Community-Based Poverty Initiative
Removing obstacles. Creating opportunities.
Each of us, in every town, can do more than we think to help our neighbors obtain economic stability. This initiative is based on a shared responsibility, with an emphasis on efforts that produce measurable outcomes.
It is the consequences of poverty that mandate a more urgent response to it.
It should push us to examine whether our current approaches are producing the outcomes we should expect.
The Problem
We won the race to the moon. We lost the War on Poverty.
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy told the American people that the United States would land astronauts on the moon before the decade was out — before the technology to do it even existed. It became a defining part of the American spirit. On July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. We won.
In 1964, just over a year after Kennedy's speech, President Lyndon Johnson declared before Congress an "unconditional war on poverty in America," stating that the richest nation on earth could afford to win it, and could not afford to lose it.
We lost.
We have been going in the wrong direction — and have allowed ourselves to go there.
An Issue of Inefficiency
Government anti-poverty programs have been inconsistent. Some have produced results worthy of taking our hard-earned money, while others have produced minimal results despite costing substantial sums to administer. The failings of programs run by government employees are not entirely their own fault — the responsibility lies with all of us for relying on them to do what we can do ourselves, in our own communities.
For a closer look at what actually drives long-term poverty, the National Academies of Sciences' consensus study Reducing Intergenerational Poverty identifies the key factors that keep families from moving up — and where policy has and hasn't helped. Harvard's Opportunity Atlas shows just how much a child's odds of escaping poverty vary block by block, which is exactly why the CBPI starts at the community level rather than the national one.
Real welfare spending per person in poverty (top) vs. official poverty rate (bottom), 1970–2024
The Solution
The Community-Based Poverty Initiative
Each of us, in every town, can do more than we think to help our neighbors — near or far — obtain economic stability. And when we do, it's not just them who benefit. The entire community grows stronger and healthier.
Our approach is focused on removing obstacles and creating opportunities.
Our approach seeks to move away from heavy reliance on government or nonprofits, and from telling people in their communities what they need to do. Instead, we focus on how communities can be authentic in their connectivity and provision of opportunities.
Standardized definitions. Official poverty statistics are a political tool as much as a measurement one — the federal poverty line hasn't been meaningfully updated in decades, and few political actors want to be the one who raises it, since doing so would shift the poverty rate overnight. The Bergel Institute uses three plain-language tiers instead:
Adopting a locally grounded definition matters — an estimated ~80 million Americans lack the self-sufficiency to cover rent and food without assistance, far more than official "deep poverty" counts alone capture.
Lasting economic mobility requires more than temporary aid—it takes an organized, community-wide effort. Our framework translates this model into immediate action through sector-specific Action Guides designed for local leaders and grassroots partners.
Why the Federal Poverty Line Falls Short
A 1960s number that hasn't kept up.
We're stuck using the FPL as our "deep poverty" marker because it's the government-mandated measure — but that doesn't mean it's a good one. The official poverty line is adjusted for inflation every year — but never for the fact that American incomes have grown faster than inflation over the last six decades. The result: the FPL keeps rising in dollar terms while quietly falling further behind what a typical household actually earns. In 1967, that gap was $162 a year. Today it's over $9,700.
It's Also the Same Number Everywhere
The federal poverty line is a single flat dollar figure, whether a family lives in rural Mississippi or in Boston. It has no way to account for how much it actually costs to get by in a given place — and the gap holds up in every single state.
What a family of four actually needs to get by, state by state, vs. the one flat federal number (2025)
The FPL's household-size adjustment doesn't fare much better: it adds a fixed ~$5,500 for every extra person, no matter where that household lives. A local cost-of-living benchmark scales by percentage instead — so the gap between the two shifts in size from one household to the next, but it never closes, at any family size, in any state.
Our Approach
Nine sectors. Nine areas of poverty.
A community is not defined by longitude, latitude, or artificial lines on a map. A community is a place where people focus on the good of the whole. The Bergel Institute has identified nine sectors and nine areas of poverty — overlapping ways to help you establish where the need lies within your own community.
Nine Sectors
01
Business
02
Civic
03
Faith
04
Education
05
Non-profit
06
Healthcare
07
Philanthropy
08
Government
09
Individuals & Families
Nine Areas
01
Housing
02
Health
03
Safety
04
Employment
05
Finance
06
Education
07
Child Care
08
Transportation
09
Basic Need Items
Implementation Roadmap
Four steps to bring the CBPI to your community.
Complete a Needs Assessment
There may be one need; there may be many — pick one to solve. Identify how many people in your community are living below the poverty threshold — unable to be self-sufficient — and use the Nine Sectors and Nine Areas above to identify which issues are most prevalent.
Identify Your Anchor Institutions
These institutions can come from any sector, including individuals and families. They can include businesses, civic associations, educational institutions, faith communities, poverty nonprofits, locally elected officials, or any organization that can take the lead in solving poverty in a community.
Develop Community Solutions
Review The Bergel Institute's Action Guide for sector-by-sector suggestions to combat poverty. For example, educational institutions can bring education programs to shelters and affordable housing communities. Collaborate with your anchor institutions to develop feasible community solutions.
Implement Your Solutions
Set a timetable for implementation and hold yourself and your community accountable for the outcomes you set out to achieve. Remain focused on those outcomes, and achieve them by whatever means necessary. Lives depend on it.
Ready to bring a Community-Based Poverty Initiative to your own community?
Get in TouchWhere We're Starting
Two very different communities. The same core problem.
We're currently talking with local individuals and institutions in Hancock County, Tennessee and Muskegon County, Michigan to explore what a Community-Based Poverty Initiative could look like there. Nothing is implemented yet — this is early, on-the-ground listening to understand what each community actually needs before anything is built.
Hancock County, Tennessee
A rural Appalachian county of about 7,200 people — among the poorest counties in the state, and in the country.
Muskegon County, Michigan
A county of about 177,000 people on Michigan's lake shore. The county-wide numbers look moderate — but poverty is heavily concentrated in the City of Muskegon itself, where the median household income is $44,735 and the poverty rate is nearly 25%.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, 2024.
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQ
Why use a new approach?
The length of time and amount of funds spent to eliminate poverty, compared with the results achieved, necessitate a new approach. It is time to have the courage to make fundamental changes and rely not on the government or even nonprofits, but on one another. Each sector and organization in a community can play a meaningful role — not in a check-box manner, but in an outcomes-based effort.
What are the core tenets of the Community-Based Poverty Initiative?
- A plan that places responsibility on the whole community.
- An opportunity to not only eradicate daily economic suffering, but to build a strong community for the long term.
- Outcomes-based, not ideas-oriented.
- Removing obstacles and creating opportunities.
What is an example of identifying an area in need?
Take, for example, a community that faces an absence of employment opportunities. This community would prioritize solutions that assist residents in building generational wealth. It could also face issues with safety — high levels of personal and property crime, necessitating solutions that mitigate crime occurring at night.
How can I start a CBPI in my own community?
Contact The Bergel Institute for more information on how to start a pilot program in your community.