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In his recent economic manifesto, Jamie Dimon rightfully notes that the middle class is under pressure, young Americans are being locked out of the wealth-building potential of home ownership, and achieving the American Dream is "conditional" – based on right education, right timing, and the right zip code.

On the last part, even zip code might not matter. For example, 40% of households in Santa Barbara County — where we are launching EnVision in collaboration with the United Way — are just one paycheck or crisis away from household instability. This includes working families, veterans, seniors, and young adults who too often fall through the cracks of disconnected services and outdated systems.

While government has a role to set the conditions at the macro level, it will be local business communities that make the biggest impact at the ground level. It’s also in their best interest.

The United Way reports that 29% of U.S. households are classified as "asset limited, income constrained, employed," meaning they earn above the Federal Poverty Level but cannot afford basic necessities. Combined with the ~11% in poverty, 40% of U.S. households (54 million) struggle to make ends meet. If those in need in every community could do just $2,000 better, their home lives and their communities would flourish! For example, in a community of 50,000 people, the 7,400 households in need would add nearly $15 million to the economy annually. Other positive impacts would also arise as the local economics improve: a more robust business environment; decreases in crime, substance abuse, and domestic violence; decreases in the need for police, fire, and EMT and emergency room services; and improvements in personal health, safety, education, and overall quality of life.

A big milestone for EnVision today! We got our 10,000th user!

Since the 1960’s, persistent attempts to reduce or eliminate poverty and related life stressors – homelessness, food insecurity, and more – have mostly failed. Individuals have gotten episodic relief (via 211, food banks, temporary housing, etc.) or counseling and caseworker-oriented support. But we’re now spending nearly $5T/year (state and federal money plus private donations) and nearly every systemic metric is flat or worse than ever. EnVision brings the whole community together to help those in need pave and follow reliable paths to self-sufficiency. Are there those who can’t yet navigate the journey on their own? Of course! And by helping those who can help themselves, EnVision frees resources that can be redirected to other pressing priorities.

EnVision makes opaque support systems visible. By mapping connections to friends, service providers, and local businesses, it helps people understand who’s in their corner—and how to access the resources and opportunities around them.

Humbling to see how Northern Santa Barbara County United Way is making EnVision their own. It’s EnVisionUnited!

People in need face many day-to-day stressors. Yet they all have visions of a better future. EnVision’s AI has analyzed user vision statements from across the nation and assessed the impact to the community of making those visions reality. The value is HIGH! Check out the summary.

There have been an increasing number of news reports on what looks to be the extraordinary misuse of nonprofit funds for personal gain. Truth be told, a lack of accountability has been high on the list of nonprofit problems – or operating norms – for upwards of six decades.

What’s often missing from these reports is a focus on organizational results. Despite all the money, the approaches to helping those in need have not made a systemic impact. As a nation, we now spend nearly $5T per year on poverty programs, yet virtually every metric is worse than ever. Among the reasons why: No measurement accountability.

At the beginning of this year, we set out to survey the thousands of service providers registered in our EnVision system – a whole community social network that aims to help those in need pave personal paths to self-sufficiency. We designed what we thought was a fair and informative instrument and sent it for review to a group of trusted advisors that work at the ground level in their communities. Within 5 minutes, we received a call from our Kansas City cohort lead. He cut right to the chase. "About your question, ‘How many people have you helped in the past year?’ Get that out of there!"

What we thought was a benign but important inquiry, he said, would lead to friction and zero responses. "No one knows," he added, "And no one wants to know." Soon after, we got similar feedback from others, although not as blunt.

By and large, there are few incentives for knowing and, whether nonprofits deliver on their intended metrics or not, the results will remain the same: (1) Little progress in helping those in need and distressed communities; (2) A continued flow of citizens’ hard earned money to the weak programs of government, nonprofits, and community-based organizations.

Please check out EnVision. It defines fair accountability and measurable progress.

We appreciate The Wall Street Journal publishing our CEO’s letter on the need to rethink how social services are delivered in the United States. With growing pressure on federal, state, and local budgets, EnVision is advancing a more efficient, connected approach that helps communities do more with the resources they have.

For those who are seeking a path out of poverty toward self-sufficiency, EnVision is the navigation aid!

In nearly every article and every report on poverty, homelessness, welfare, and support services, solutions – if they are offered at all – can be reliably summarized as "Give us more money." We know from decades of organizational performance research that effective solutions will follow some combination of the right information, the right tools, and the right incentives. What’s almost always missing is the incentive part. That creates a dependency model that makes information and tools excessively costly and less effective. Communities that wants to rethink their approach to poverty and cut the ever-growing costs, must incorporate effective incentive structures. That is the core of EnVision. [Graphic from the book, "Giving Away Power." Used with permission.]