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Designing essential financial services for those in need
Summary
Please join us at the next Civic Design Community call where you'll hear from Alan Williams, VP Design at Propel and Rose Deeb, Senior Content Designer. They'll walk us through their Providers application and share how they deliver essential financial services and tools to over 5 million families living with limited income who utilize the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Benefits (SNAP) program. The Providers application provides participants in any state with timely, localized updates about changes to benefit allocations, and details about benefits that users may be eligible for but not yet aware of, all in plain language. https://www.joinpropel.com/
Key Insights
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The Benefits Hub started as a hackathon project and rapidly evolved into a critical tool serving over 3 million monthly users.
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Propel operates with a small, part-time team coordinating clearly defined roles to maintain and improve the Benefits Hub.
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User engagement metrics, such as 4 visits per month per user, indicate high recurring use tied to timely benefit updates.
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Benefits Hub content evolved from a bulky banner and a single scrolling page into a streamlined carousel and pillar pages with actionable calls to action.
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Tracking direct benefit uptake post-referral is not possible, but click tracking and population-level data are utilized to inform updates.
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Net Promoter Scores and qualitative feedback from approximately 20% of users provide actionable insights on content timeliness and specificity.
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Marketplace partnerships are guided by strict principles prioritizing user financial benefit and avoiding click-maximizing incentives.
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Categorical eligibility is leveraged to infer user access to related government benefits with minimal user data collection.
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Timely publication of policy updates requires close collaboration with government stakeholders and ongoing community engagement.
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Iterative, data-driven improvements like CMS templating and layout standardization have enhanced content consistency and UX.
Notable Quotes
"Benefits information really complex. Making them accessible is god's work in effect."
"We launched the Benefits Hub in just a few days during a hackathon at the start of the pandemic."
"Three million people access this information through the Benefits Hub every month, often multiple times."
"It takes a village to maintain the Benefits Hub with clear roles and responsibilities among a part-time team."
"Users want answers to urgent benefit questions but also opportunities to explore other programs they might qualify for."
"Our content must be concise, consistent, and actionable to reduce uncertainty for users."
"We can't track actual benefit uptake after users click through to official government sites, only clicks and visits."
"About 20% of users shown our Net Promoter Score survey provide written feedback that can be analyzed for improvements."
"Marketplace partners have to demonstrably save people money, aligning with Propel’s mission."
"Categorical eligibility allows us to communicate benefit access without asking for personal data directly."
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