Project: EVALUATION OF NEW YORK CITY FOOD STAMP PAPERLESS APPLICATION DEMONSTRATION

Sponsor: New York City Human Resources Administration (with grant funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food, and Nutrition Service)
Status: In process 
IPS Staff: Demetra Smith Nightingale and Burt Barnow

Purpose and Approach
New York City’s Human Resources Administration (HRA) administers cash assistance and food stamp programs in the city. The agency is piloting a new outreach and application strategy. Nonprofit organizations, under contract from HRA, conduct mobile outreach to specified target populations potentially eligible for food stamps (e.g., disabled individuals, recipients of Supplemental Security Income, and working recipients), enter preliminary application and verification information electronically into a newly-developed management data system, and arrange for formal application with HRA employees. The pilot is to operate in five HRA model centers.

A non-experimental evaluation design is being used to measure basic program outcomes and document implementation of the program. The evaluation is primarily concerned with determining operational outcomes (e.g., application rate, enrollment rate by target group, error rates) of the outreach initiative within HRA and in the context of the surrounding nonprofit community. The basic model involves measuring the quantifiable outcomes for each of the five model HRA centers participating in the initiative, and (1) analyzing the change and trends over time and (2) comparing the trends and changes in the outcomes in the model centers to the trends and changes observed in comparable or all other HRA centers in the city.

Results and Publications
Forthcoming.