From Pilot to Permanence

Partnership lies at the heart of all our work at Held. We focus on providing direct, guaranteed income so that our partner agencies can continue providing the services and support they specialize in. 

In 2024, just a few months into our second year, we launched an implementation partnership with the United Way of Forsyth County. They had received a grant to support struggling families in the Winston-Salem area. These families had fallen behind on their bills or could only pay a portion of their rent. UWFC wanted to not only provide case management services for these families, but direct financial assistance to get them out of a difficult situation and help them find some stability. However, like many service agencies they lacked the capacity to deliver the funds efficiently and regularly to the people in the program.

That’s where Held came in. Because of our focus on guaranteed income and direct financial assistance, we have the infrastructure and capacity to deliver funds to people where they are and in a way they can use. 

Starting in March of that year, UWFC began enrolling participants in the program and issued them a Held GiveCard, a reloadable debit card that we loaded each family’s funds onto. They received $100 per month per child in the household up to $400. While this may not seem like a lot, it served as a lifeline for many of the families in the program and over the next year working together, we put over $130,000 directly into the hands of 44 families in need. That’s money for groceries and gas. It’s cash to keep the lights on and the phone service working. 

In the course of the program, one mother found a better apartment for her and her child. Moving put her son farther away from his school so she drove him across town each morning and picked him up each afternoon. One month she lost her job. She wanted to ensure her son stayed in the school in which he thrived so she would drive him to school and sit in her car waiting for him in the parking lot until he got out so she could save money on gas. 

She said that she knew that no matter what happened in that time, she could rely on the $100 per month she got from our partnership to ensure her car had gas in it to get him to school. That $100 per month got her through that difficult time, and she later got a new job with more hours. 

The project’s director Deb McCluney had this to say about working with us, “The partnership with Held made it possible for us to serve more families than we could have on our own. Their excellent management of the funding system made it so we could keep our focus on helping families and less on administrative work.””

And now we’re excited to announce that after the success of this pilot project, UWFC and Held are partnering together again to begin providing a $200 per month Stability Stipend to more families they serve. Together, we’re moving direct, cash assistance from a trial project to a regular service provided to families in need. 

I always say that people have a lot of needs, and one of them is money. So often it’s hard to tackle those other needs, need for community, employment, safety, or housing, without first addressing the financial need. 

At Held, our role is to empower our partners to go above and beyond with the funds they have, to reach out and directly impact people’s bank accounts and ultimately change their lives. 

You can read more about how implementation partnerships like this work at Held.