Off the Funding Cliff: Building Sustainable Support for Digital Adoption – Episode 31 of Unbuffered

Christopher Mitchell (00:16)
Hey, we’re back with another episode of Unbuffered, the Unbuffered Podcast with Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self Reliance. Unbuffered and poorly mic’d. I’m talking today with Samantha Schartman with Connect Humanity, where you are the Director of Philanthropic Programs at Connect Humanity. Welcome.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (00:36)
Thank you, Chris. Always great to see you.

Christopher Mitchell (00:39)
So we’re cheating in that you and I already know how the interview went ’cause we just finished it. Only I recorded the first half with the wrong mic. And so it doesn’t sound this good. So I just want to let people know halfway through I’ll come back on on the good mic. but we’re gonna transition right now over to that interview.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (00:56)
Okay, no spoilers.

Christopher Mitchell (01:00)
Yeah, so we’re gonna be talking about a a guide that has your name all over it, has your fingerprints throughout it with a lot of great collaborators.

and I realize I never put this in the notes and then I always tell people, can just give us like, you know, the the synopsis of what Connect Humanity is for people that are not familiar with it?

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (01:19)
Sure. So Connect Humanity is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, but we are also an emerging CDFI. So that’s a Community Development Financial Institution. We’re on the track to becoming that. Basically, we were created to provide access to capital for broadband, for community-centered broadband projects. So we want to make sure that the people that are most interested in delivering equitable.

access and meaningful use to to communities, have the access to capital that enables those plans to move forward everywhere, not just where it’s most prof profitable.

Christopher Mitchell (02:00)
And we have a history of working together, both you and I, but then more more significantly Connect Humanity and ILSR on on some of

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (02:08)
That’s right.

Christopher Mitchell (02:08)
these projects. So we’re we’re big fans of everything that y’all do.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (02:12)
And likewise.

Christopher Mitchell (02:13)
and now you have published the Alt Funding Field Guide, Building Sustainable Funding for Digital Adoption, which is remarkable and and just a really wonderful contribution, I think, to where we have to go. since we’re out of money.

What do we do? We get creative. We have to figure things out. That’s the subject of of this report, right?

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (02:35)
That’s correct. Yes. So the Alt Funding Guide really came out of a recognition of a pattern that has been going on in the digital equity inclusion fields for a number of years, really since its inception. and saying we have there’s gotta be a better way, something a way to sustain this work so that we’re not constantly

You know, building bridges and then falling off funding cliffs at the end and having to rebuild all over again. So the Alt Funding Guide goes sector by sector. We have six chapters, so six chaff six sectors. I’m sure we we anticipate doing more in the future. but we go into those sectors by thinking about the inverse of what we typically think about in this field, which is

We do such great work for the individual and the individual social impact of you know we helped someone get a house, get a new job,

Christopher Mitchell (03:38)
Right, by we, I think you mean like social worker types, right?

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (03:41)
Yes, we do all these great social impact things. instead we are talking about what value beyond that person are we creating in the local economy? And

in the various sectors. So how does having people digitally and meaningfully skilled and connected, how does that impact healthcare and the healthcare in the local healthcare providers and stakeholders? How does that impact your affordable housing sector? How does that affect your local workforce sector? etc etc and there’s number of different stakeholders within those sectors. there’s different value propositions for each of those

We break it down each chapter at a time.

Christopher Mitchell (04:25)
Right. And I think the words that we’re talking about in a little bit, we’re gonna go a little bit into your history, but we’re gonna come back to the report and and the alternative model. is not just basically being like, we have to figure out how to get other people to write us checks. It’s it’s actually it’s actually more involved than that. And and

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (04:41)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (04:42)
I think the term co investment that comes up a lot starts to to make that case. and so I think it’s important for people to know that this report isn’t just sort of saying, Hey, like a bunch of this stuff would be nice.

You you have guides from written by people that have been working in the in each field for a long time, and it has practical advice for how people in a community could go out tomorrow or today if they speed read and they can

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (05:06)
Ha ha ha.

Christopher Mitchell (05:07)
go and start having conversations to put some of this into practice.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (05:11)
That’s right. we want it to be actionable. But the one thing I always want to start off with, because we got to set expectations. It’s not a quick fix, right? None of this is a read the report, plug in a new concept, and all of a sudden it’s raining cash, right? That’s not gonna happen. These are long-term relationship development.

you know, pro opportunities that we’re surfacing and allowing you to think more strategically about how you position the value of digital skills and connectivity programs to a different set of stakeholders that haven’t traditionally been looked at as co-investors in the work.

Christopher Mitchell (05:55)
Right. And I think one of the challenges will be just the the how do we bring them off the sidelines? And so that’s something that we’ll be talking about. but I did want to enable label them. I’m not gonna ask you to do it off the top of your head, so I wrote it down. But the six

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (06:09)
Ha ha.

Christopher Mitchell (06:10)
areas in which you have poured your life into for the past year or so have come out to be currently education, healthcare, telecom, which you can think of as being like the industry around the Internet Service Providers, workforce development, housing.

And local government.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (06:26)
That’s correct.

Christopher Mitchell (06:27)
And housing is super meaty. It’s one of the it’s I the only two that I haven’t listened to yet are workforce development and housing. and I’m I’m getting through those. but I did notice that housing was the most significant

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (06:40)
Yes, it is. That one there’s just so many different stakeholder groups and different financial mechanisms at work within affordable housing. everything from new market tax credits to, you know, C D BEAD G, you know, grant you know awards and

Different actors, there’s the developers and then there’s the managers. So there’s just so, so, so many different aspects to the work. It it became quite a meaty sector. To be honest, the healthcare sector was pretty big too. we I just were I think we’re able to narrow it a little bit more than we were successful at doing the same for housing.

Christopher Mitchell (07:27)
Well, they’re all terrific that I’ve heard so far. I mean, I mean housing could be terrible. We’ve had Catherine Crago on before and she’s wonderful, but she she could have I mean, I just like to throw little surprises in here for people that listen. I don’t want these interviews to go

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (07:38)
Right. I mean Catherine’s is

gonna be clearly horrible. No, she is phenomenal and she is

She’s so brilliant in her knowledge of the sector and the way the finances work within it that it’s just a lot there’s a lot of density there. So and she ’cause she

gives you all of it.

Christopher Mitchell (08:03)
Well I’ve talked with her quite a bit about it. She’s really helped inform my understanding of these issues. So I can

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (08:07)
Fantastic.

Christopher Mitchell (08:08)
expect that I’ll be I’ll be seeing that when I get there. but before we do go further into the report, I did want to ask you, you know, what what scars do you have that that you did not learn sufficiently from that you wanted to sti spend all of this time working on this? What what’s your background in in coming into this?

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (08:28)
Well, Chris, I know you share a lot of this background. you know, many of us. So I got my my biggest start. I did some community technology work prior to to the early 2000s, but really my biggest stint was working on the BTOP program. So I worked with Bill Callahan and a number of others on the Connect Your Community program. And we were based out of Cleveland, Ohio. That’s where I am.

And we were a five-state program. It was a $19 million pro project. We worked in five states and we had 15 partners in seven different geographic areas. It was very large scale. We ended up training 33,000 first-time computer users. And I had the receipts to prove it, unlike many of our programs at that time, because it was not a requirement.

but we Bill and I decided that we needed to have data to start showing and demonstrating the impact of this work. So it was quite a a lot. I there’s there’s that’s another podcast. but the point that I wanna drive home is that this was a major federal investment at that time. And

Christopher Mitchell (09:44)
Right. So I just wanted

to I wanna I wanted to make sure that people knew the BTOP program was and it doesn’t really matter what the name of it was, but it came out of the twenty ten era, the the two thousand nine bill. We’re coming out of the recession, kind of the signature stimulus bill that Obama passed, and

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (10:00)
That’s right.

Christopher Mitchell (10:00)
and it funded a bunch of work for both infrastructure and in the beginning of the federal government starting to really focus on digital skills in a sort of comprehensive if temporary way, as I think you’re about to note.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (10:12)
Yes,

yes. so it was called the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program. So that’s that’s what BTOP stands for. it’s yes, and it was actually a suite of programs, much in the way that our more current programs, BEAD, DEA, were part of, you know, one one comprehensive infrastructure bill. So at that time, this was a what they called an SBA program, a sustainable broadband adopter.

Our job was to go out and get people connected to Internet. We did that, 33,000 of them. And to do that, it took us about a hundred staff people across those five states. We employed a lot of people. So not only was this an effort towards in increasing connectivity and meaningful use of digital resources, it was also a jobs program. And I think we often forget about that.

And so, you know, we trained people, we invested in their professional development, we built careers, we built people that cared about what they were doing. And roughly three years later, we showed all of them the unemployment line for all of their hard work. And I think that there was an assumption that if we were successful and we could demonstrate

that we did a good job and we had meaningful impact and we had the numbers that somebody would like reinvest in this. Like, hey, that we should keep doing that. That didn’t happen.

Christopher Mitchell (11:44)
Right, and think Congress was the expectation,

right? That the Congress would see value in appropriating more dollars most

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (11:50)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (11:50)
likely.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (11:51)
Right. That we would create like a new line of work, that this would become something that was ongoing. That did not happen. I’m sh I’m sure there were plenty of naysayers out there that were like, nah, I never expected that. I being one of those newly trained, you know, idealistic people, did, right? I mean, I think we all grow up thinking like if we work hard, we continue to get to do good work.

Christopher Mitchell (12:16)
Well, when you see the value of it over and over again, and mean like like you said, so in twenty nineteen you did publish a report and people can check it out to see the results,

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (12:23)
Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (12:24)
but but you knew that you were creating a lot of value. It’s not like you were just pushing paper.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (12:29)
There’s a great report that’s published. You can find it online, or I can post it for for you, Chris. It’s called Adoption Persistence. So we surveyed all those 33,000 people. We s we did a cross-section. It’s like 450 of the same people we talked to at six months, a year out from the program, and then six years out.

Christopher Mitchell (12:50)
Wow.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (12:50)
And I

Think I’m almost might be one of the only people to have actually done that with the same group of people over that long of time. Very hard

Christopher Mitchell (13:00)
it’s very hard to do.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (13:01)
to do. The reason we could do it was because of the relationships that were built with the organizations that delivered that training. And that’s one of the major findings. But, anyways, I digress. The point of the matter is, is we created this work. We created and invested in people, in programs, and it went away.

And I would say, and this is not an actual number, but like my gut check number is like our field went from, you know, these calls with all these program managers across the country and we all knew each other and blah blah blah. Like we reduced by like 70, 80 percent the entire field. Because you know, people had to go back and do other things after the the money was gone and you know, and so

It really retracted. It to me, it was awful. I was eight months pregnant at the time that I was shown the unemployment line. That was a particularly challenging time in my life. And I really have PTSD. I looked around, I saw my friends struggling. people that wanted to continue doing the work and couldn’t. And I was I think lucky and scrappy enough.

That I dug in and I found a way to keep doing it. Meaning, like I worked part-time jobs that were not in this thing and were doing it on the side because I refused to give up. And that has turned into now, you know, over 20-year career of doing it. And I see this same thing happening. So we had DEA, right? The Digital Equity Act grant.

Right. We had this big promise and we started building programs. So during 2020, we had, you know, COVID happened, everyone realized that we needed digital skills. It was this big deal. overnight we went from, you know, the work being educating our local officials and stakeholders on why this was so important to okay, guys, go do it. And it was like a light switch. And

Christopher Mitchell (15:04)
Right. In that case in that in that case I think it

was like to be clear, my sense is is like the federal government gave a lot of money to local governments and stun and state

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (15:13)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (15:14)
governments that filtered down and phil in philanthropy stepped in and started writing checks. And so local governments and philanthropy basically were choosing local organizations to staff up

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (15:24)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (15:24)
to provide these sorts of services because they recognized that people couldn’t continue their lives without some basic digital skills.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (15:31)
That’s right.

Yeah. I mean, kids weren’t able to go to school. You know, people were trying to work from home that never did before. Like it was just bonkers. And I think everyone looked at the digital equity field like, hey, you’ve been talking about this for 10 years. Like, here you go. And it was, it was also very stressful because everyone’s like, we didn’t expect to have a plan to need a plan this quick. So, but it was good. Like we had in in the sense that

You know, people did. They dug in, they they took the resources that were giving. We had ARPA funds, we had capital project funds money. There was just there was a wash in emergency funding that was given. And so we s stood up the field again. This is our second time now, right?

Christopher Mitchell (16:14)
Mm-hmm.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (16:15)
And so, you know, over the years, you know, th those funds have dwindled, you know. So again, you know, we had this field and it depleted. We built it up again and it’s slowly been depleting. Now, just so you know.

Capital project funds, ARPA dollars, those are need to be expended. They were extended for a moment and they’re they expend this this year is like the last hurrah. And there’s very few dollars out there that are still circulating. But what little will be over over? Well, you know, a year or t or so, year and a half, what is it? God, how long has it been? A year and a half ago. We had the digital over a year ago, the the Digital Equity Act, you know, was announced and

application started going in and no, I’m sorry, twenty twenty two that was happened. It was canceled a a little over a year ago.

Christopher Mitchell (17:07)
Right, we thought the money would be out in the street and instead

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (17:11)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (17:12)
we were told that it wasn’t gonna be happening. Now, we’re not gonna get bogged

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (17:14)
That’s right.

Christopher Mitchell (17:15)
down in that, but it since then the Trump administration has told the courts that they do plan to implement it and

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (17:21)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (17:22)
we will know more in December, we think.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (17:25)
Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (17:26)
and b and one of the things that some of us fear is that they might be not telling the truth because there is some history of this with the Trump administration in the courts, so

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (17:36)
Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (17:37)
we’re both gearing up and hoping that we’ll be able to to get back to work right,

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (17:40)
Hoping for the best. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (17:43)
but also kind of n aware that this might be another i as as they say when you’re in the tunnel, you know, it might be a train and not the other side.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (17:51)
Yes. So, you know, over a year ago, what is it at the last Net Inclusion conference, which is N NDIA National Digital Inclusion Alliances annual conference, which is kind of the main, you know, conference for the field of digital equity and inclusion. We all were expecting to attend that conference celebrating like this next, you know, big tranche of funding.

And work being done and more proof points to be had and to look forward to. And instead, I saw some of the same people I saw during BTOP those that were as scrappiest and still had hung on, they’re now wearing big buttons that they had handmade saying, please hire me. And my heart just broke. I mean, it

Christopher Mitchell (18:39)
Mm-hmm.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (18:39)
just was, you know, I I was immediately transported to the moment that.

we realized that we weren’t gonna be able to move forward after BTOP And it’s absolutely heartbreaking. You dedicate your life and your, you know, your passion to something and just to see it thrown in the trash is really hard. And we were doing

Christopher Mitchell (19:01)
Well and it’s not just

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (19:02)
it again.

Christopher Mitchell (19:03)
it’s not just your life. I mean, you also you

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (19:05)
Everyone.

Christopher Mitchell (19:06)
have the fact that like you’re working with people that you know need help and people that you cannot help anymore. And

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (19:09)
Yeah. That’s right.

Christopher Mitchell (19:12)
and so you see that too going on. so I wanna I wanna I do wanna transition to the hope though. And

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (19:15)
Awful, awful. Yeah. Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (19:19)
and I think it’s helpful for people to better understand if we talk a little bit about you know, this is where I think Brian Vo, your boss, I think, technically, is that right?

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (19:29)
He is. He

is the CEO of Connect Humanity.

Christopher Mitchell (19:32)
So in in chief evangelist of terms like co-investment and capital stack and blended finance and and

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (19:39)
That’s correct.

Christopher Mitchell (19:40)
such things, you know, those things to me it’s sort of we talked before about the capital stack, right? The idea of like, you get money from different places that’s like all sort of marching in the same direction and you line it up. Okay. But like this is a little bit different in that

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (19:54)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (19:55)
I feel like and we’re gonna I I should say we are gonna come back.

And I’m gonna try and force you into doing more free work with me in which we’ll go through these and perhaps two at a time in future shows to go in in in greater depth on the on each of the s the six areas that you’ve already worked on. But if we just try to give people a sense, like where does the money come from to do the work? And I know that this isn’t the only question, but it’s the one that’s on top of everyone’s mind. Sort of

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (20:23)
Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (20:24)
like, where does the money come from, Samantha?

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (20:26)
Well, I feel like I need to give you the miss the little link to get to that point, which

Christopher Mitchell (20:31)
Okay.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (20:31)
is, you know, we saw the sadness, you know, and the buttons and the the and at that same conference, I grabbed a few people that I know had gone through it before and I said, we have to figure this out now. This is we I can’t do this again. You can’t do this. Like we’re no, we’re done. And so we started creating a a small working group. Honestly, it was just like

half a dozen of my closest colleagues and allies that I’ve known in this field for a long time. And we started racking our brain like, okay, how do we pay for this? Like how do how do we do this? And you know, who are we benefiting outside like where is the value accruing? And so that’s where it starts.

Christopher Mitchell (21:13)
I hope at least one of you th hope at least one

of you was thinking about robbing a bank or just committing large scale fraud in order to pay for it and and then you

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (21:18)
Well

Christopher Mitchell (21:21)
decided that that wouldn’t work perhaps.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (21:23)
Yeah, there there were a few ideas that we we got rid of in in the bunch, but ultimately it became the alternative funding working group. This was a terrible name and it was literally just defaulted because we couldn’t come up with a better way of saying it other than alternative to grant funds, right? So it’s alt funding. It has stuck

Christopher Mitchell (21:43)
And ultimately you stuck with it, yeah.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (21:46)
by necessity, because everyone else did.

And we still couldn’t come up with anything better. So if it if you guys are if you’re listening to this and you have a better idea for a title, please send it. I’m I’m open to to ideas here. But so over the last year and a half, you know, that group grew from about six people to over 150 people. each of them representing a leadership role in

A different organization across the country. We are in almost every every state at this point. I mean, it’s it’s quite impressive how quickly it has grown. And it’s because everyone’s asking this question that you just asked me, Chris: is like, how do we pay for it? What are the ideas? And so we try to go through systematically and be like, okay, well, where are the normal stakeholders?

for for this work, the people that have shown and demonstrated that they care about it in the first place. And that’s where we came up with the first set of of sectors, really. you know, the housing, the education workforce, telecommunications, and local government. These are the people that we normally see are sitting around coalition tables. They’re, you know, in

the list of organization types that NDIA will tell you to look for when you’re doing your ecosystem mapping and things like that. So we started there and I just we tried to find someone who had been really working deeply in those fields and said, okay, where where is the value accruing? And that answer is different for each each

sector for sure. And then within those sectors there’s a number of stakeholders that have sometimes different value propositions.

Christopher Mitchell (23:33)
So you have the you the the ultimate working group and then

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (23:37)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (23:38)
decide that rather than just being a talking shop, you put together a really impressive report.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (23:44)
Yes. So yeah, after you know, talking to the group and say, like, what is the first thing that we can create that would be helpful? it’s basically can we get our arms around all of the value propositions? Like where what are the opportunities? And so that’s really what the guide is intended to do. It’s to identify where the strategic alignments are between the digital equity inclusion field and X, you know, sector.

And ex stakeholder within that sector. So understand why they would care that we are connecting people. And we go a little bit further to say like, how would we demonstrate? How could we evaluate our efforts to align with metrics that they use, meaning they, the stakeholder from the sector, use to measure their own.

success. So if success in say healthcare is about, you know, patient patient success is is basically, you know, mm more in lowered mortality rates, you know, improved access to health care resources, adherence to medication programs, lower y d reliance on emergency, you know, services, things like that. Yeah. Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (25:08)
Right. Even f fewer no shows, there could be other things, yeah, that are not just patient

centered, but yeah.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (25:13)
So, all of those things. So, if that translates to success and also cost savings for that sector, how does enabling people with digital skills and access serve that goal? And can we measure it? Can we prove it that we are driving those metrics? So that’s kind of what we set up and ask in each of those chapters. And what we find is that

There’s absolutely ways that we can do that in every single place. Now, is it the only way? It’s probably not. I’m sure that, you know, someone from X, you know, chapter will be like, I could come up with a few more. But we tried to be as comprehensive as possible without being really bogged down in the weeds. And in fairness, it’s 150 pages altogether. It’s a lot of text.

Which is why we have two-page executive summaries of each chapter. but it’s a lot of content. and it’s a lot of proprietary, you know, sector knowledge that if you have only and ever worked in the nonprofit or philanthropic sector, you probably haven’t encountered firsthand before. So, you know, some of us have, you know, I have come across f you know, at least a handful of people be like,

I’ve been doing that forever. Great. Fantastic. I hope you have.

Christopher Mitchell (26:40)
Lies. Lies. No, they

haven’t. People say this all the time. I just and

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (26:45)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (26:45)
I’m not gonna say that every last one of them is lying. But like, I mean, the the part that I think people need to understand about this is that this is not a matter of just being like, we’re gonna find money elsewhere. This is like a whole different thing. It it involves I think having commitments and being accountable in new ways, in ways

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (27:07)
Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (27:08)
that

I I just feel like, you know, like there’s a lot of good organizations out there that I have no doubt are doing good work. But if you ask them to prove it, they would not be able to. And I know this. I know this

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (27:17)
That’s true. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (27:19)
because like for during the ACP thing, I would constantly be like, why don’t we have like why is the face of this like N D I A? Or, you know, like why is it not, you know, some person? I mean, you know, like the work that that was done in like I’m trying I’ll think of a specific example, but I don’t think it’s all that helpful.

But like the point is just that like if you want to say the Affordable Connectivity Program matters and we need it, you don’t want the the case to be like some person working in a nonprofit making it. You want it to be, you know, a person that is compelling, who is using the program. And like, I just feel like a lot of the people that are doing this work, they are like, well, we know generally that like that the people who go through our program did well. And like, okay, well, like, could any of them be a spokesperson for it? And granted,

When I f when we dug into this, you know, we found that people are like, well, not everyone that is like, you know, has has found themselves in a very difficult situation, then wants to go tell the world about how hard their situation is, right? Like and I could appreciate that.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (28:19)
Yeah, that is part of it.

But honestly, what we’re trying to do is not that. That’s like actually that we’re trying to flip that on its head. Like it’s not about the individual saying, my gosh, I was helped so much. And look at how much great my better my life is. I want like the local business sector, you know, to say, I have so many better employee choices. Like I’m able to choose from a better roster.

Of first-time hires for my entry-level work. Or I, you know, my my hospital system want I want to hear them say, you know what? We are spending less year over year on emergency services because of this program that has lowered that because now people are more educated in using telehealth. That’s what I want to hear, because

those are the people

Christopher Mitchell (29:10)
Right, that’s terrific too.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (29:11)
that have the financial power and resources.

To put money into perpetuating those things. The problem here is, is, and I want to be really clear about this to anyone who might be listening and saying, hey, I run one a program like this. This is not a plan for you getting money from a sector stakeholder to do the thing you’ve always done. This is also a call to action for our field to reframe and redesign our programs to align better.

with other community goals and and stakeholders, re you know, interests. You know, it’s we need to make connectivity meaningful for for not just the individual, but also for the community. Because when the community is benefiting and the individual benefits, that’s actually synergetic. And it means that they’re able to access more, they get more support, the system is better aligned.

communication is improved, it makes community work better.

Christopher Mitchell (30:20)
But what is so, and I’m I don’t want to disagree with that, but I think again, the thing that people are wondering about is like, okay, so is that business then gonna write a five figure check or a six figure check to to make this program happen? And like they’re not gonna be the sole funder, but they’re gonna be a piece of it. are they just gonna pay their taxes more happily? Like w how does it work?

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (30:41)
Well, this

is where we need Brian, right? We need his capital stack to come in at this point. this is about trying to supplement. at this stage, we are always and going to continue to need and rely on philanthropy, quite honestly, because this is going to take time. The goal is that you can demonstrate value to a number of stakeholders, and each one co-invests.

Equal to the amount of value they’re provided. So if we can demonstrate that we reduced the hospital, you know, administration costs by, you know, a million dollars, we’ll just use a flat right. Do you think that they could coinvest 250,000? Maybe? I think that’s a reasonable ask.

If you can demonstrate that you are the one responsible for driving those administrative costs. Now, if you add that to the telecommunications company, your local ISP, and you know, part of your work as a digital equity person is we connect people, we help them find the most affordable plans, we drive subscribership, we improve take rate. That is the meaningful core business of an Internet service provider. If we can start doing that.

I think they should be able to give us customer acquisition fee, you know, fees for that. That requires a negotiation and all of that, but that’s not out of line with things that they’ve done. I mean, there are white labeled services, there are resellers. Like

Christopher Mitchell (32:22)
Mm-hmm.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (32:22)
this is not uncommon to the field. So it’s just uncommon that we tap into it. So, you know, that’s another piece, right?

If you know some of our participants are residents of a affordable housing, and all of a sudden that that affordable housing unit has more regular rent payments, they’re making their service requests online, they’re able to communicate better, that’s cost savings. It just it keeps accruing. And if everyone gives us just a piece and throws it in a pot, sooner or later we’re gonna have a fully funded.

sustainable program that is designed to be better aligned with the community goals as well as being sustainable and able to be built on top of. So we’re not going to keep reinvesting in, you know, building and retaining and training. Instead, we start hitting a stride and doing the work better all the time.

Christopher Mitchell (33:28)
I mean, to me it seems like the the key is still government to some extent in because

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (33:32)
There is.

Christopher Mitchell (33:33)
like a hospital or the housing authority that’s saving money may not have the authority with the funds that it’s receiving largely from the government to to then make a payment and to co and co invest. I think there’s there can be challenges there. And so,

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (33:49)
There is.

Christopher Mitchell (33:49)
you need to be able to convince other stakeholders as well about the value of this. I mean, this is really I think you know, a

a reordering of of the importance of this is showing people that like this is this is something that we need to pay for. I mean I just think this is a continuation of education to some extent. And I just think if you walk back to like why do we have schools? Well it costs too much for me to like educate my child alone. And so as a community, we put all the kids together more or less and

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (34:18)
That’s right.

Christopher Mitchell (34:19)
then we charge everyone for them because everyone’s benefiting from not having a bunch of kids running around illiterate, right?

And so like

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (34:26)
Exactly.

Christopher Mitchell (34:27)
and like and then we, you know, like and they like then, you know, businesses pay their taxes and they have access to a better workforce. And you

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (34:34)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (34:34)
even I mean, you don’t see this in every case, but like communities that have like a large employer will sometimes have specialized courses that the employer helps pay for at the community college in order to track them into that business and and things like that. So I

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (34:47)
One hundred percent, yes.

Christopher Mitchell (34:49)
mean like this is not it’s not crazy talk.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (34:51)
It is not. It’s really the work that needs to be done is building the community communication infrastructure and program alignment. That’s really the challenge. It’s

just yes. Well, for sure. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (35:02)
But I think evaluation too. I just think that what it comes down to is like, I

mean, like we were saying earlier is that like, you know, to have for this to work, one of the things you need to have is to be able to say, we know that this is working because, and that’s not look at Jeff

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (35:14)
That’s right.

Christopher Mitchell (35:15)
or or or or Mary who like has this great job now, right? It’s like, no, okay, well, like this rate for them, but like, like what’s the what do we know?

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (35:20)
Here’s yeah. Yes, we need to

move from testimonials to metrics to like comprehensive, yeah, bulk metrics.

Christopher Mitchell (35:29)
And that’s needed for the co investment. I still think to win in politics,

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (35:31)
When true.

Christopher Mitchell (35:32)
you often need that one smiley person. So, but

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (35:34)
Well fair.

Christopher Mitchell (35:35)
you need you need you need both here or there. but

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (35:37)
We do.

Christopher Mitchell (35:38)
but I just I think most of these groups, it feels wasteful when you’re trying to figure out I’ve got a hundred dollars to put into something, how much am I gonna put into like into like evaluation and this and that when like I’d rather just put all that money into helping people.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (35:51)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s and that’s unfortunately the equation that a lot of these programs do. I mean, BTOP, we spent millions, mil I think it was like over a billion actually for the whole program. And it there was no requirement for evaluation in that program. It’s absolutely crazy. You know, the Digital Equity Act, when we were writing those and like in the original No Fo, there was very light requirements on on reporting.

metrics for there too. And they use the reasoning for is the paperwork reduction act. We don’t want to burden people with paperwork. Well, okay, great, but at the end of the day you have no proof that the stuff, all the money you spent was actually worth it. And that is a shame. It really is. But there are

Christopher Mitchell (36:41)
Well I mean

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (36:41)
people like me who have done those numbers.

Christopher Mitchell (36:43)
But I think

this is also a matter of one of the the failures of how Congress works, because if they had wanted to do evaluations, they would have had to pay more in admin costs to be

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (36:53)
They would have.

Christopher Mitchell (36:54)
going through that and everything else. And so you did it because you recognize the need for it for the community at large. But you know, from a government perspective, it’s like, well, we don’t really want anyone to read all those reports at the end of the day anyway. I mean, this is this there’s a there’s a fundamental tension in terms of this in that I do feel like Republicans like

They don’t want to have this stuff necessarily because they don’t want someone to be reading it. Democrats, I think, would rather see all that money going out for the same reasons we laid out laid out earlier. So it’s not often a a part of it. But it’s it is important if we’re trying to build something that’s funded by someone other than you know, once every ten years from the federal government when everything breaks.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (37:33)
In 2017, I wrote another report. It was called Connecting Cuyahoga. It was for Cuyahoga County. And I did it in partnership with the Cleveland Foundation and ASC3 at the time. and we I worked with Karen Mossberger. Some of you may know that name. She’s a phenomenal researcher in in digital government. And we spent a year going through local government administration costs, like

what does it actually cost to serve someone that is using social services? So we’re talking about food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, right? You know, the TANF, all of these typical programs that that you’re that people use. And we found that there for an most of the people, because they are low income, because they oftentimes, you know, cannot afford a $50 to a hundred dollar broadband bill, met there’s a big high percentage, about a third of them, at least at the time.

that were not connected to any kind of broadband. So you know that they’re not connected. so the the amount the number of that those people that are able to do online service of of their in of their programs was minor. But there were some. And so we looked at the cost between offline we call them, like in person or over the phone administration of their social services. Like

Checking your food core card or recertification activities, things like that. the cost for an offline transaction was like $13 and change. This is in 2019. Okay, it’s probably more now. an online transaction for the same things was about $3. We were able to demonstrate that hypothetically, if you actually

Funded a program to train people to pay for their Internet connection, like cover the Internet connection, give them a device, okay, and train them to use it to administer their social service programs. That doesn’t cost money. That actually saves you mil tens of millions of dollars within only two years. Because those benefits accumulate. They don’t go away. Once someone knows how to do them, they’re not going stop doing them.

They’re going to continue because they’re more convenient, they’re more immediate, they’re not sitting on the phone queue for an hour and a half waiting. Like it’s just better. The problem is they don’t have the access. So it’s actually cheaper to fund the program

Christopher Mitchell (40:06)
Mm-hmm.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (40:07)
and the service provision than it is to keep doing it the crappy way that we’ve been doing it. And to to put on top of that, most because most of our to I not most.

Because such a large percentage of social service users are offline, the government cannot justify moving to more online services. So we are entrenching this overly burdensome, very expensive, offline, paper based process of administering these giant social programs instead of modernizing, making things more accessible online, make them work.

you know, self-service and 24 hours a day, that makes that’s government efficiency, right? And modernization.

Christopher Mitchell (40:59)
Yeah, we’re spending the money.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (41:01)
We are spending crazy amounts of money to be stuck in the dirt because we don’t want to give a handout. We need to flip that on its edge. This

isn’t about

Christopher Mitchell (41:10)
Mm-hmm.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (41:11)
giving a someone a handout. This is about helping us recoup the the costs that are overly burdensome and holding ourselves back.

From modernizing and being more efficient. So, you Republicans out there, this is your call to action to say if you really want to get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse, start thinking about how social goods can actually produce economic benefit for the things you want. You want to pay less for social services? This is how you do it.

Christopher Mitchell (41:42)
Well, and for people on the left, one of the things that drives me crazy is and I think about this in regard to what we’ve done here in Minnesota with the free school lunch program, is there’s all this argument about like, we don’t want kids to be hungry and the kids should you know, like the kids should they’re gonna do better in school if they’re not hungry and all this stuff. And when I learned, and I this is what it was claimed, was that like it is more expensive to like pay for like the bureaucrats to figure out which kids get free lunch and which ones don’t.

Than it is just to just to give everyone a free lunch. I was like, that’s the only thing you need to tell people. Is that like, yeah, okay, we could either give all the kids free lunches or we could spend more money and give fewer kids free lunches. What

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (42:26)
Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (42:26)
do you what should we do with our money? It’s like, it’s not hard. And like, but this is where like the left

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (42:28)
Right. This is stupid, right?

Christopher Mitchell (42:31)
is so bad at figuring out how to make an argument that’s actually compelling. It’s just, it drives me crazy.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (42:36)
Yeah.

I I’m so tired of us not owning the whole the waste fraud, like we’re the cause of the waste fraud. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You know, this insanity. Here’s another one. This drives me crazy. So Medicaid will pay for a free computer or tablet for a patient, okay, for like remote blood pressure monitoring or things like that to help with medical care remotely, particularly for seniors and things like that. However,

We will not allow that device to be used for anything else. And so, in order for the healthcare to pay for it, it has to be locked for no other use except for just that bl you want to talk about waste fraud. That is the most wasteful government policy I have

Christopher Mitchell (43:22)
Mm-hmm.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (43:23)
ever heard in my life. So we’re gonna pay a thousand dollars for a tablet, but we’re not gonna let anyone like send an email on it or even use your health portal, you can

Only use it to measure your blood pressure. Really? That is insanity. Yeah, craziness. Craziness.

Christopher Mitchell (43:39)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we’re

and we’re gonna do the same thing with the E rate, with the lines that are in the ground, fiber lines, and we don’t let anyone else use them. The school can’t use them to get kids connected in apartment buildings. so yeah,

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (43:53)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (43:53)
I mean, but I I think fundamentally is like the thing that we’ll come back to on this when we cover each sector is that there are real things that we can do to get started with this. and we need to do things differently. This system this system does not work.

but it does require, I think, us to have the numbers when we’re doing this work to show that it is effective and we have a sense of what the cost is for the intervention and and that sort of a thing. So, but there’s like

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (44:19)
Absolutely.

Christopher Mitchell (44:20)
it’s just important to understand there’s so much money that’s already being spent. If we redirect it, we would have some period of time where we’d have a little bit of savings and then after that we have a lot of savings. I’m like, that’s awesome.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (44:31)
Yes.

Yeah. It is an on-ramp to more efficient government, more efficient community, and everyone being more productive in long term and having better services. Why wouldn’t you want to do that?

Christopher Mitchell (44:46)
Yeah. No. I’m I and I mean, there’s just there’s so many reasons, but I feel like it it you have to get around this sort of the demagoguing that comes from the idea of like, well, we’re gonna make sure that they have this device and it can only be used for this one thing because God forbid that someone uses that device who didn’t qualify for it to play solitaire or something like that. Yeah.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (45:06)
Right. Or stream Netflix, my God,

the horror, right?

Christopher Mitchell (45:10)
Right.

so I did want to say that I’m gonna try and work with you to get these up, but I was trying to read this and I was failing at it because I struggle to be able to read things. There’s always so much stuff going on. Whereas I’m often listening to dumb books or audio or like audiobooks or dumb podcasts or various things. And I was like, Man, I just wish I could listen to to Samantha and this these papers in my ears. And I used a local AI.

a couple of different ones to like actually create a pipeline in which it can take PDFs and turn them into audiobooks. And so that’s how

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (45:45)
Amazing.

Christopher Mitchell (45:46)
how I’ve gotten through this. Although your request that I do Morgan Freeman, I’ve not yet come through on that. And I don’t want Morgan Freeman to sue me. So I will not make those available even if I do customize those for you. but

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (45:58)
I think

a dramatic reading of the alt funding guide by Morgan Freeman would be amazing. The

Christopher Mitchell (46:03)
I mean, so here’s the thing is that like I can actually I didn’t send you the one,

but you can make these dramatic. The first test that I was doing, like the default setting for this is to be more exaggerative. And the person would like be like getting through these sentences, and by the end, he’d be almost shouting, and it would just be like it was just like I listened

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (46:21)
That sounds really annoying actually.

Christopher Mitchell (46:23)
to a GAO report like that. It was just like it was just really the person was really passionate about these conclusions.

And one of the fun things is like it just it refuses to say BEAD It always says B E A D. And so I just got used to like some weird little things like that. But it was wonderful. And I’m very happy to share the MP3s around if anyone is interested, they can reach out to us.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (46:46)
I am sure some people would really appreciate that. So thank you for for putting that work in.

Christopher Mitchell (46:52)
Yeah. thank you so much, Sam. These are great reports. we’re gonna come back with a deeper dive into some of the subject areas. So I’m looking forward

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (47:01)
That’s right.

Christopher Mitchell (47:01)
to that.

Samantha Schartman, Connect Hu (47:02)
I got my case studies ready.

Christopher Mitchell (47:04)
All right.

Jordan Pittman (47:07)
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Unbuffered Podcast. We have transcripts for this and other episodes available at ILSR.org/podcast. While you’re there, check out our other podcasts from ILSR, including Building Local Power, Local Energy Rules, and the Composting for Community Podcasts. Email us at [email protected] with your ideas for the show. Follow us on Bluesky. Our handle is @communitynets.

You can catch the latest research from all of our initiatives by subscribing to our monthly newsletter at ILSR.org While you’re there, please take a moment to donate. Your support in any amount helps keep us going. Unbuffered is produced by Christopher Mitchell with editing provided by me, Jordan Pittman. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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