In 2018, United Way of the Big Bend (UWBB) underwent a strategic planning process to adopt a strategic reset for our organization. We have long been the trusted leader in addressing our community’s needs but also recognize the importance of staying relevant by keeping up with the ever growing community needs and changing philanthropic landscape.

This process was guided by the ALICE Report and other community data. ALICE is the acronym for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed – simply put the working poor. The 2023 ALICE Report (right), provides clear yet startling pictures of our neighbors struggling to make ends meet and of those living in poverty. In the new 2024 ALICE Update (below right), the most recent statistics show that on average, 55% of households in the Big Bend region cannot afford the basic costs of living. This number equates to over 94,310 families or 235,818 individuals are struggling day-to-day in the Big Bend.

Our strategic direction positions UWBB to be more effective than ever in serving as the trusted strategic leader and convener for identifying and addressing the needs of those living in poverty and the working poor. Our goal is to shrink these populations in the future by focusing our collective resources on Economic Development through Workforce Enablement. Three goals and five priority outcome areas support this focus. The three goals are to help this population gain access to basic necessities, achieve economic stability and develop skills to either help gain employment or move up the economic ladder. Five funding priority outcomes anchor the three goals. Housing, Early Learning (to include elementary age and younger), Safety Net, Health & Mental Health, and Skills Development are the five funding priority outcomes.  A graphic of our strategic direction is below.

The ALICE Essentials Index measures changes over time in the costs of the household essentials that matter most to ALICE and poverty-level households: housing, child care, food, transportation, health care, and basic technology. The traditional measure of inflation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index (CPI), tracks a much larger basket of over 200 goods and services — items that financially insecure households can’t afford on a regular basis, like full-service meals at restaurants, wine, major appliances, flights, and jewelry. Tracking costs over time using this larger basket alone can conceal important changes in the costs of basics.

Tracking changes in the cost of basics, the ALICE Essentials Index has consistently outpaced the broader CPI nationwide since 2007. Costs for both measures increased at a faster pace following the COVID-19 pandemic, peaking between 2021 and 2023. During this period, the ALICE Essentials Index increased at an annual rate of 7.3% compared to 6.1% for CPI — both much faster than the annual rates from 2007 to 2010 (3.3% annual increase for the ALICE Essentials Index and 1.7% for CPI).

In Florida, the ALICE Essentials Index also tended to increase faster than CPI, as shown in the figure below. And like the national trend, costs in Florida increased at a faster rate following the COVID-19 pandemic (9.4% annual increase in the ALICE Essentials Index from 2021 to 2023).