UCDD has earned national recognition for its regional impact after receiving the 2024 National Association of Development Organizations Impact Award for its work through the Empower Upper Cumberland initiative.
Director Megan Spurgeon said the award recognizes regional development organizations and their partners for strengthening communities and building regional resilience.
“Specifically on the development district side, we’ve looked at system-level issues such as childcare and access to childcare and have made a lot of groundwork in that arena,” Spurgeon said. “We’ve had a great team led by Megan Choate working on childcare issues and housing issues and that was what we wrote our award submission for and were awarded that award.”
Spurgeon said the initiative has successfully increased the number of available childcare slots in the region by 350 through partnerships with local agencies. Spurgeon said the organization also identified specific regulation issues that make it difficult for childcare facilities to remain in business or turn a profit.
“We’ve been able to address some areas that bring some things to light that didn’t quite make sense to make it more possible for childcare slots to increase in our region,” Spurgeon said. “Also, as a whole for Empower Upper Cumberland, we have served over 900 families with 474 of those individuals increasing their income and 89 reaching self-sufficiency.”
The program specifically targets the “benefits cliff,” a situation where a small increase in income causes a family to lose more in public assistance than they gained in wages. Spurgeon said this systemic issue often discourages families from accepting raises or increasing their working hours.
“The system is unintentionally keeping folks in situations where they’re unable to take raises or increase in hours because what they will get in a monetary raise from their employer will take away much, much more in their food assistance, housing assistance, healthcare assistance, or their childcare assistance,” Spurgeon said. “And if nothing else throughout the last four years, we’ve been able to highlight the inefficiencies of the benefits system and been able to talk about how there has to be changes and that we don’t need to be focusing on workarounds for these families.”
Spurgeon said the participating families have seen a combined $9.2 million in annualized income growth since joining the program. Sturgeon said the regional employment rate among participants rose from 68 percent to 78 percent, with 125 adults entering the workforce for the first time during their enrollment.
“The cost savings is more than just what new income is coming into the region through increased employment, but also a great cost savings for reduced benefit usage as well,” Spurgeon said. “We have seen, you know, a savings of hundreds and thousands, up to millions of dollars in what families are no longer on things like food stamps, TennCare, receiving their Medicaid that way, healthcare.”
The initiative was launched as a pilot project funded through the Department of Human Services via the TANF Opportunity Act. Spurgeon said the organization has developed a “playbook” to help other rural and urban communities implement similar models without facing the same learning curves.
“We want the safety net to be better should my children need it in the future,” Spurgeon said. “So that was really encouraging to see how many individuals were willing and interested to participate in a research project to see what did and didn’t have an impact long term.”
Spurgeon said the program is now entering a “glide path” year with leaner funding as it approaches its fifth year of operation. Spurgeon said the organization is actively seeking new funding opportunities to maintain its partnerships and continue serving families until a more permanent funding line is secured in 2027.
“It’s a nice capstone to kind of wind down our time on this project,” Spurgeon said. “The Upper Cumberland Development District is doing a lot of great things in our community and to get to be recognized by this organization for the work that’s been done and all of the time and effort that’s been put in, we’re just incredibly grateful for that.”
The National Association of Development Organizations will formally present the award at its annual conference in October.
