for constructive actions they can take to confront barriers that hold people back from back from achieving their potential. The National Plan to End Poverty explores the urgent needs around us and presents a framework for a new path forward. 

Through a dynamic, web-based tool, the Plan provides current, searchable data to reframe the true scope of poverty in the United States alongside clear, actionable activities that engage individuals, families, companies, and communities in shaping a more equitable nation. While the site is not currently publicly available, it is ready for demonstration.

According to the Federal Poverty Line, 38 million people in the United States live in poverty. But close to twice that amount are unable to meet even their most basic needs without some form of assistance. By select measures, 250,000 die of poverty and inequity each year. (American Journal of Public Health, 2011) Trillions are spent addressing poverty year after year, yet it has continued and indeed worsened for those living in it. 

Many factors contribute to poverty--inequitable systems, bureaucratic policies, and social service systems that value complacency over humanity. Statistics from the realms of education, health, employment, income, and safety prove the interconnected nature and damaging effects of long-standing economic injustice. 

No single person, piece of legislation, or added benefit will end poverty. Eradication must include a comprehensive, multi-sectoral, humanistic approach that listens first to those with lived experience and builds solutions based not on burdensome guidelines but practical, actionable items rooted in our shared humanity. 

The National Plan was created to embody this strategy, offering those looking to engage in meaningful action with a comprehensive, accessible guide to meaningful action.

The National Plan to End Poverty is a new virtual platform and forum dedicated to educating Americans about the actual income levels needed to survive without support--and to mobilizing action for change. It reframes the issue to compel multiple stakeholders to understand that the magnitude of need is far greater than most reports. 

The platform also provides a directory of proven action steps with specific examples, such as a  business that addressed workers’ transportation challenges by developing a shuttle system to and from public transportation, or a faith community who transformed underutilized space into a childcare co-op that is affordable, accessible, and of quality. The user can filter by constituency type (business, individual, government) to find specific items that can contribute to ending poverty for individuals and entire communities. An online forum allows users to share their experiences, successes, and ideas that allows for all segments of society to get involved. The actions of many and the lessons and impact they share will compound as more people join the movement, growing the momentum and reality of ending poverty. 

First and most importantly, the Plan impacts those who have been struggling for too long, those told they don’t qualify for benefits but who remain unable to feed their children, pay their rent, or dream of building savings. The 76 million people unable to live without assistance for a sustained period of time are at the heart of this plan, which was developed based on many years of listening to the true experts - those with the lived experience of poverty.

Second, the Plan serves individuals and communities not experiencing poverty but who have the skills, privilege, or commitment to create change. For them, the Plan elevates the issue of poverty and provides new knowledge and easily implementable solutions on a user-friendly platform. 

The impact will be not only for those in need, but also for all of us, as an entire segment of the population moves from surviving to thriving, whose determination and potential are finally and fully tapped, and whose ingenuity sparks opportunities at the individual and community level. Along the way, many who believed they could not create change or that this issue is intractable, will realize what is possible.

The 24/7 news cycle and relentless distractions of social media cannot obscure the pervasive sense that American society is unsustainably off-kilter. Poverty surfaces again and again, in the context of stories about the 2020 election, racial injustice, and the Coronavirus pandemic--which disproportionately threatens the lives of the poor. The National Plan to End Poverty has an awareness component and an action component. It reframes the issue of poverty - often seen as too burdensome, complicated or entrenched - and segments it into concrete ways all of us can employ and build a new way forward. 

As I reflect on the origins of A Wider Circle, I feel impassioned and energized -- the organization has helped more than 260,000 children and adults, but yet it feels we have barely made a dent in ending poverty. I am inspired by the reminder that I intended A Wider Circle to be a launching pad for a movement. This is the moment to propel the next chapter and include the entire nation in the campaign.

The National Plan has been brewing for many years, and for most of that time, I have understood that a web-based tool, available to everyone, would allow for the broadest levels of engagement. From time to time, at odd hours, I have sketched the National Plan in notebooks and computer files, showing it to trusted partners and colleagues and inviting their candid feedback. In the past 12 months, these sketches have been translated into wireframes and algorithms as the web component takes shape. The Plan is in the early stages but the structure and potential is clear.

I have never been able to overlook poverty and the cluster of poisons that surround it--racism, injustice, inequality, violence, and so on. These powerful emotions drove me to change my career pathway and launch A Wider Circle. Moving from theory to practice added fuel to my inner flame. The personal stories I have heard and the faces I have encountered shape every aspect of the National Plan.

The examples set by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. freed me to embrace a big goal--eliminating poverty--that often provokes cynicism in others. My personal refusal to sleep in a bed at night until all people have a bed has similarly elicited mockery. I hope it also stimulates reflection.

I cannot rest easy when I see families return year after year to make use of our services. I cannot stop when I hear of young children without enough to eat or turning to violence to escape scarcity. If the aim is to make sure that people aren’t living in deprivation amidst such abundance, then we need a way to enlist even more people in this movement. The National Plan connects person to person, community to community, toward a common goal.

Twenty years ago I would not have been prepared to launch this National Plan. It is only through my experience walking alongside those living in poverty in the D.C. area and  launching A Wider Circle in the efforts to end poverty locally that I am prepared and well-positioned to take this effort to the national level. 

In 2019, A Wider Circle had a corps of 30,000 volunteers, enabling us to serve about 30,000 people in need. This symmetry points to a vital truth about the human capital needed to bring about wide-scale change. Over time, I have learned to find and trust people to whom I can delegate important functions and decisions, listen more to those with lived experience than those who consider themselves experts, and think broadly in conceptualizing comprehensive solutions. These critical building blocks allow me now to launch this next chapter. 

Anyone working to combat poverty knows there are many barriers to creating change. Entrenched cultural beliefs leading us to believe poverty is insurmountable; systemic classism and racism conspiring to prevent those in poverty from achieving sustained self sufficiency;  and multiple failures of government policy and infrastructure making the vision of a nation without poverty difficult to realize.

There have been many moments of frustration over the past two decades – frustration in seeing clients return and knowing they were still struggling; not making enough strides toward ending poverty; and in witnessing and feeling the devastation of Coronavirus for many individuals and families who were starting  on a pathway to self-sufficiency. 

I continue to see our systems, government, and infrastructure fail the people of our nation. Through my frustration, I have become more committed to my vision, learning not to let those disheartening moments defeat me. I now have many lessons learned, strong staff support, and credibility across sectors, all of which prepare me for this next step in launching a national movement. There will be adversity as we forge ahead but those struggling deserve our collective effort and energy to overcome it all for the needed change.

I am still learning to become the kind of leader the movement to end poverty needs. I study heroes like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. as well as leaders in my own time, entrepreneurs, and those who, despite barriers, emerged from poverty.

When asked, Chanel Giles, A Wider Circle’s Director of Operations, whom I’ve known for over 10 years since she came to A Wider Circle as a volunteer, shared the memory of her interview at A Wider Circle. When she gave me the quick answer of “Good” to my question of “How are you today?”, I stopped her and said “No, really, how are you doing?” While that moment of humanity struck a chord with Chanel, it was obvious to me. 

My work is based in a deep seated curiosity around the intricacies of people as unique and complex individuals. I lead my team and interact with people guided by the understanding that we all are human, have struggles (seen and unseen), deserve to be treated with dignity, and are instilled with tremendous potential. While preparing to launch a national website and build actions for change, that aspect of my leadership remains paramount. 

The National Plan to End Poverty exists because I searched high and low for a tool that would bring people together around this urgent cause and failed to find one. I knew I had to organize a team to create it.

I have devoted my life to human connection, and this project realizes that value in the form of a website. Just as Yelp brings people together around restaurants and GoodReads brings them together around books, the Plan brings people together around social change. It starts with reframing the issue and helping people to understand the scale of the problem. If everyone knew how many of their neighbors are actually struggling and if they understood they could help, they would. A number of websites encourage good deeds and volunteerism, but none create an easily accessed framework, linking multiple sectors and actions under a common goal of ending poverty, together.  

In addition to the unique structure of this platform, what makes my work truly innovative is the conviction that my ultimate success is when social service organizations, such as the one I founded, no longer need to exist. 

Because poverty isn’t just one problem, the method of tackling it must encompass the range of challenges faced by people living in it. History, barriers, unjust policies, and misperceptions could slow progress. But this Plan provides the information and tools for real change. Every action outlined in the National Plan has a research-proven return on investment. Although the information and resources in the website are publicly available, they have never been presented in such an intuitive and user-friendly interface.  Our goal is possible because we know what it takes and have the tools to share with others to implement actions.

The Learn/Act/Interact structure makes it very convenient for users to “choose their own adventure.” Doing something small at first is the best predictor of subsequent, more impactful, collective action. It starts with learning--demonstrating through an interactive map interface how many people are in need in a given county, according to the A Wider Circle Income Standards (AWCIS) which present a locally specific picture of true need in a community, based on 50% of local median income.

From there, users can “act” by selecting who they are and what they care about. For example: 

Selecting I am a Person with Lived Experience who wants to address Child Care yields five actions, including Join or help establish a babysitting cooperative--which could relieve child care deserts, a crisis severely limiting the job prospects of parents.

Selecting I am an Individual/Family who wants to address Financial Stability yields six actions, including Become a money management volunteer, with a link to an AARP article about the Massachusetts Money Management Program--information that might inspire people in other states to replicate this successful effort that includes volunteers providing a trained set of eyes to monitor low-income individuals’ finances could protect them from eviction, food insecurity, high debt, and exploitation. 

Finally, the “Interact” component welcomes stories and tips from users, enabling continuous improvement of our content and a ripple effect of engagement.

While A Wider Circle, the base for the Plan, served 30,000 people via 30,000 volunteers in 2019, those served by the Plan are mere projections until we launch and partners engage. At the September 2020 launch, we will be starting from zero, in terms of web traffic--which, as we grow, will be one measure of impact. Other metrics include:

• The number of individuals and organizations engaged who take action. Tracking activity directly inspired by the National Plan.

• The volume of interactions and feedback. Here, quality matters. If a small organization selects key Plan items to engage in, a ripple effect can take place that counts for more than a one-off food drive by a large group.

• The number of people served. We are exploring ways to estimate based on the factors above. The deeper connections we can make with partners who undertake measures in their communities will allow for a better sense of those engaged and those served.

• Social change. It will be more difficult to measure the Plan’s effect on policy, decreases in the poverty rates, or shifts in the zeitgeist. Given the need for attention, prioritization, and urgency to this issue and yet the slow and largely ineffectual changes of past decades, change might not be overnight but it can exist and tracking progress will be critical. 

Developing realistic and achievable indicators would be an area where Elevate’s insight and technical assistance could be particularly useful. 

My life’s work is eradicating poverty. I believe in human connection and the potential to solve problems others consider unsolvable. I am used to skeptics questioning my personal mission. While I admit the odds are not in my favor, it remains my North Star. Ending poverty is my goal now and will remain so. The issue needs to become a movement. The National Plan represents a major step in that direction. A key tenet to reaching this goal is engagement with the Plan on a wide scale. We would like to engage 10,000 people in the next year and, over the next five years, a million people. 

When I think about the Civil Rights movement in America or earth-shattering startups like Amazon, I conclude that short-term goals, while important for measuring and driving success, matter less than vision and relentlessness to the ultimate goal. Jeff Bezos’s goal isn’t selling books or groceries; he wants to populate outer space. Martin Luther King Jr. aimed for more than desegregating the buses of Montgomery, Alabama; he was “compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town,” as he wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail in 1963. I aspire to apply the same long-term vision to my own work. 

My work won’t end in five years even if the Plan is successful.  My work must continue until the ultimate goal is reached.

The National Plan is a new endeavor with huge ambitions and a comparably meager budget. Awareness building via a national marketing plan is a critical first step to draw users to the website to learn about poverty and understand engagement options. Subsequent action requires travel, meetings, and participatory planning. Information exchange through various forms of communication and dissemination will document results and allow for deeper cross-collaborations. While several financial, technical, and market barriers exist, they are surmountable with funding, partners, and engagement. 

The more concerning barriers to accomplishing the goal of poverty eradication is will and commitment. Poverty ends only if all of us care enough, commit enough, and engage enough. Can we build the necessary momentum to get people involved in the movement to end poverty? The website is a tool to drive people to act, but if a critical mass of people do not  join, it falls flat. It is easy to remain a country divided into the “haves” and “have nots”. Truly eradicating poverty will mean that we, individually and as a nation, act selflessly for the benefit of others and for the populace and our nation as a whole. The biggest barrier to success is therefore ourselves. 

Funding is a major contributor to overcoming the barriers. Funding will allow us to market and publicize the tool, build partnerships to promote the Plan, and drive exponential awareness and engagement. Funding will also allow me to travel to speak with civic leaders and local non-profit organizations across the nation.  

Lack of social engagement and national attention to economic and racial injustice would have been a greater barrier to The National Plan even two months ago. But, now is a time when economic equity, justice, and inclusion of all is at the forefront. We must seize this moment and the energy across the nation and call for change in the systems that have brought on and perpetuated disparities.

We currently partner with more than 500 nonprofit and government agencies in our day to day work. These include public sector entities such as DC and  Montgomery County government, Maryland state government, and various departments and authorities within these jurisdictions. Additionally, we work with nonprofit providers, faith communities, schools, corporations, and civic groups. With these groups we host volunteers, receive funding, and undertake collaborative programming to meet the needs of those struggling in our community.

We shared preliminary components of the Plan with many partners who expressed strong interest. Currently, we are building an Advisory Council composed of experts to provide  feedback on our work. Members to date include: 

Safety - Chris Patterson, Senior Director of Programs & Policy,  Institute for Nonviolence Chicago

Employment - Pam Loprest, Senior Fellow & Labor Economist, Urban Institute

Education - Kimberlin Butler, Director of Foundation Engagement, Mathematica; and Marla Dean, Executive Director, Bright Beginnings

Child Care - Joanne Hurt, Executive Director, Wonders Early Learning; and Marla Dean, Executive Director, Bright Beginnings

Additional outreach will expand our partnerships on a national scale. The variety and number of partnerships that will make the National Plan successful are limitless. Everyone has a role to play. National level associations could collaborate for conferences, corporations could underwrite speaking engagements with industry leaders, and community stakeholders could join together for action planning and implementation.  Partnerships have been key to building the base for the Plan and will be even more critical as it launches and takes root across the nation.

More than 50 years after the War on Poverty was declared by President Lyndon Johnson, poverty remains a violent crisis for those mired in it--and all Americans bear the cost, whether or not we feel it on a conscious level. Events of the recent weeks and months are compelling individuals, municipalities, and corporations alike to shift long-standing patterns of behavior that have held people back. The National Plan provides a crucial resource to these actors - presenting a customizable clearinghouse of specific, research-based, actionable steps they can take to improve equity within their spheres of influence.

The National Plan also offers value to users by reframing the scope of poverty and making clear the true extent of need in our nation, providing a clear justification for action. We believe that communities across the country are searching for this message of urgency and actively looking for ways to enact change. To our knowledge no tool like this exists with the depth of research, actions, and interactive opportunities.  The value we offer is a tool easily accessible and allowing for immediate use. Measurable short-, medium-, and long-term outcomes will yield the proof of concept we need to pique new partners and supporters and build an ever-growing base of support and adoption.

While I have been singularly focused on poverty eradication for close to two decades, A Wider Circle provided the needed organizational base to build partnerships as well as in-depth understanding of and credibility among those whom we serve. I developed a new department within A Wider Circle committed to this Plan and to date, have funded incurred expenses through A Wider Circle’s general operating budget. 

In the immediate term, this allowed coverage of staff and technology costs as we conducted the data analysis and drafted the initial framework. But the Plan has a scope and potential beyond A Wider Circle.  

While our web-based tool was built using a free web design program, there are on-going costs of tool operation, partnerships, and implementation. Therefore my team and I at A Wider Circle are actively engaging national funders to help launch this Plan.

The short-term sustainability plan includes seeking grant funding, including our application for the Elevate Prize, among other proposals in progress. Having led A Wider Circle, I recognize the importance of income diversification and a strong funding model to support the mission and goals of the project.  Therefore, the mid-term goal is to grow toward an anticipated revenue breakdown of:

• Foundation support: 30%

• Crowdfunding: 10%

• Sponsorships: 30%

• Fee-based packages: 30%

Funding will be analyzed regularly and diversification and sustainability will be key priorities as we move ahead. 

The Plan is not intended to be revenue-generating. Funds raised are intended to cover the cost of personnel, research, development, roll out including marketing and travel, and refinement. 

Recently, a major local foundation was so impressed by our demonstration of The National Plan that it invited us to apply for a 50% increase over the previous year’s grant and allocated some of the new funding to costs incurred in development of the Plan. 

My aim is to create a separate sustaining funding stream for the Plan and not continue to draw down on A Wider Circle’s operational funding. 

Ending poverty cannot wait. While we are ready to launch the first iteration of the website and action guide, we are aggressively seeking funding to support finalization of the tool, rollout, including dollars to cover marketing, press, and travel to spread the word within the next year (pending the ability to travel based on travel and social-distancing regulations), as well as the interactive and iterative processes within the site functionality. On-going refinement of the user experience of the platform is key. This tool offers an opportunity and potential for every individual, family, group, and community to create change. But reaching all parts of the United States, engaging diverse stakeholders, and enhancing as we go, takes sustainable streams of funding. 

We estimate that finalizing and launching the National Plan in 2020 will entail the following expenses:

• Web development: $80,000

• Research: $50,000

• Press and Marketing: $50,000

• Partnerships and Travel: $50,000

• Staff salaries, benefits, and payroll taxes: $250,000

The Elevate Prize provides a unique opportunity to “elevate” an issue too long overlooked by bringing forth a practical tool with digestible information and steps to create true change. This prize offers support, exposure, and funds, but more importantly, it provides  a tremendous boost to the speed of dissemination, the level of awareness and engagement, and, in the longer term, opportunities for those struggling for too long.  It will be a defining moment for the movement to eradicate poverty and for me personally to bring this issue to a broader audience. Despite my personal discomfort with public recognition, the movement and the issue demand it.

The time to rest content with the status quo has to be long behind us. Progress can be very slow and inch along, even under the leadership of well-intentioned and capable people in the non-profit or the government sector. It is now time for much bigger outcomes, much more impact, and many more lives changed, quickly, because of the devastating consequences born by those who are forced to live in poverty and exacerbated by recent events such as COVID-19. 

Moreover, we will regard Joseph Deitch and team as partners in our mission to shift the culture in America to one where we prioritize helping our neighbors.  As we come out of the pandemic crisis, our country has a chance to adopt sweeping, systemic change. I am inspired by those such as Joseph Deitch and the team who seek to support true and large scale change.  

• Talent Recruitment. A top priority is identifying and cultivating local partner leaders and ambassadors who can communicate authentically, support community planning, guide implementation of efforts, and document results.

• Monitoring and evaluation. Showing demonstrable and replicable examples of real people taking action and providing tools to allow us to measure impact. Development of a detailed monitoring and evaluation framework with process/output and impact/outcome indicators, as well as criteria for review and processes for review of qualitative and quantitative feedback.  Development of case studies, promising models and practices, and toolkits.

• Marketing, media, and exposure. Development and implementation of a media and communications campaign to ensure everyone can learn about the plan, access the plan, and share results of their implementation of actions outlined in it. 

• Tech companies: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, NextDoor, Microsoft. In time, the National Plan may take the form of a mobile app, in which case we will need further technical assistance. In addition, accessibility to the data and details in the Plan should be for all. Partners who can support improved access via a device, broadband, or improved digital fluency will be needed..

• National nonprofits: The United Way, The Poor People’s Campaign, Habitat for Humanity, National League of Cities, 4H Club, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Scouts BSA, Living Cities (a collaborative of 18 of the world’s leading foundations and financial institutions who work together to boldly fight poverty in America’s cities).  In addition, faith groups and other non-profit and social networks will be identified who can support outreach and adoption of the approach and ideas in the Plan.  

• Influencers and thought leaders: Oprah Winfrey, Serena Williams, Michelle and Barack Obama, Brené Brown as well as others for whom economic justice and poverty eradication are critical issues to which they donate or serve as an ambassador. We would also seek to partner with those who grew up in poverty, worked to rise out, and now support others to do the same. These influencers can bring attention to the issue, raise funds for change, and share their lived experiences.