Cash Prizes Entice Creative Minds to Develop Fresh Approaches to Poverty

Gilbert Bonafé earned a master’s degree last spring from Harvard Graduate School of Education. But he says he grew up in a low-income neighborhood in the Bronx, where his educational success was “the exception and not the rule.”

“Educating others and finding ways to get them through higher education and graduate is a passion of mine,” he says.

So Mr. Bonafé decided to put his hat in the ring when the Robin Hood Foundation, the New York antipoverty charity, decided to try a new strategy—offering cash prizes to entice creative minds to develop innovative technologies to fight poverty.

The first competition, which it announced last spring, was right up Mr. Bonafé’s alley—a $5-million College Success Prize, which challenged designers to create a tool to increase the graduation rate of the most at-risk community-college students, those taking remedial classes.

Mr. Bonafé joined forces with three other recent Harvard grads—Sheila Jackson and Jessica Pérez, who also attended the education school, and Nicholas Cheng, who earned a master’s in public policy and has ties to Silicon Valley developers. They dubbed themselves Team InfoMe and set about creating a mobile app that would help students pick the right courses and send prompts to help them fulfill requirements.

Wall Street Darling

Team InfoMe was one of 18 semi-finalists announced in August, winning $40,000 to further develop its project.

Robin Hood, created by hedge-fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones to fight poverty in New York City, has channeled more than $1-billion to soup kitchens, homeless shelters, job-training programs, and other efforts since 1988. A darling of Wall Street and celebrity donors, it normally awards grants after reviewing proposals from nonprofits, then measures whether the grants are effective.

But the foundation wanted to reach for something “grander, something that might not exist yet,” says Michael Weinstein, chief program officer, by enlisting the “metaphorical garage engineers and entrepreneurs.”

The College Success Prize targets community colleges because they attract many low-income students who struggle to graduate. Yet a degree can be a ticket to higher earnings.

Robin Hood has awarded grants to another effort, Accelerated Study in Associate Programs at the City University of New York, which has improved graduation rates by offering counseling and financial assistance. However, Mr. Weinstein says, it costs about $5,000 per student to administer. The cost of a good technology solution, he says: “essentially zero.”

Graduation Goals

In January, the semifinalists, drawn from 104 applicants from 12 countries, will present their solutions to a judging panel, which will select up to three finalists, who will get $60,000 more.

A grand prize of $3.5-million will go to designers who develop a mobile or computer project that can increase by 15 percentage points the three-year graduation rate of students taking remedial courses at several CUNY community colleges—roughly doubling the current rate. The results will be measured by a three-year randomized, controlled trial. An additional $1.5-million will go to projects that help students stay in school and graduate during the trial period.

The nonprofit firm ideas42, which advises clients about behavioral economics, helped Robin Hood develop the competition and is advising the semi-finalists.

Allison Rosenbloom, a senior associate, says the firm urged the developers to consider concepts like the way students are influenced by social norms and how a lack of resources can hinder good decision making, a phenomenon described in the book Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much.

Mr. Bonafé says his team came up with its concept for an app to guide course selections after talking to community-college students, especially those taking remedial courses, and hearing a frequent complaint: “I wasted time taking this course, and it’s not counting toward anything.”

If the competition succeeds, says Mr. Weinstein of Robin Hood, it could offer solutions beyond the community-college world. “We want to go after those low-skilled workers every bit as much as low-income students,” he says.