MyFriendBen Is Coming to Washington

Every year, an estimated $351 million in federal Earned Income Tax Credits goes unclaimed in Washington State. Not because people don’t qualify. Because the system that’s supposed to connect families to support is too complicated to navigate. Add in SNAP, Medicaid, childcare assistance, and the state’s own Working Families Tax Credit (up to $1,200 per household since 2023), and the gap between what’s available and what actually reaches people grows even wider.

The good news: these benefits exist for a reason, and there’s now a better way to find them. We’re excited to announce that MyFriendBen, a free benefits-screening tool built in Colorado by Gary Community Ventures, is launching in Washington State with support from the Delta Fund. Washington is Ben’s sixth state, and we couldn’t be more proud to help bring it here.

Here’s what Ben does: you answer a few questions about your household, and in about six minutes, you get a personalized report showing which public benefits you may qualify for, what they could mean for your family budget, and clear next steps for applying. More than 40 federal, state, and local programs, all in one place. No login. No bureaucratic maze. Just clear information you can actually use.

This matters because benefits work. SNAP keeps families fed. Medicaid keeps people healthy. Childcare subsidies keep parents in the workforce. These are programs we’ve collectively decided should exist because they help people meet their basic needs. The funding is there. The eligibility is there. What’s been missing is a bridge between eligibility and access: a simple, dignified way for people to see what’s available to them without spending hours deciphering government websites or filling out the wrong forms.

Colorado proved what happens when you build that bridge. In just two years, MyFriendBen has helped more than 100,000 households access more than $52 million in benefits and tax credits that they qualified for - averaging $1500 to $3000 per family in potential support across an average of nine programs they didn’t know existed. The Urban Institute is currently evaluating Ben’s impact across Colorado and North Carolina, and the early numbers are worth sitting with: among 301 users studied, 64% learned about at least one benefit for the first time. 91% planned to apply within three months. And 95% said the tool was easy to use.

Those are families discovering that help was there all along. The programs existed. The eligibility existed. What was missing was six minutes and a tool that spoke plain English (and 21 other languages!).

The organization behind Ben, Gary Community Ventures, is one we’ve been watching closely. Based in Denver, Gary combines business, policy, and philanthropy with a single focus: increasing opportunity for Colorado kids and families. They incubated MyFriendBen as an open-source tool, co-designed with the families it serves. Their Youth Advisory Board, young people with lived experience navigating benefits systems, shapes the tool’s design and user experience. And here’s what sets Gary apart from most foundations: they’ve committed to transferring all of their resources to the community by 2035 and closing their doors. They’re not building an institution to sustain. They’re building infrastructure to give away. That’s the kind of partner we want to learn from.

For us at the Delta Fund, this is what a wellbeing economy looks like in practice. Not an abstraction. Not a theory. A struggling person sitting at their kitchen table, answering a few questions on their phone, and learning that their family qualifies for healthcare, food assistance, and a tax credit they’ve never heard of. A wellbeing economy starts with people having enough: enough food, enough healthcare, enough stability to participate in their community and plan for the future. That’s the social foundation in Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics framework, the floor below which no one should fall. Benefits programs are how we’ve collectively agreed to build that floor. MyFriendBen is how we make sure it holds.

Brad Smith, MyFriendBen board member, said it best,

Here is the thing most people in the pro-democracy world are getting wrong: you cannot talk people into trusting institutions. You have to show them that institutions can deliver. When families are struggling with the cost of groceries, gas, childcare, and housing, a speech about democratic norms does not land. But when someone helps them access benefits they did not know they were owed, or when a state program makes it possible to keep the family farm or their house - that builds trust in the system. Not because you told them to trust it. Because the system worked for them.

(MyFriendBen) is not a civic engagement program. It is not a voter registration drive. But it is one of the most powerful pro-democracy tools I have seen, because it demonstrates that the system can actually work for working people. About $140B in benefits go unclaimed in America every year. Every dollar that reaches a family is a data point that says: your government can help you.

We are grateful to Gary Community Foundation for building robust tools like this, with families, with young people, with partners across five states. We were able to use their leadership and help bring it to Washington. We’re learning from what Colorado has already proven, and we appreciate the chance to be part of expanding it.

If you’re a hospital, school, food bank, United Way, 211 service, or nonprofit in Washington State, we want you to know about MyFriendBen. Organizations interested in shaping how Ben serves Washington families can connect directly with the team at myfriendben.org. The benefits are already there. Let’s make sure they reach the people they were created for.