The Change Our Client Seeks

For more than 30 years, Robin Hood has invested in poverty alleviation in New York City. Through the Mobility Learning and Action Bets (LABs), the foundation aims to expand its impact with a focus on increasing mobility from poverty. The goals of the four-year initiative are to spur the development of new solutions to sustainably lift families out of poverty and to promote dynamic leaders who aim to change the national conversation around social and economic mobility.

In partnership with the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, Tipping Point Community, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and an anonymous donor, Robin Hood will identify an inaugural cohort of planning grantees in five communities: New York City, Baltimore, rural Northeast Pennsylvania, suburban Chicago (Cook County), and the San Francisco Bay Area (Pittsburg, Bayview, and East San Jose).

The Role We’re Playing

Robin Hood engaged Equal Measure to co-design a measurement, evaluation, and learning plan to:

• Document what it takes to increase mobility from poverty in terms of implementation and impact within and across the five regions.
• Work with the communities and partners to identify short-term measures that can serve as predictors of mobility.

The Results Thus Far

Equal Measure has co-developed an initial theory of change with Robin Hood Mobility LABs. The intended outcomes of this engagement are to influence and inform:

• Funders and partners in their grantmaking decisions.
• The field on how to measure mobility from poverty.
• Communities on strategies to implement community-level change.