Over the next two years, the Economic Security Project project will invest $10 million in projects to explore the best ways to design an economic system with recurring cash benefits — including how to structure, fund, talk about, and execute a basic income program.

The project’s initial grant recipients will benefit from a preliminary investment totaling more than half a million dollars for projects including:

• Roosevelt Institute will conduct macroeconomic modeling of cash stipends, as well as behavioral research and public opinion research around universal basic income.
• The Center for Popular Democracy and some of its affiliates are exploring campaigns to strengthen the safety net in ways that lay the foundation for universal basic income as part of a robust system of social provision.
• Niskanen Center will carry out policy research on the multiple ways recurring cash stipends might be implemented in the US.
• Alaska Group American Center will help fight the cuts to the yearly dividends that all Alaskans receive from the state’s Permanent Fund, widely viewed as one of the key existing examples of cash dividends.
• Chesapeake Climate Action Network will study the feasibility of carbon pricing and dividends at the municipal level to fund a basic income.
• GiveDirectly will support a longitudinal basic income study in Kenya and how lessons learned could be applied to the U.S. context.

We have more questions than answers, and look forward to working with these groups and many, many more to figure out how cash for all can become a reality in the United States.

Let us know if you have an idea here, and please donate to the fund if you’re inspired. 100% of your donation will go to the most interesting, promising projects we find. Onward.