Press Release

By: AIF Staff

Janesville, WI – In honor of Janesville, Wisconsin’s 180th birthday, the Janesville Gazette has been highlighting one Rock County resident per decade who played an outsized role in shaping the city’s trajectory.

As part of its “19 People for 19 Decades” feature, the Janesville Gazette selected Paul Ryan as its “Person of the Decade” for the 2010s, a period which saw him go from House Budget Committee Chairman to Vice Presidential nominee to Ways and Means Chair to Speaker of the House to President of the American Idea Foundation.  

The entire article is accessible here and excerpts of the Gazette’s feature, written by Tom Miller, follow.

“When Paul Ryan was selected by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to be his vice-presidential running mate in the 2012 national election, Janesville, Wisconsin vaulted into national prominence.

Networks and newspapers sent crews to the city of 63,000 to chronicle Ryan’s rise from his election to Congress in 1999 to one of the leaders of the Republican Party.

While Ryan left national politics in 2020, his influence—both nationally and locally—has made him The Gazette’s Person of the Decade of the 2010s in the paper’s on-going observation of the 180th birthday of Janesville.”

***

“I grew up on Garfield Avenue in Janesville,” he said in a phone interview in November. “I went to Marshall (Middle School) and Craig. I never thought of any of this stuff.

“When I ran for Congress, I just wanted to be a policy guy working on economic policy,” Ryan said. “The things I’m most known for, running for vice president and being Speaker are things I didn’t seek. They came to me.”

***

During his 20 years as a congressman, Ryan often had to balance national interests with what was needed in his six-county district in Southern Wisconsin. Ryan said he always made clear the principles that he advocated, mainly balancing the national budget and supply-side economics….

His popularity was the result of his steady personality as he became a national figure. It was not uncommon for Janesville residents to see him at local grocery or hardware stores.

Ryan never had a problem with balancing his love for the people who voted him into Congress and what was right for the nation.

“Very rarely do you have a conflict between your district and the nation,” he said. “It really doesn’t work that way.”

Among the major Janesville projects Ryan championed was gaining funds for a runway extension at the Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport to help General Motors and firefighting equipment for the Janesville Fire Department, and $1.38 million to develop the Ice Age Trail. In 2012, Ryan supported a request for $3.8 million from the Department of Transportation for the 43,000-square foot bus transit center on Black Bridge Road.

***

One of the projects Ryan could not complete while in Washington was keeping the General Motors plant open. GM closed the assembly plant in April, 2009. The plant opened in 1919 and was the oldest operating GM at the time.

“Singles and doubles,” Ryan said. “We knew we weren’t going to replace this massive employer with another massive employer. We concluded that instead of going for a grand slam, let’s just go for a bunch of singles and doubles and make a more durable economy where the city’s economy is not dependent on one massive employer. That can be very volatile and risky.”

The plan has worked. “It’s thriving,” Ryan said of the local economy.

***

Ryan, who has always been a proponent of term limits, left the national politics in 2019. His three children were entering high school, and Ryan wanted to be there for them.

“I wanted to get out in time to be a real dad,” he said. “I did not want my children to have an absentee father their entire childhood….”

“I always knew I didn’t want to be a lifetime politician,” Ryan said. “I always knew there was going to be shelf life to my political career. I didn’t want to be in it for 40 years like a lot of people I knew. I did 20.

“I looked at my counterparts, who at the time were Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell who were like 40-year politicians. I just didn’t want my life to look like that….

***

The now 55-year-old has continued his public service locally with his American Idea Foundation that helps people in poverty. Among his other projects is teaching Economics and being on a poverty economics board at the University of Notre Dame, and serving on several board of directors, including SHINE Medical Technologies.

“My vocational stuff is my poverty work and my think tank work and teaching,” Ryan said. “On the business side of things, I am a partner in a private equity fund that Mitt Romney founded 20 years ago that invests in founder-owned businesses to help grow those businesses, which takes me around the country.”

“I go with what I call a ‘portfolio approach’” Ryan said of his present job status…. “My mind is always racing. I just want to set my life to work on the causes I believe in. Where I find it most interesting is helping founders grow their businesses. I find that super interesting.”

***

Ryan spends his winters near Washington D.C., but Janesville blood still runs through him.

“I represented my town in Congress for 20 years,” he said. “It was an absolute gift. It was the honor of my life to do it.”

By: AIF Staff

Since 2022, the American Idea Foundation has offered policy advice, generated awareness, and provided financial support to nearly 30 organizations across the United States. The goal is to help these organizations as they work to alleviate poverty and address complex social challenges in a data-driven, evidence-based way.

Inviting academics to evaluate a program can be a nerve-wrecking experience, but former Speaker of the House and AIF President Paul Ryan believes it is necessary if America wants to break the cycle of poverty and overcome the problems plaguing our communities. In Ryan’s view, it is vital that these front-line organizations match their powerful anecdotal evidence with data and empirically-sound research. By doing so, these organizations will arm policymakers and community leaders with the data and evidence to prioritize what works, deprioritize what doesn’t, and develop a more targeted and effective approach to fighting poverty.

One of the organizations that is committed to developing an initial base of evidence and data around their programming isFamily Promise.

In 2024, AIF partnered with  Family Promise of West Michigan as they, along with Family Promise of Spokane, and the Lord’s Place (located in West Palm Beach), conduct a randomized controlled trial with researchers at Notre Dame’s Laboratory for Economic Opportunities, to study how flexible financial assistance during diversion conversations impacts housing shelter use, housing stability issues, and other outcomes.

The goal of the trial is to determine if individuals who are diverted from homeless shelters, largely through financial assistance or other support services, will have increased housing stability and improved outcomes in terms of income, employment, and overall well-being.

This year, with  the RCT of Family Promise still ongoing, the American Idea Foundation will focus on helping build Family Promise’s capacity in the state of Wisconsin.

Family Promise of Wisconsin is a state-based affiliate of the national Family Promise organization, which works with faith-based and community organizations to move families to stable housing where they can grow and thrive. Family Promise of Wisconsin is focused on ending homelessness by connecting families in need with a suite of services like supplies to meet their basic needs, access to family support and emergency assistance, and other stabilization efforts.

Family Promise of Wisconsin employs a case management model, which means providing individualized, wrap-around support for families and their children during times of great need. The people engaging Family Promise of Wisconsin are often seeking urgent assistance with basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter and Family Promise works tirelessly to address their immediate problems while identifying long-term solutions for shelter.

They try to divert clients away from homelessness and costly shelter stays by instead providing them with alternative temporary housing options. Most individuals who enter emergency shelters tend to remain homeless longer, which is why Family Promise seeks to intervene before that occurs, operating with a lighter touch and supporting individuals as they find alternatives like short-term rental housing or staying with family and friends.

Family Promise uses local resources, volunteers, and organizations to create a network of assistance that keeps families intact and children healthy. As part of the wrap-around support, families are given access to Family Promise services like tutoring, summer programming, and trauma-informed mental health care. The video below provides an overview of their holistic approach.

Across the country, Family Promise has a network of 200 sites in 40 different states. Since 1988, they have helped over 1,000,000 families in times of great need. Most of their families (50%) are minorities and 100% are low-income or no-income. In 2024, they served 25,000 families nation-wide, 50% of whom were minorities and 100% are low-or-no income households.

Family Promise is looking to expand to 8 sites operating full-time in Wisconsin. Thus far, they have served 516 Wisconsin families with 936 children through their four core programs: Prevention, Shelter, Housing, and Stabilization. The support provided by the American Idea Foundation will go towards expanding Family Promise’s operations into areas like Monroe, Ozaukee, and Washington Counties, helping train staff and volunteers, and giving the organization added capacity to help more families and kids with emergency stabilization needs.

As Family Promise summarized in their 2024 Annual Report: “Preventing and ending family homelessness requires a community response. Family Promise maximizes impact through extensive partnerships and collaborative contributions at the national level, as well as through local businesses and community organizations within every community.” The American Idea Foundation is proud to assist them in this noble endeavor and help build a base of evidence that hopefully validates the profound impact Family Promise is having in Wisconsin and around the country.

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

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.

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.