Moving the Needle, Inc.

Our vision is a community in which all individuals and families can attain the level of economic freedom necessary to pursue their fullest potential regardless of their zip code or when they arrived in our community.  When all of our residents can thrive, our community thrives. 

Approximately 40% of households in our community are working and not earning enough to live here based on a very basic cost of living.  It's not right and it's not sustainable.  We will inspire and drive the change in our community necessary to raise the standard of living.  We will do this by offering success coaching and information about trusted resources to our target population and collecting and analyzing data about our target population.    Aggregated data will be publicly available in real time to improve our community's knowledge base and we will, in collaboration with other organizations, test, advocate for, pilot and scale viable solutions.   

According to the United Way ALICE Report, approximately 60% of households in Miami Dade County are earning less than a very basic cost of living.  Approximately 20% of all households are living in poverty and approximately 40% of all households are working, not receiving government assistance and not earning the cost of living. Our community is typically at or near the top of the list of house-burdened and rent-burdened communities in the US.   While there are many in our community providing services to these individuals and families, including financial stability services, affordable  housing and promoting and seeding entrepreneurship, after extensive research, we have not identified any organization taking a holistic approach to understanding how the typical economic principles play out in our community, working to improve our standard of living or bringing together the different groups in our community that would need to come together to move the needle.  Taking the analogy of a formula, no one is looking at all of the variables and how they inter-relate to each other and we think that by looking at the whole picture, meaningful change and impact are possible.

Our target population is the households in our community who are working, not receiving government assistance, and not earning the cost of living.   As indicated earlier, the United Way has estimated this population to be approximately 40% of households in our community. We envision breaking this population down into more specific demographics to allow us to identify and analyze patterns or issues that may be impacting some groups but not others.  Just over 50% of our community's population is foreign born, so understanding the considerations particular to this group is important.   We will begin with providing success coaching and understanding the concerns of foreign-born women in light of their collective potential to move the needle on economic growth in our community.

Utilizing an adaptive leadership model, we will inspire and drive the change in our community necessary to raise the standard of living for the 40% of households working and earning less than a basic cost of living in our community.  In order to do this our community must understand the issues faced by our target population beyond the fairly general and high level data currently known.   And we need to inspire our community leaders to engage in the healthy risk taking necessary to move the needle for our target population.  Finally, as we gather information that helps us identify ways to improve opportunity and raise our standard of living, we will develop or work with others to develop products and services for our target population.

We will offer success coaching to our target population.  Our first step is to begin offering coaching to foreign-born women in our target population as we see these women as having great potential to move the needle on economic growth. Data will be collected and aggregated to provide our community with a clearer picture of the challenges facing this target population.    We will  invite other organizations who provide similar services to share and include their data with us to improve the information publicly available.  As issues impeding opportunity for the target population are identified, we will begin to work with the relevant organizations - nonprofits, business community, and government - to develop the appropriate solutions.   We will utilize the USAID theory of change model to conduct, evaluate and demonstrate the potential of solutions under consideration.  We have evaluated and plan to use the SoPact software to demonstrate impact.    Because our target population is mobile device friendly, we plan to build an app that will deliver on-demand coaching and provide our target population with resources appropriate to their particular circumstances as well as offering them grants or short-term loans.  Research has shown that financial decision-making is greatly improved by access to coaching ( more so than financial literacy courses) and we think this is also true with the other decisions that affect success.    Finally, trust of the coaching we provide and our endorsement of the resources with which we connect our target population will be critical.  

We have identified a for-profit third party software company to develop the app and other software needed to provide the coaching and conduct data collection and research.

While there are many in our community providing services to the individuals and families in our target population, including financial stability services, affordable housing and promoting and seeding entrepreneurship, after extensive research, we have not identified any organization taking a holistic approach to understanding how the typical economic principles play out in our community, working to improve our standard of living or bringing together the different groups in our community that would need to come together to move the needle.  Taking the analogy of a math formula, no one is looking at all of the variables and how they inter-relate to each other and we think that by looking at the whole picture meaningful change is possible.

Our objective is, while offering success coaching to individuals in our target population which may include financial coaching and career advice, to gain the research data needed to identify the ways in which we can aid our target population in improving their own financial standing and overall well-being and therefore be an engine for economic growth in our community.

We envision using a software called SoPact for demonstrating impact and working with a for profit third party software company to develop the app we need to collect research data and offer services as well as integrating with SoPact.

By combining our knowledge of fundamental economic principles, focusing on raising the standard of living for our target population and quality research with our genuine desire to see our target population succeed, we have the ability to give voice to our target population. 

No one in our community is looking at our standard of living challenge in a systemic way and doing so is necessary to move the needle.

Current number served:  0.

Number served in 1 year:  350.

Number served in 5 years: 100,000 (through development of app)

In this next year:

Obtain the support of specific key stakeholders in the business community, nonprofit community and government for our organization's leadership role in seeding systemic change around our standard of living challenge. 

We will starting to provide coaching services this fall.

Develop the initial aspects of the app we need to collect and disseminate our research data. 

In 5 years:

Development of our app and we are providing coaching to our target population through our app as well as delivering other needed services like grants and loans.

We have moved the needle on the standard of living.  We can demonstrate the correlation between individual opportunity and economic growth in our community by having developed and tested a number of theory of change models.

We are at the beginning phases and need patient seed capital.  We want to follow an adaptive leadership model to bring about systemic change.  We believe strongly that we should be driven more initially by the ability to have impact and the change we are able to seed than whether we can make money.  We know that there is a lot of money flowing into fin tech but have decided that first understanding what our target population needs to be successful is of the upmost importance and an investment in that early stage work is critical to success of any subsequent products.

Systemic change is politically difficult and there may be organizations who oppose these efforts.  

Understanding and increasing the risk tolerance of our target population as well as those who are in positions to influence improving the standard of living likely will also be a challenge.

Patient Seed Capital.   Applying for grants, like this one, that may fund concept stage work.   Talking with consultants in adaptive leadership and potential supporters to identify funding sources.

Politically Difficult.  We are seeking to position ourselves in a way to support these other organizations to mitigate against this potential outcome.

Risk Tolerance.   Using the USAID theory of change model, we hope to learn from our coaching of the target population as well as our interactions with organizations and leaders ways in which we embrace greater risk taking to support our vision.  We have also identified an academic working in the area of behavioral economics /financial decision-making and may collaborate with him. 

There are currently 3 of us.

Our team of 3 experienced professionals bring the key skills needed.  And, as importantly, care very deeply about opportunity, mobility and the importance of the American Dream.     We have identified or can identify other colleagues in our networks to provide any other technical support we need that we do not personally have.

One of us is a consultant and expert in on line education and educational technology and has an educational background in economics.   https://www.linkedin.com/in/catalinavalenzuela/  

One of us has experience in operating and successfully scaling for profit businesses.  https://www.linkedin.com/in/vojkand/

One of us is a lawyer, has developed extensive knowledge of the local economy and relevant players in our space and also has an educational background in economics. https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristina-raattama-26b34239 

We are at the concept phase and starting the prototype phase so we are not currently partnering. Starting in August, we will begin the process of reaching out to the key organizations and players in our community who work in this area to find ways to collaborate with them, including data sharing and advocacy.

As noted earlier, we are at the concept stage and moving into the prototype stage.  We ultimately believe we can generate value for our target population and revenue through coaching, lending, partnerships and the development of our app as well as impact our standard of living.

We have developed a website, www.movingtheneedleinc.org, which is going live this week and through which we will solicit donations from individuals interested in supporting our initial efforts.  

We will also start making grant applications to support our initial work to pay our Executive Director and to commence coaching and data collection as well as license fees for the software we need.    We also believe we may be able to charge certain members of our target population for our coaching and that we will generate revenues through referrals. Ultimately, we believe we will identify solutions that have commercial viability and through which Moving the Needle may earn revenues.

We are excited about the Solve Challenge because the category we selected recognizes the values of both economic inclusion and improving a community's responsiveness to its members.  This fits well with the work our organization is doing.  Additionally, other than amounts the 3 directors have personally contributed, the Solve funding would provide us with some of the seed funding we need to commence coaching.   We also think winning Solve will raise our profile  in our local community and help jump start our efforts and improve our ability to get additional funding.     Finally, we really appreciate that the Solve Challenge is wide open and relatively unconstrained in how it is asking for ideas.  You seem to really be looking for innovative ideas and we think we have one even though we are at an early stage.  Even if Moving the Needle is not selected, we hope to receive valuable feedback about our project, including revenue generation options.

Locally we see partnership opportunities with the United Way, Branches, the Women's Fund Trust, the Beacon Council, and the Miami Dade County Public School System.    All of these organizations play a large role locally in serving our target population and have the ability to help move the needle.

We have also identified the following potential national organizations as partners:

 https://financeinnovationlab.org/

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, particularly its social justice initiative.

National Financial Educators council

National Endowment for Financial Education

Mission Assets Fund

Finally, because our coaching will focus in large part on personal finances, credit unions, banks and other financial institutions are natural partners.

Our team will utilize the prize money for two purposes:

1. To implement the software So Pact to be able to measure our impact
2. To begin providing coaching sessions to our first users group: Professional foreign-born women recently arrived to Miami Dade community.
   

So Pact software would provide us with impact data using our own theory of change. This tool will provide real time impact data to analyze the effect of our solution on the target users. Also it will allow us to inform key conversations in our community regarding the correlation between economic opportunity and economic growth and the areas of opportunity in our community to remove impediments and improve potential for our target population. 

The coaching sessions that we are envisioning are a first step to gather data and helping our early adopters to reach financial stability and ultimately their full potential.

Our team will utilize the prize money for two purposes:

1. To implement the software So Pact to be able to measure our impact
2. To begin providing coaching sessions to our first users group: Professional foreign-born women recently arrived to Miami Dade community.
   

So Pact software would provide us with impact data using our own theory of change. This tool will provide real time impact data to analyze the effect of our solution on the target users. Also it will allow us to inform key conversations in our community regarding the correlation between economic opportunity and economic growth and the areas of opportunity in our community to remove impediments and improve potential for our target population. 

The coaching sessions that we are envisioning are a first step to gather data and helping our early adopters to reach financial stability and ultimately their full potential.

Our team will utilize the prize money for two purposes:

1. To implement the software So Pact to be able to measure our impact
2. To begin providing coaching sessions to our first users group: Professional foreign-born women recently arrived to Miami Dade community.
   

So Pact software would provide us with impact data using our own theory of change. This tool will provide real time impact data to analyze the effect of our solution on the target users. Also it will allow us to inform key conversations in our community regarding the correlation between economic opportunity and economic growth and the areas of opportunity in our community to remove impediments and improve potential for our target population. 

The coaching sessions that we are envisioning are a first step to gather data and helping our early adopters to reach financial stability and ultimately their full potential.