Short Summary

Hi, my name is Jonathan Johnson and I lead a young national non-profit network of four schools across four states and other projects focused on increasing upward mobility for youth faster than local projections. We’re called Rooted School Foundation and we currently work in New Orleans, Indianapolis, Vancouver, Washington, and Las Vegas. 

During the 2020–2021 school year, we received an opportunity to test an idea with 20 students at our New Orleans campus – what would happen if we gave $50 a week to high school students without conditions for an entire year? Turned out that they spent the money on bare necessities and planning for the future. During the 2022–2024 school years, building on the work of organizations like GiveDirectly and the positive outcomes that have been shown in studies around cash transfers in combatting poverty, we are exploring the impact of unconditional cash transfers directly to high school students struggling financially in a broader study across multiple states. 

The project called The 50 Dollar Study was named a Finalist in the Social Justice category of Fast Company’s 2023 World Changing Ideas Awards and received Honorable Mention in the North America and Experimental categories. In partnership with prominent research and philanthropic institutions, this study holds wide-reaching, potentially historic implications, and we want you to be a part of it. 

Understanding The 50 Dollar Study

The 50 Dollar Study is a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) and the first study in the world to assess the effectiveness of a cash transfer program for high school students facilitated by Rooted School Foundation in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania Center for Guaranteed Income Research and the University of Tennessee – Knoxville School of Social Work. The study will investigate the impact of direct, unconditional cash transfers on reducing students’ financial hardship, enhancing their financial capability, and promoting upward economic mobility, as well as the impact on students’ academic achievement. 

From 2022 – 2024, 470 students in grades 9-12 will be randomly assigned to one of two groups, one that will receive $50 a week, the treatment group, and a control group that will receive no cash transfer. The study will collect quantitative and qualitative data through recipient surveys, transaction data, and interviews. 

The 50 Dollar Study is the first study of its kind in which a high school serves as the disbursement provider and is the most empirically driven guaranteed income pilot with this specific age group. Rooted School Foundation hopes to leverage the findings from the RCT to increase the number of schools and districts that participate in similar programs. 

Rooted School will publish a mid-study report in the Winter of 2024. An ongoing podcast, The Rooted Cash Podcast, produced in collaboration with BeLoud Studios and hosted by Rooted Alumni Vernell Cheneau, shares recipient stories and experiences in narrative format. Additional study updates are shared via Instagram (@the50dollarstudy).

Why So Big?

470 students are the number of total participants we need in order to achieve clinical significance with our findings. Research questions that we will explore during the study are: 

1. Does guaranteed income promote students’ financial stability and freedom?

2. Does guaranteed income improve students’ financial capability and financial socialization?

3. How does guaranteed income impact students’ future orientation?

4. Does guaranteed income impact academic and school performance?

What We Need & What You Get

So far, we’ve raised $75,000 for The 50 Dollar Study. In order to complete the randomized controlled trial, we need to raise an additional $50,000. Those funds will cover the costs of the cash transfers, banking fees, communication tools, and media and outreach. Our study is doing groundbreaking work to explore innovative interventions to create economic opportunity. If you are interested in being part of this first-of-its-kind, historical work, we encourage you to get involved.

Giving Opportunities

Any donor to this project will have their name featured (if they want) and all levels of donation result in an automatic subscription to receive updates.

$50 – Level 1

Sponsors one week of direct cash transfers to one student. 

$200 – Level 2

Sponsor one month (or 4 weeks) of direct cash transfers to one student. 

$600 – Level 3

Sponsor three months (or 12 weeks) of direct cash transfers to one student. 

$1,000 – Level 4

Sponsors the direct cash transfers to a student for half of the study (or 20 weeks).

$1,200 – Level 5

Sponsor six months (or 24 weeks) of direct cash transfers to one student. 

$1,500 – Level 6

Funds the production costs for one Rooted Cash Podcast episode.

$2,000 – Level 7
Sponsor direct cash transfers to one student for the entire duration of the study (or 40 weeks). 

All funds raised for The 50 Dollar Study will go toward the RCT over the 2023-2024 school year whether we reach our goal or not. 

The Impact

Once at full scale with all funding raised, The 50 Dollar Study will achieve clinical significance with its findings. This is important because the findings can then be used to influence broader policy and practice change across local and state governments, schools, and school districts. Additional revenue sources can be discovered and an intervention like this can be sustained over the long-term with a broader collection of youth over time. We know this is possible because we’re starting to see the momentum now.

Since the first Rooted School opened in 2017, the school has built a first-of-its-kind school that has been recognized as one of the 232 most innovative schools in the U.S. by Transcend Education and the Christensen Institute. Rooted’s game-changing approach to education has been featured in Forbes (The Rooted School Network: Experiencing Success In College And Work In High School | How Rooted, A New Orleans Charter High School, Prepares Freshmen For $20/Hour Jobs), the national education news outlet The 74 (Tracking How 232 Innovative Schools Are Challenging 5 Big Assumptions About American Education, NOLA’s Rooted School Aims to ‘Beat the Streets’ by Graduating Students Ready for High-Tech Jobs), in the Center On Reinventing Public Education’s Future of Learning series (A New School Takes Root in New Orleans—And Races Against Time), and on NPR (New Orleans Educator Dreams Of Teaching Tech To Beat The Streets). In 2020, a second high school opened in Indianapolis which is also where Rooted opened its first middle school in 2022. Rooted will launch the first public charter high school in Southwest Washington history in 2023 along with Rooted School Las Vegas. 

Risks & Challenges

– Our biggest challenge was securing the 315 additional students needed to reach 470 total participants. We’re excited to share that we achieved that goal in April. 

– Now our challenge is securing the remaining funds needed to complete Phase 2 of the study. Our goal is to reach out funding target by August 2023.

– We provide regular updates to our project partners to ensure they are informed about opportunities, challenges, and changes that develop over the course of the study.

Other Ways You Can Help

– Please share The 50 Dollar Study with friends and family you think might be interested!

– The easiest way to help us spread the word is to use the Indiegogo share tools!