INVESTORS · THEORY OF CHANGE
From the ALICE Threshold to civic infrastructure, in five stages.
The long-form narrative behind the company. The same content as the visualization deck, written for readers rather than skimmers.
Theory of Change · five stages · problem → long-term impact
01 · The problem
There are roughly 56 million U.S. households at the ALICE Threshold — Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. Forty-two percent of all U.S. households are at or below this line. The safety net was designed for the population below the poverty line; the consumer-tech industry was designed for the population well above the cost of living. The largest population in the country — the working middle that can’t absorb a missed paycheck — has no infrastructure built for it.
02 · The premise
A household’s records — ID, income, immigration, housing, learning, health, benefits — should belong to the household. They should travel with the household. They should be shared only by consent, only in the scope granted, only for the time granted. This single premise reorganizes the rest of the stack: case management changes when the case manager doesn’t own the file; eligibility screening changes when the screen runs over the member’s own data; outcome measurement changes when the household holds the audit trail.
03 · The build
Three products, in sequence:
LP Account is the records primitive. The records the member owns. The consent the member grants. The case-management workspace partners use on top of the same records. The Cliff Planner that flags benefit cliffs before they hit.
OutPosts is the community platform on top of LP Account. The convening surface for the everyone-touches-the-household network — partner orgs, members, case managers, classes, clinics, events. The core surface is free, forever; premium surfaces serve operators and funders, not the household.
Oasis is the post-Series-A expansion: a creator economy that lets practitioners earn inside the platform, and a civic infrastructure layer that lets cities, counties, and foundations wire in. A 5–10% commission band funds public goods inside the platform itself, allocated under Charter and ratified by the Trust Advisory Board.
04 · The outcomes
The outcomes are stable, comparable, public. Continuous benefits — households don’t lose support to paperwork. Fewer cliffs — households can model and pre-empt benefit cliffs before they hit. Reduced administrative burden — case managers spend more time on care and less on re-asking the same question. Cross-partner coordination — warm referrals, not "call this number." These are measured and reported in the annual Impact Report.
05 · The long-term
The long-term outcome is civic infrastructure: a records primitive, a community network, and a procurement-ready API surface that cities, counties, and foundations treat as critical-path. The Charter constrains the company against the patterns that would let an acquirer strip-mine that infrastructure. The Perpetual Purpose Trust prevents the company from being acquired out of its own purpose. The combination is what makes "public infrastructure built by a corporation" a coherent claim rather than a marketing line.
Why now
Three macro shifts converge. First, the consumer-controlled records pattern is finally practical: cheap storage, ubiquitous mobile, mature consent primitives. Second, the safety-net administrative burden is at a generational high; public-sector partners are openly looking for technical help. Third, capital is hunting for outcomes-aligned vehicles — both venture and foundation — and the Charter-bound PBC + Perpetual Purpose Trust structure is the most credible answer we can offer. The window is open for the next 24–36 months. After that, the procurement contracts that define the civic-infrastructure layer go somewhere else.
DOWNLOAD · Theory of Change Deck (PDF · 13 slides) · Foundation One-Pager (PDF · 2 pp)
SOURCES · ALICE methodology from United Way / United For ALICE. Household counts from the 2024 ALICE Report. Federal/state benefits spend from CRS compilations. Detailed footnotes in the deck.