Leveraging Our Tech to Address Student Verifications
The issue of hunger on college campuses has started receiving national attention. The largest national survey addressing food insecurity among college students found that 36% of students surveyed were food insecure in the past 30 days. mRelief is proud to connect eligible students to SNAP benefits so that they can get back to the most important task at hand: school.
At mRelief, we help students get approved for SNAP as easily as possible by ensuring that they submit documents that provide all the necessary information for the government agency. Getting the correct documents requires fine-tuning our language to make sure that students understand exactly what to send.
For example, all students need to provide verification that they are enrolled in college or vocational school. We call this document Proof of Course Units for the term. This document can’t just be a class schedule - we tell students that they have to submit an official school document with the student’s name, the school’s name, and the number of units they are taking.
If students need more information, they can click on a “What’s this?” button to get more details about the document. We reiterate the document requirements and let them know the types of acceptable documents, like a screenshot from the school portal or an unofficial transcript. We also include a visual example of a document type that will work for them.
Being specific in our descriptions and offering extra support empowers students to submit the correct document the first time around. This increases the likelihood that students will complete the CalFresh process and also shortens the timeline for approval.
By being specific about documents, mRelief ensures that students don’t get intimidated by thinking they need to submit lots of personal information to get approved for SNAP. Natalie Pang, a Masters Student in Nutritional Biology at UC Davis who has spent time working directly with food security initiatives on campus explains that “It can be intimidating to have to submit transcripts if students think it’s their grades that matter. Food insecurity may affect students in a number of ways, including one’s GPA.” Pang continued, “Thus it may be important for students to know that GPA doesn’t affect eligibility determination for CalFresh.”
Docusign & Text Messaging
We also can use DocuSign and text messaging to step in if a student is having trouble proving that she has been approved for Work Study. In this case, we ask for the student’s permission to reach out to the school and coordinate a DocuSign statement to be sent to a school official who can confirm the student’s acceptance of work study.
All we need to coordinate a DocuSign is the name, title, and email address of the school official. We can easily ask the student for this information by text, and then send a customized electronic statement to the school official. DocuSign statements are legally binding just like hand-signed statements, but they only take a few seconds to complete electronically.
Students today face academic and social pressure as always, but they also increasingly face economic pressures from the rising cost of college tuition. Because no student should be distracted from her studies because of hunger or food insecurity, mRelief leverages technology to streamline the SNAP application process so that students can get their benefits in the quickest, simplest, most hassle-free way.
