Rooted School Foundation exists to reimagine and support the role schools play in providing students with personal pathways to financial freedom and then scaling those opportunities so that more students may excel in school and after graduation.
The $50 Study is a direct cash transfer program for high school aged students. From 2022 – 2024, Rooted School Foundation (RSF) and The $50 Study will facilitate a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) to explore the impacts of unconditional cash to teenagers, as participating students in this study receive $50 a week for 40 weeks. It is the first and largest study of its kind.
In 2024, The $50 Study will partner with the City of New Orleans to facilitate a 1,600 student study, in which 800 students will receive cash transfers. This study will focus on 12th grade students; we will research the impact of the direct cash transfers on their final year of high school and for 18 months following graduation.
To date, The $50 Study has been funded through institutional grant making and donations. The City of New Orleans partnership represents movement towards public funding, which is essential to the long term success of The $50 Study, and guaranteed income programs writ large. RSF’s goal in applying for The Fels Institute Capstone project is to develop a roadmap for securing public funding for future iterations of The $50 Study.
A successful final deliverable for this project will increase momentum towards policy implementation by providing: a) a recommendation for regions/geographies that are best suited for public funding of a program like The $50 Study in the next 1-3 years; this could include regions/geographies where both the school district and cities are potentially good candidates, b) recommendations on fundraising approaches for the regions identified that includes a combination of governmental and philanthropic sources.
We are actively exploring expansion The $50 Study to new regions and hope to have a more robust strategy for expansion by early 2025.
