Our Work
The Bridge Project is New York City’s first guaranteed income program. Launched in June 2021 by The Monarch Foundation, The Bridge Project is designed to support low-income mothers in New York City during the first 1,000 days of their children’s lives by providing them with consistent, unconditional cash on a biweekly basis.
The first phase of the Bridge Project provides either $500 or $1,000 a month to 100 low-income mothers living in Washington Heights, Inwood, and Central Harlem for three years, and is a randomized controlled trial in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Guaranteed Income Research.
The program has since expanded to a second phase, which launched recruitment in April 2022. The Bridge Project dramatically expanded to include a cohort of 500 additional low-income, pregnant mothers across the project's existing neighborhoods in Northern Manhattan, along with the neighborhoods of East Harlem, the Central Bronx, and the South Bronx. Selected mothers are receiving $1,000 a month for the first 18 months of the program and $500 a month for the last 18 months, all on a biweekly basis.
The program hopes to continue to expand throughout various neighborhoods and boroughs across New York City to support mothers and their babies and alleviate child poverty.
...but we want to answer a few additional questions:
Can a guaranteed income targeted at mothers improve their babies’ social, emotional, and mental development and well-being?
For a city like New York City, what level of guaranteed income provides recipients and their babies with the strongest financial, social, and developmental outcomes?
Does the provision of additional services and resources encourage low-income families to take advantage of them, and are outcomes necessarily greater for those who do?
...and that bring expertise and passion to providing economic security and mobility solutions to marginalized communities.
