Reimagining Public Benefits Access Ideas Showcase

Where Are They Now?

Six-month updates from six featured innovations

Reimagining Public Benefits Access Ideas Showcase Group Shot

In March 2026, Economic Opportunity Funders and the Tax Equity Funders Network hosted an Ideas Showcase featuring forward-looking approaches for creating more equitable, effective, and people-centered public benefits systems.

Six months later, we checked back with the featured organizations to learn what has changed, what they are learning, and what comes next. 

Explore the original Reimagining Public Benefits Access Showcase Overview and Recap for presentation materials, key takeaways, and related resources.

Explore the Updates

  • Center for Taxpayer Rights
    Exploring automatic enrollment for tax and other public benefits.
  • Digital Public Works
    DiCIT: Software that increases access to benefits by minimizing applicant burden.
  • Mirza
    The Common App for public benefits: Transforming how families access safety net benefits.
  • MyFriendBen
    MyFriendBen: Unlocking the next generation of benefits access for long-term care support services.
  • Public Policy Lab
    GovPay: An instant, unified, privacy-first benefits payment platform.
  • Rx Kids
    A prescription for health, hope, and opportunity.

Looking Ahead

Six months after the Showcase, these innovations are generating new evidence, shaping public debate, and attracting interest from policymakers and advocates. Some are moving toward legislation or implementation, while others are building the policy frameworks, coalitions, and public understanding required to enable future change.

Continued philanthropic support can help organizations respond to growing state and federal opportunities, deepen research and policy development, strengthen communications and coalition-building, and translate promising ideas into action.

Center for Tax Payer Rights

Exploring automatic enrollment for tax and other public benefits.

 

About the Innovation

This innovation explores an integrated tax-and-benefits access system that uses tax data, with strong privacy and consent safeguards, to automatically determine eligibility and proactively connect individuals to public benefits. Drawing on successful international models such as Canada’s Automated Benefits Application and considering platforms like IRS Direct File, the approach reframes tax filing as a gateway to economic stability by reducing administrative burden and increasing benefit participation. The Center for Taxpayer Rights seeks to identify and provide actionable recommendations to federal, state policymakers on which benefits and populations are best suited for automatic or one-click enrollment, and the design and data protections needed to ensure appropriate use of tax information.

 

Six-Month Update

Since March, the Center has continued its work on what it would take to do automatic enrollment in the context of 530A (aka Trump) Accounts and more specifically how to automatically enroll children for the $1,000 pilot contribution. We have published blogs detailing the challenges under current law, submitted comments to Treasury on the proposed regulations, and testified at the public hearing on the Treasury proposed regulations. We are continuing to study other efforts at the state level, and regardless of where Treasury ends up with its final regulations, we believe there will be many left behind in the pilot program and that continuing work is necessary.

As far as next steps, we are also focusing our efforts on the consumer and financial education necessary for lower- and middle-income beneficiaries of these programs to understand how to invest and use these accounts. We are very concerned about their exposure to predatory or risk-taking advisors. Auto-enrollment without financial education and consumer protection will pose grave risks for these programs so that is the next phase of our work. We are actively exploring opportunities to pilot a project that could be scaled up.

 

Learn More

 

Contact

For more information, contact Nina Olson, Executive Director, neo@taxpayer-rights.org.

Digital Public Works

DiCIT: Software that increases access to benefits by minimizing applicant burden

 

About the Innovation

DiCIT (Digital Consent-based Income Tool) is a software platform that streamlines income verification for public benefit applicants and caseworkers through a simple, six-step, user-consented process that securely connects to employers, payroll providers (like ADP or Workday), and gigworker payment platforms. By automatically extracting complete, eligibility-relevant income data and sharing it directly with states—without retaining financial information—DiCIT reduces applicant burden, speeds eligibility determinations, and minimizes errors. Pilots conducted in 2025 with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services demonstrated strong user trust and viability, cutting median income verification time from 45 minutes to 6.5 minutes while improving data quality for caseworkers. Building on this evidence, Digital Public Works seeks to scale DiCIT by deepening use in current partner states, expanding to additional states, and adding new features in 2026 to further lower costs, strengthen data insights, and increase benefit access.

 

Six-Month Update

Since March, DPW completed its spin-off and became a fully independent 501(c)(3) with our own board and a new Head of Operations.

Verify My Income (formerly called DiCIT) is live and in production in Pennsylvania and Arizona. In Arizona, our analysis of over-verification practices contributed to a policy clarification from the state, and Pennsylvania has adopted a metrics format we created as their reporting template for digital response vendors.

We are evolving from a single-product organization toward an open platform that gives states access to a variety of verification tools matched to their clients’ income situations. The barrier to better income verification is not the tools themselves but the procurement and data-sharing infrastructure that prevents states from accessing them. We submitted a proposal to the Public Benefits Innovation Fund to build this infrastructure in an open, sustainable manner that will allow states to compare tools and allow builders greater access to state markets.

We completed research with older adults and community organizations on income verification accessibility. The key finding: the greater barrier for older adults is the cognitive load imposed by the process inherent to income verification. We are working to ease this burden through our technology.

 

Learn More

 

Contact

For more information, contact Michael Burstein, Executive Director, Digital Public Works, michael@digitalpublicworks.org.

Mirza

The Common App for public benefits: Transforming how families access safety net benefits.

 

About the Innovation

Mirza is a digital front door for public benefits. Mirza offers a centralized eligibility and enrollment platform that integrates directly with payroll systems, banking, and gig economy platforms to verify income and hours worked in real time. The mobile-first, native language platform provides instant eligibility screening in under 3 minutes, automates the application process to be completed in 20 minutes or less, and keeps track of application or redetermination windows. Mirza helps to eliminate manual document collection, reduce rejection rates, and support families to maintain benefits, while reducing administrative burden for eligibility staff. Mirza seeks to pilot test and expand this approach with partners to remove burden from benefits access.

 

Six-Month Update

Since March, three major updates:

  • We won a statewide contract! A Mid-Atlantic state selected Mirza to be the new front door for public benefits for every resident in the state, across food, healthcare, childcare, and more. This replaces a system built by one of the large legacy government contractors, and it is our first statewide deployment.
  • We’re using AI to protect people from wrongful disenrollment. New federal work requirements will push millions off Medicaid, but many who qualify for medical frailty exemptions can’t produce the paperwork to prove it. The evidence usually already exists in their clinical records. Our system reads those records and surfaces it, so people who are exempt stay covered rather than losing coverage to a documentation gap.
  • We’re meeting people where they already are. We’re piloting a conversational assistant that works across SMS, WhatsApp, web, and app, so someone can check eligibility and complete an enrollment through whichever channel they already use. Thanks to Resilient Chicago Fund support, we’ll pilot this with ICIRR, an immigrant rights coalition in Illinois, reaching families for whom a traditional online portal has never been the right door.

 

Learn More

 

Contact

For more information, contact Siran Cao, CEO and Co-founder, Mirza, siran@heymirza.com.

MyFriendBen

MyFriendBen: Unlocking the next generation of benefits access for long-term care support services.

 

About the Innovation

MyFriendBen is known for our plain-language platform that translates complex benefit eligibility rules into accessible guidance for families navigating safety net access. Our tool already delivers personalized checklists, application resources, and referrals to vetted local agencies. More than 100,000 families have secured over $40M in benefits through MyFriendBen. Building on this foundation, MyFriendBen is now piloting and validating AI-powered agent tools to deepen support for specific family segments — including aging-in-place households, facility transition families, and dementia caregivers — with more targeted, conversational guidance that adapts to each family’s unique situation and local-specific rules.MyFriendBen will use insights from this pilot to inform the development of the Medicaid Long-term Support Services (LTSS) Navigator, an educational digital platform that translates complex state-specific long-term care Medicaid rules into plain-language guidance, helping families understand eligibility, asset protection, and spousal protections before applying.

 

Six-Month Update

The six months since the Showcase have been the most exciting in MyFriendBen’s history. We’ve grown from momentum to movement: now live in 9 states (CO, IL, KS, MA, MO, NC, NJ, TX, WA) with 160K+ families served — screening for 40+ benefits in about 6 minutes, no name or SSN required, and 90% of users discovering programs they never knew existed. The Urban Institute’s independent evaluation confirmed what families tell us: 79% rate the screener ‘very easy,’ 2 in 3 learn about a benefit they didn’t know existed, and in follow-up surveys 86% applied within 3 months and 85% of applicants were approved for at least one benefit. Most exciting: the AI agent tools we showcased in March are now real. BenBot and BenWallet have launched — staying with families beyond screening to guide applications, enrollment, and keeping benefits over time all over text— and they are the foundation of our Medicaid LTSS Navigator and HR-1 Support tools translating complex and changing rules into plain-language guidance on eligibility, asset protection, and spousal protections for the families who need it most.

 

Learn More

 

Contact

For more information, contact Laura Glaab, Chief Executive Officer, MyFriendBen, laura@myfriendben.org.

Public Policy Lab

GovPay: An instant, unified, privacy-first benefits payment platform.

 

About the Innovation

GovPay is a proposed payment platform that would enable government agencies to instantly and securely deliver benefit payments to members of the public. GovPay will consolidate fragmented, outdated payment systems into a single modern infrastructure using FedNow instant payment technology, reducing administrative costs and processing delays, while incorporating key privacy protections to shield benefit recipients from invasive data collection and surveillance. Recipients will use one platform to manage their benefit payments, rather than navigating multiple systems. Public Policy Lab seeks to build and pilot GovPay with a diverse cohort of state and local agencies that administer benefits such as unemployment insurance, SNAP, and cash assistance. The platform will be co-designed with agency staff and benefit recipients to ensure it meets their specific needs.

 

Six-Month Update

GovPay remains a priority for the Public Policy Lab. We believe that a FedNow-based, privacy-protective payment infrastructure would meaningfully reduce administrative burden and processing delays across unemployment insurance, SNAP, and cash assistance. We’re exploring opportunities  to move from concept to a co-designed pilot with state and local agencies.

Simultaneously, PPL’s other benefits-delivery work continues: CLARA, our AI-assisted plain-language notice tool, is piloting with North Carolina toward a 2027 launch. Separately, we’re redesigning SNAP and Medicaid communications with the states of Delaware and Maryland, addressing H.R. 1 compliance requirements ahead of January 2027. And through our partnership with the NYC Administration for Children’s Services, we’re designing a new system to connect families involved in the child-welfare system to public benefits and economic supports, on the understanding that economic instability is a primary driver of system involvement.

Together, this work reflects our consistent thesis: Benefit systems fail people not only through punitive policies, but also through design choices — at application, notice, and payment implementation — that treat the public’s time, dignity, and financial resources as expendable. GovPay seeks to address that problem by redesigning payment infrastructure itself.

 

Learn More

 

Contact

For more information, contact Chelsea Mauldin, Executive Director, Public Policy Lab, cmauldin@publicpolicylab.org.

Rx Kids

A prescription for health, hope, and opportunity.

 

About the Innovation

Rx Kids provides unconditional cash transfers to pregnant women and families with newborns through six months to one year of age. It is currently operating in 39 Michigan communities and funded by a mix of philanthropic and state and local public funding. Peer-reviewed research shows the program has led to reduced evictions, improved nutrition, reduced postpartum depression, increased prenatal care utilization, and improved birth outcomes with fewer NICU admissions. Rx Kids seeks to scale its evidence-based model to 2-3 additional states.

 

Six-Month Update

Since the March Showcase, Rx Kids has significantly expanded its reach across Michigan, growing from 39 to 62 communities through an innovative public-private funding model that combines state general funds, TANF, municipal investments, and philanthropy. Building on this momentum, Rx Kids will launch this fall in high-need communities in Cleveland, Ohio, marking the program’s first national expansion, while conversations continue with leaders in several other states about future opportunities. New research continues to strengthen the evidence behind the program, with emerging findings showing a 50% reduction in neonatal mortality, driven by established reductions in preterm birth and low birthweight. Together, this rapid growth, innovative financing, and growing evidence demonstrate what is possible when we invest directly in families during pregnancy and infancy.

 

Learn More

 

Contact

For more information, contact Rx Kids Team, Rx Kids, Rx-Kids@msu.edu.

The innovations included in the Ideas Showcase and this update are intended to spark dialogue and support funder learning. Inclusion does not constitute an endorsement by Economic Opportunity Funders or the Tax Equity Funders Network.

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