Benefits Access for Student Success:

Delivering personalized, timely, and actionable information from a trusted source, as opposed to broad-based awareness campaigns, is a best practice to meet students where they are and motivate them to act. Using data to tailor outreach lists allows institutions to direct specific messages to relevant student populations. This approach increases the efficiency and efficacy of outreach efforts.

Benefits Data Trust regularly employs the use of data-driven outreach to connect with and prompt action by likely eligible people, which research has consistently found highly effective². For example, in 2021, Benefits Data Trust tested outreach to individuals who were ineligible for or had exhausted their unemployment benefits to assist them in applying for SNAP and found that outreach recipients enrolled in SNAP at significantly higher rates than people who did not receive outreach.

Data-driven outreach campaigns allow for:

• Customizing messages that are personalized and relevant to a specific student population’s needs
• Coordinating outreach schedules based on time-sensitive deadlines and expected capacity for student support
• Increased awareness among students of benefits they may be eligible for
• Higher likelihood of engagement with benefits applications

Government agencies determine eligibility based on unique requirements per benefit, which sometimes vary by state. This toolkit guides institutions on how to use higher ed data as a proxy to identify the most likely eligible students at their college or university. This toolkit contains the following sections, each of which includes a practical tool to complete the task identified below. Navigate using the tabs above to access each section.

1. Assess Current Practices: Identify what you can learn from existing outreach efforts at your institution and apply lessons to efforts to identify students likely eligible for benefits

2. Goal Setting: Establish clear goals to guide your initiative to curate data and identify students likely eligible for benefits

3. Build a Campus Team: Identify and engage campus partners that are needed to develop and implement efforts to connect students with benefits

4. Explore Available Data: Explore what data are available at your institution to identify students who can be connected to public benefit programs

5. Choose Benefits for Outreach: Decide what benefits programs you will connect students with, based on the data elements you determined are available to you in Tool 4

6. Visual Guide to Curating Data: Use this visual guide to better understand the steps involved in curating your data by benefit program

7. Create an Action Plan: Develop a work plan and realistic timeline to implement this project at your institution

8. Evaluate Efforts: Document your learnings to identify areas for improvement, celebrate successes, and motivate campus buy-in to continue or scale this work.

We have designed these resources to build sequentially and encourage you to start with Tool 1. We recognize, however, that institutions may be at different stages in their benefits access journey and may choose to focus on specific tools.

While collecting consent from students is necessary to share data with external parties, institutions can cull their data to identify students who are likely eligible for public benefits and use this data internally to support students without violating FERPA. Specifically, institutions can use data internally to outreach to their own students without requiring student consent.

With student consent, colleges and universities can share data with external parties such as local departments of human services or nonprofits like Benefits Data Trust. This may help institutions offer more coordinated and comprehensive services to help students access benefits. If you have questions or to explore partnership opportunities, reach out to Neeta Sonalkar, Director of Higher Education Innovation, at highered@bdtrust.org.

Benefits Data Trust (BDT) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving health and financial security by harnessing the power of data, technology, and policy to provide dignified and equitable access to assistance. Together with a national network of government agencies and partners, we efficiently connect people today to programs that pay for food, healthcare, and more while helping to modernize benefits access for tomorrow. Since 2005, BDT has secured more than $9 billion in benefits for households across the country, helping to reduce hunger and poverty and build pathways to economic mobility. Learn more at bdtrust.org.

Benefits Data Trusts’ higher education practice supports student access and success by improving student connection to financial aid and public benefits through direct service and technology, technical assistance, and policy. Learn more about our work in higher education here.