The New Hope Project

About this page

GiveWell aims to find the best giving opportunities we can and recommend them to donors. We tend to put a lot of investigation into the organizations we find most promising, and de-prioritize others based on limited information. When we decide not to prioritize an organization, we try to create a brief writeup of our thoughts on that charity because we want to be as transparent as possible about our reasoning.

The following write-up should be viewed in this context: it explains why we determined that we wouldn't be prioritizing the organization in question as a potential top charity. This write-up should not be taken as a "negative rating" of the charity. Rather, it is our attempt to be as clear as possible about the process by which we came to our top recommendations.

A note on this page's publication date

The last time we examined the New Hope Project was in May 2011. In our latest open-ended review of charities, we determined that it was unlikely to meet our criteria based on our past examination of it, so we did not revisit it.

We invite all charities that feel they meet our criteria to apply for consideration.

The content we created in May 2011 appears below. This content is likely to be no longer fully accurate, both with respect to what it says about the New Hope Project and with respect to what it implies about our own views and positions. With that said, we do feel that the takeaways from this examination are sufficient not to prioritize re-opening our investigation of this organization at this time.

Published: May 2011

According to its website, "The New Hope Project is a Milwaukee-based nonprofit organization dedicated to helping individuals leave poverty through work. New Hope both directly helps individuals find jobs and advance in the workforce and shapes policies that provide greater work opportunities for low-income individuals."1

The New Hope Project was created in 1994 to pilot and test an employment assistance program. This program was evaluated in a randomized controlled trial by MDRC.2 Currently, New Hope is implementing a new program, the "Supporting Families" program.3 According to New Hope's website, MDRC will also evaluate this program with a randomized controlled trial.4

Sources

  • 1

    New Hope Project, "The New Hope Project: Building Bridges to Work."

  • 2

    Miller et al. 2008.

  • 3

    "For the past two years, New Hope has administered the Supporting Families employment program that uses the “transitional jobs” model with its participants. While NHP works with any low income adults who are looking for work, we have a special focus on non-custodial parents and those who have been convicted of a crime." New Hope Project, "About NHP."

  • 4

    "To test how effective the program is, MDRC, a New York-based research and evaluation firm, in collaboration with the Urban Institute and the University of Michigan, will assign one group of men to the program and the other to a “control” group that does not get the services provided by the program. Evaluators will examine long-term employment, income, and incarceration rates. The results of the study, due in 2009, should both establish whether transitional jobs are effective and also, by comparing different initiatives, identify models that work especially well and people who benefit most."

    New Hope Project, "Employment Program."