In these last few incredibly busy months at CLASP, writing this letter offers me a rare moment to stop and reflect. It is with this in mind that I start my final organizational update letter and brief video message by thanking you, our donors, for the extraordinary support you’ve shown both me and CLASP over the years.

The day I joined CLASP in 2013, during President Obama’s second term, feels so long ago right now. It was a time when the world seemed more stable and predictable, when the huge accomplishment of the Affordable Care Act was opening doors for people with low incomes, but when it was hard to see a path for the other big changes that we knew the nation needed. Yet from the beginning, I believed that CLASP’s history of persistent advocacy, unmatched quality and integrity, and ability to move nimbly and without fear to the most urgent issues – along with its powerful and then-recent commitment to applying a racial equity lens to our work – made it the right organization to meet the future head-on. I believed that whatever the future held, CLASP was the right place to seize and advance every opportunity for racial and economic justice, even with its modest size of about 30 staff and a $6 million budget. 

So much has unfolded since then, and CLASP has been in the midst of all of it. During the Trump years, we were at the forefront of fighting back against the attacks on the core federal programs for people with low incomes, Black and brown communities, and immigrants and their families. Then in just two years came the pandemic and recession, the ongoing racial reckoning, the election of a new Administration and Senate, the January 6 insurrection with its deep threat to democracy, and then the opportunity last spring to respond to the multiple crises with large changes that CLASP has been advancing for decades, through the American Rescue Plan Act. 

I came to CLASP because I believed the organization was extraordinarily well-positioned to face the future — whatever that future held. What I learned through this tumultuous time is that, if anything, I had underestimated the magnitude of the impacts CLASP and our partners would make, by defeating terrible proposals and advancing positive change for millions of children, families, and working people across the country. I am so proud of all the successes we achieved together. 

Because of our crucial role leading both defense and offense, we grew over this period to a staff of 50 and an annual budget of about $10 million. Our growth is the direct result of the generosity and dedication of our network of funders and donors, our staff and leadership, CLASP’s alumni, the Board, and our partners. Thank you all so very much.

Just a few of CLASP’s highlights over these years include:

• Reforming the Delivery of Health, Nutrition, and Child Care Benefits in the States: Throughout these years, a core role for CLASP has been to work with state advocates and decision-makers around the country so people actually get the help they need from core federal programs – tearing down barriers, hassle, bureaucracy, and state rules designed to cut costs or keep people out. Among many examples, CLASP has worked since the passage of the Affordable Care Act—which included expansion of Medicaid for the people with the lowest incomes—with state agencies and advocates to streamline administrative procedures in Medicaid as well as nutrition assistance (through SNAP). We also helped states promote policy improvements in Medicaid around mental health for people with low incomes, especially mothers experiencing depression, and young people.
• Elevating and Implementing our Racial Equity Vision: Since CLASP’s racial equity journey began over a decade ago, it has included many components – a commitment to racial equity as core to our mission, major changes in recruitment leading to a far more diverse staff and Board, new and deeper partnerships with civil and immigrant rights colleagues and people with lived experience, and a far deeper focus in our advocacy on understanding the history of racism and the current racialized outcomes when we analyze problems and then identify solutions that take on race directly. So, in the spring of 2020, amid the pandemic and as the racial justice reckoning catapulted racial equity to the top of the nation’s agenda, CLASP saw the need to do more, including a transformational plan to bring together changes across the range of our internal policies and a policy framework to share learning and hold ourselves accountable across the whole range of our external advocacy. For example, we’ve worked closely with the Biden Administration, Congress, and states to help them understand and fix the problem of administrative burdens that hold people back from getting core benefits and systematically harm people of color.
• Defeating Attacks and Advancing Health and Wellbeing for Immigrant Families: CLASP and the National Immigration Law Center co-created the Protecting Immigrant Families Coalition to bring the anti-poverty, children’s, nutrition, health, and faith-based communities together with immigrant rights and civil rights communities to fight the Trump Administration’s public charge rule, which is a racial wealth test that was designed to keep millions of immigrants and their families from getting health and nutrition benefits they deserved. After generating 250,000 public comments opposed to the rule and ensuring that the Biden Administration immediately stopped it from going forward, the PIF campaign today has 500+ organizational members committed to a future vision of health and wellbeing in partnership with immigrant families and communities. 
• Responding to the Pandemic: During the COVID-19 crisis, CLASP stepped up across the board – responding to immediate needs of the pandemic, sending new ideas to Congress, providing technical assistance to federal and state agencies, and investing in partnerships with our advocacy colleagues. We drew attention to the disproportionate effects of the pandemic-associated economic disruption on young people, advocated successfully for $50 billion of pandemic relief to the child care sector, helped states implement new options for getting food to children dependent on school and child care feeding programs, and worked with Congress on the first-ever national paid family leave program (which, disappointingly, has not yet been made permanent).
• Advocating for Good Jobs for All Workers: Our long-time focus on making jobs better – especially for workers who now have low wages and no benefits, including young people and women, especially women of color, and their families – became even more urgent and obvious with the pandemic. In particular, we are helping to lead the effort for policies that support care – meaning that families can get affordable access to quality child care, that workers have paid leave to care for their own or a family member’s illness, and that people who work in child care and in home and community-based services for seniors and people with disabilities can thrive. For the first time, these policies all passed the House of Representatives in 2021, but there is still a long slog to finishing the fight.
• Lifting Up the Voices and the Vision of Young Leaders: A multi-year focus on the engagement of young adults in CLASP’s policy work led in 2020 to the creation of the New Deal for Youth, which has brought several dozen youth changemakers together to define and implement a powerful multi-pronged agenda for young people today.

We’ve shown we can step up when it counts. I have no doubt CLASP will fiercely tackle the battles ahead. But it won’t be easy, as many fights involve systemic issues and will require time, sustained investments, and solutions that are both bold and practical to turn the tide in a sustainable way in favor of communities we care about.

As I prepare for my departure, I am extraordinarily optimistic and excited about the future of CLASP, and I am delighted that the passionate and talented Indivar “Indi” Dutta-Gupta will be leading the next stage of CLASP’s journey, beginning on June 1. We need his leadership, dedication, and innovative ideas to fight poverty and inequality now more than ever. If ever there was a time to step up and show your support for CLASP’s mission, it is now. Join me in continuing or increasing your investment in CLASP. Without action, we could lose so many of the gains over the last decade — for women, children, youth and young adults, working people, immigrants, those with low incomes, and communities of color—especially Black and brown communities. 

I will be so proud to join the ranks of CLASP alumni in just a matter of days. And I am so deeply grateful to all of you – I hope you will join me in remaining a committed partner to CLASP for many years to come. Your unwavering support has played a large role in building CLASP’s long-term success as the powerhouse anti-poverty and racial equity policy advocacy leader it is today. Your sustained generosity and partnership will help ensure a smooth leadership transition and an ever-evolving CLASP.

Thank you so much for all you have done and continue to do for CLASP.

Yours,

Olivia