the Midas Collaborative

The Midas Collaborative includes 32 non-profit organizations providing wealth-building initiatives in low-income communities across Massachusetts. Our work with working-poor families enables them to build assets, not just income; empowers them to own, not just owe; views them as savers, producers, and entrepreneurs, not just recipients, borrowers, and trainees. We invite low-income workers to be full participants in the economy.

In Midas’s model of delivering matched savings accounts, community partner organizations provide design, outreach, training, and counseling to the savers, while Midas provides back-office account management, training of staff, evaluation, and access to match funding. This collaborative approach provides flexibility to fit target groups and local economic conditions, while building efficiencies into managing bank accounts, raising match funds, and collecting evaluation data. In a state with great disparities of income and wealth between communities, this responsive model is what has made Midas so successful.

Midas’s featured partners on SaveTogether include:

Lawrence Community Works (LCW)
LCW works to transform and revitalize the physical, economic, social and civic landscape of Lawrence, Massachusetts through a growing network of residents and stakeholders who are building family and community assets, providing each other with mutual support, building leadership skills, and engaging in collective action to advance an agenda for positive growth and change among the largely immigrant and Latino population of Lawrence. www.lcworks.org

DotWell
The mission of DotWell is to guarantee high-quality clinical and community services across both the Dorchester Multi-Service Agency and the Codman Square Health Center, addressing health disparities, meeting the complex needs of the Dorchester community, and building social capital in and across neighborhood, while saving operating costs. www.dotwell.org

Jewish Vocational Services (JVS)
JVS, serving the Greater Boston area, empowers individuals from diverse communities to find employment and build careers, and partners with employers to help them hire, develop and retain productive workforces. JVS services are targeted to: (1) unemployed individuals, including welfare recipients; and (2) individuals who are employed, but at wage levels that do not support their families. www.jvs-boston.org

Midas and its partners help low-wage investors to navigate and succeed by saving, increasing incomes, and making judicious use of programs that move families up and out of poverty. As one investor put it: “Before, I knew where I wanted to go, but I was going around and around, lost. Now I’m on my way, and most importantly, I have a map to get there!”