This grant provides support to the United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley to advance support for programs, policies, and practices that help low- and moderate-income families build assets. Among other strategic objectives, support from the Mott Foundation will help enable the United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley to strengthen the Massachusetts Asset Building Coalition by increasing and diversifying its membership, developing and implementing a media and messaging strategy, and developing a public policy campaign. This is one of ten grants aimed at building the capacity of asset-building coalitions to effectively build an enduring infrastructure for asset-policy development across states.

This grant provides continuing support to Washington University for a statewide demonstration of children's savings accounts. Because the demonstration is being conducted within the state of Missouri's existing college savings plan system, it could serve as a prototype policy for expanding asset-building opportunities from thousands to millions of families. Key goals for the grant period are to: 1) manage year four implementation activities; 2) undertake account monitoring research and reporting efforts; and 3) communicate research findings and other lessons to a broad group of stakeholders, including policymakers and the media. Washington University Professor Michael Sherraden is a leader in the asset-building field and is widely credited for launching the movement with his seminal book, Assets and the Poor.

Federal and state governments currently support a variety of programs and policies to encourage saving. However, most of these programs are focused on long-term goals, with consequent restrictions on use and penalties for withdrawals other than those tied to a specific goal. Currently, no systematic savings program exists to intentionally encourage savings that are unrestricted and not oriented toward specific long-term goals. MDRC is requesting support to pilot a concept that uses the workplace as the portal to initiate and sustain the accumulation of unrestricted savings for emergency and/or short-term uses. Mott funds will enable MDRC to field test this new savings intervention in at least five diverse workplace settings. The primary deliverable from this pilot phase will be a memorandum summarizing the early operational lessons, including employer and employee take-up and attitudes toward savings and the AutoSave concept. Established in 1974, MDRC is a nonprofit research institute headquartered in New York City.