American Idea Foundation

Measuring Results, Expanding Opportunity, Improving Lives.

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Replicating the Transformative Impact of Catholic Charities’ Padua Project

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By: AIF Staff

Since his time as a Member of Congress, American Idea Foundation President and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has believed the case-management model utilized by Catholic Charities of Fort Worth is an effective way to help individuals out of poverty.

As Fort Worth Inc. described when profiling Catholic Charities of Fort Worth’s approach:

“Catholic Charities isn’t handing out scholarships or money; they’re guiding students to make the right decisions and navigate challenges. The goal is to help individuals move from survival jobs to career roles, teaching soft skills that lead to promotions.

As Paul Ryan says, “What the Padua Project is doing is more than just helping people get jobs or improve housing — they’re helping them achieve their God-given potential, building a more just society.”

How does the Padua Project work?

Notre Dame’s Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO), which has partnered with Catholic Charities of Fort Worth on empirical studies, described the Padua Project this way: 

“The backbone of Padua is wrap-around, “supercharged” case management that involves a two-person team of social workers and begins with building a relationship with clients. The Padua model ensures a high level of personal support for each client. Clients work with their teams to set goals related to asset areas that are key to clients’ long-term success including finances, education, social skills, legal status and physical and emotional well-being.”

The services provided by Catholic Charities Fort Worth through the Padua Project fall into one of five “Out of Poverty Pathways” and include:

  • Education: Offering counseling and support for educational milestones.
  • Emotional Resiliency: Providing counseling referrals, long-term case management, and mental health programs.
  • Employment: Assisting with job searches and career coaching to help clients secure and succeed in employment.
  • Financial Resiliency: Teaching financial skills for long-term independence.
  • Resource Stability: Offering short-term relief, support for new mothers, and comprehensive refugee services.

It’s a high-touch, labor-intensive care modality designed to help people get back on their feet over the long-term. And it’s delivering results.

Catholic Charities’ approach to expanding upward mobility has been the subject of multiple randomized controlled trials, each with incredibly promising findings, and though there have been challenges along the way, the “Padua Project” has made an enormous impact helping those struggling in Fort Worth, Texas.

Because of this hands-on, comprehensive intervention, people like Keith Collins have benefitted. As Cynthia Allen summarized in a Fort Worth Star Telegram op-ed:  “According to CCFW, participants in the Padua Pilot on average increased their liquid assets by over $5,000, reduced their debt by over $2,000, and experienced a 23% increase in full-time employment. In two years time, 73% of those who entered the program not housed were stably housed and working toward self-sufficiency, and those who came into case management stably housed had a 36% in full-time work and a 34% increase in monthly earnings.”

Additionally, Notre Dame’s RCT found real improvements in self-sufficiency and labor market outcomes for Padua participants:

  • 25% more likely to have full-time employment than the control group.
  • Monthly earnings were 18% higher after 2 years, compared with the control group.
  • 43% of participants reported improved health after two years.

When Catholic Charities Fort Worth began the Padua Project, the organization’s leadership set a goal of helping 10,000 families get out of poverty in 10 years. They have currently assisted 5,700 families out of poverty and they have done so in an academically rigorous, quantifiable way which allows their program to be replicated, scaled, and improved upon. Due to this approach, the Padua Project is not only helping local families every day in Texas, but they are also providing a successful template for others to follow in their communities.

In a 2021 policy panel hosted by Notre Dame and the American Idea Foundation, Dr. Jim Sullivan spoke to the importance scaling successful solutions that are rooted in data and evidence, saying in part:

“The way you get the policy at a national level is to build the evidence at the local level. If we can demonstrate that it can work with Catholic Charities, is it because Catholic Charities Fort Worth is so good [or] can we replicate it? If we can replicate the Padua Project in a lot of the community providers in Dallas, then let’s spread it to other cities and let’s apply it in other contexts, like for prisoner re-entry or for refugee services. This comprehensive case management model works and as you build the evidence, it becomes more and more compelling.”  

During a 2019 visit to Catholic Charities while he was Speaker of the House, Ryan summed up the Padua Project’s impact succinctly, saying in part: “Organizations like Catholic Charities are doing heroic work in our communities to fight poverty. This is among the keys to breaking the cycle and getting more people into good-paying jobs…. The case management system is the best possible system. It’s individual, it’s focused, it’s customized.”

Because of their impact and because of the strong base of evidence in support of their “Padua Project,” the American Idea Foundation has awarded a 2025 grant to Catholic Charities of Fort Worth so they can scale, replicate, and study their program’s effectiveness in other U.S. cities.

The American Idea Foundation is proud to work with Catholic Charities Fort Worth, Franchise for Good, and Notre Dame’s Lab for Economic Opportunities as they expand the Padua Project into other communities that are struggling with persistent and multi-generational poverty. Because of their fidelity to evidence and their proven model, Speaker Ryan wholeheartedly believes the transformative results seen in Texas will be found in other areas where the Padua Project expands.

To learn more about the American Idea Foundation’s 2025 grant recipients, click here. 

College Possible expands access to higher education in a data-driven way

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By: AIF Staff

American Idea Foundation President and former House Speaker Paul Ryan has long believed that education is essential to helping individuals experience upward mobility and economic prosperity. There is a strong correlation between economic well-being and educational attainment, which is why the American Idea Foundation is working with organizations who are expanding access to higher education, helping students (often first-generation students or under-represented communities) to complete their degrees, and doing so in an evidence-based way.

One of these groups, which was awarded a grant from the American Idea Foundation in 2025, is College Possible.

Founded by Jim McCorkell, who was a first-generation college student, in St. Paul, Minnesota, College Possible was built on the belief that every student, regardless of their individual challenges, should have a chance to attend and succeed in college.

Starting with 35 students and a group of AmeriCorps coaches, College Possible has helped nearly 100,000 students since they began twenty-five years. Their expansion is due in large part to their unique programming model and their fidelity to data and evidence.

College Possible matches eligible students with near-peer coaches and provides an intensive curriculum designed to help these students overcome the most common barriers to getting into college and completing their degrees at no cost to students or their families.

These peer coaches operate from one of College Possible’s 8 sites across the country and provide students who have been identified and selected as having high academic potential and who come  from low-income backgrounds, with 5 critical services: 

(1) academic support through ACT/SAT test preparation;

(2) college application assistance;

(3) financial aid consulting;

(4) guidance in the transition to college; and

(5) coaching throughout college to support the academic confidence, financial literacy and resilience needed to graduate.

Originally conceived as a program centered around “test prep help for students who can’t afford Kaplan,” College Possible has expanded methodically. It now has a presence in 8 regions of the country, with sites stretching from Austin, TX to Seattle, WA, and College Possible’s near-peer coaches have assisted nearly 100,000 students on their college journeys.

To see the impact College Possible has had on the lives of young Americans, check out this video featuring testimonials from students enrolled in the College Possible Wisconsin program.

Beginning in 2008, College Possible began working with the Milwaukee Public School system, deploying their model to help students successfully apply and complete an undergraduate degree. In 2018, a multi-year evaluation was commissioned to measure how students participating in the College Possible program performed relative to a peer group, who were also in the Milwaukee Public School system.

The results of the evaluation were impressive. Among them:

  • College Possible students were 30% more likely to enroll in college immediately after high school.
  • College Possible students completed 1.4x the number of scholarship applications relative to the comparison group.
  • Enrolled students were 30% more likely to attend a 4-year college or university.

Equally important was the finding that the more often students participated in the College Possible program, the higher their college enrollment and persistence rates were.

These state-specific results lend credibility to a 2013 randomized controlled trial conducted by Professor Chris Avery of Harvard’s Kennedy School. This evaluation, which consisted of 238 Minnesota juniors and seniors who were randomly selected and split into treatment and control groups, found the following:

  • Participating in College Possible led to a statistically significant increase in college enrollment by around 19 to 21%.
  • Utilizing College Possible increased the likelihood of applying to a “highly competitive” or “very competitive” school and increased the number of applications submitted, particularly to four-year programs.
  • The effectiveness of College Possible’s programming was limited when it came to standardized test scores and the positive impact diminished over time as students enrolled in college degree programs.

As College Possible has matured as an organization, they have tweaked their model to account for some of these research findings. In 2016, to ensure that the robust, hands-on support continued throughout students’ college journeys, College Possible created the Catalyze program, which is a partnership where peer-coaches work with student support teams directly on campuses to help 1st year and 2nd year students remain on track towards degree completion.

In 2024, the Catalyze program helped 4,000 students graduate from 9 partner schools. It works by having coaches, who are often recent graduates of the same institution and partner campus, work directly with enrolled students to navigate registration, financial aid renewals, degree requirements, and connections to on-campus resources. These college freshmen and sophomores benefit from a trusted relationship with their near-peer coach and access to College Possible’s tech-enabled curriculum, which hopefully increases the likelihood of their remaining in school through graduation.

College Possible has recognized the importance of evidence and data in measuring success and the organization has gone a step further by augmenting their programming in response to early studies and experiments. They are committed to meeting the long-term needs of students and have worked tirelessly to help under-resourced students not only gain acceptance to colleges but to succeed and graduate upon admission.

The data from College Possible alumni is a testament to the program’s impact. In a 2024 survey of alumni, 95% of college graduates were employed, 71% were saving for retirement, 57% have experienced material career advancements, and nearly 40% were pursuing or had completed an advanced degree.

College Possible was created with the noble goal of helping every young person in America pursue higher education and because of the effectiveness of their peer-coaches and their reliance on evidence and data in shaping their programming, they are well on their way to succeeding. The American Idea Foundation looks forward to partnering with them as they continue to scale and assist more deserving students get into college and ultimately graduate.

To learn more about the American Idea Foundation’s 2025 grant recipients, click here. 

CarePortal: Harnessing technology and civil society to help America’s at-risk youth

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By: AIF Staff

American Idea Foundation President Paul Ryan has long believed that America is at her best when civil society, which he often defines as the space between citizens and their government, is strong. Rather than simply waiting on government to help fellow citizens in times of need, Americans have always prided themselves on assisting their neighbors and community members who are struggling, often utilizing churches, philanthropic, or civic groups to organize these efforts.

This community-driven approach to solving some of America’s social challenges is what animates the work being done by CarePortal, one of the organizations that the American Idea Foundation will be supporting in 2025 with financial assistance and technical expertise.

CarePortal is an online hub, a digital platform, and a networking community that links caseworkers, social service agencies, churches, local philanthropists, and aid organizations with individual families and children in times of crisis.

CarePortal predominately serves those involved in the child welfare system or those who are at risk of entering the child welfare system due to preventable causes like poverty and neglect. The organization’s mission is to keep families together, keep children healthy and happy, and harness the power of technology and networking to create a community of caregivers that those in-need can turn to during trying times.

Each service provided or request met via CarePortal is designed to prevent children from entering foster care, to strengthen their families, to improve their educational or health outcomes, and to do so before a breakdown occurs.

Here’s a quick example of how CarePortal works:

  • A social worker or caseworker identifies a specific need for a child, ideally before they enter the foster care system, and enters a request for assistance via the CarePortal platform or app.
  • This request for assistance is then shared with local churches, businesses, non-profits, and individuals, giving them a real-time opportunity to immediately respond and help those in their community.
    • These requests can be for financial assistance on rent, transportation, food, clothing, or any type of support related to a child’s well-being and safety.
  • These requests are met by these civic or faith-based organizations and ideally, a family is strengthened, or a child is helped in a way that prevents them from going into the foster care system.

This video drives home further how CarePortal works with individuals and organizations to help local families and children in need.

CarePortal’s growth is driven by individuals and communities’ desire to support their neighbors in-need. The Wall Street Journal’s Andy Kessler described CarePortal as “The Uber of Foster Care,” and explained the organization’s maturation in this way: 

“The origin story: Healthcare executive Adrien Lewis and his wife began fostering children in 2011 and spent two years trying to get churches in the Kansas City area to recruit foster parents—no easy task. Then, “out of nowhere,” Mr. Lewis says, “I get a vision for CarePortal, to leverage technology to connect. In crisis, those touched by the child-welfare system could connect with churches and people who care in proximity that would want to help if they knew. What would happen if you could expose people to the reality that a bed or crib or car seat, or paying a bill, things that were small, like 6-inch barriers, would actually make a difference to keep kids out of foster care and reunify biological families?” Heck of a vision.

So “with shoestring and duct tape, we pulled together different software platforms and kind of jimmied them together. A pilot of CarePortal hit the market in Austin, Texas, in late 2014. People went nuts over it. The very first request was for a family with a bedbug problem who was trying to adopt a cousin who had been in foster care. Supplies and volunteers solved their bedding problem.”

From those earnest beginnings, CarePortal has developed a network of 1,000 agencies and 6,000 local church and aid response teams across 37 different states that serve a projected 140,000 children and families annually.

In the same Wall Street Journal piece, CarePortal CEO Joe Knittig summed up the group’s work succinctly:

“Uber is to ride-sharing what CarePortal is to care sharing—community-based care sharing. Every day, we have 350 children that are actually being served by their neighbors through CarePortal.” The plan is to scale it to thousands.

Mr. Knittig explains, “CarePortal at its essence is a request-response loop.” On one side are social-service professionals, social workers and others who enter “real-time vetted needs of kids and families in crisis” into the CarePortal app. On the other side are local churches and community responders who see the need and jump into action. “Bedding is the No. 1 need entered into CarePortal. But there could be relational things like ‘I need a mentor.’”

Today, there are over 400,000 children in the U.S. foster care system. The United States spends $30 billion on foster care annually, yet research increasingly shows that preventing foster care is more cost effective and yields better outcomes for both children and families. CarePortal leans into this idea by providing a proactive, connected system of local support for families and children facing immediate crisis.

By combining modern technology with local civic, philanthropic, and faith-based organizations’ desire to help society’s most vulnerable children, CarePortal has hit on an innovative and impactful strategy to keep families intact. The American Idea Foundation is proud to support their efforts to strengthen civil society and assist our neighbors in times of crisis.

To learn more about the American Idea Foundation’s 2025 grant recipients, click here.