Mayors for a Guaranteed Income has announced a $15 million commitment from Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey in support of universal basic income pilot programs in more than twenty-five U.S. cities.

Awarded through Dorsey's #startsmall LLC, the commitment follows a $3 million gift from Dorsey to MGI, a coalition launched in June by Stockton, California, mayor Michael Tubbs that has been running a guaranteed income pilot program since 2019. The latest grant will support efforts to launch or expand guaranteed income pilots in a number of cities, including Columbia, South Carolina; Los Angeles, California; Madison, Wisconsin; Providence, Rhode Island; Richmond, Virginia; Tacoma, Washington; Saint Paul, Minnesota; and New Orleans, Louisiana.

In California, Compton mayor Aja Brown's Compton Pledge initiative will provide eight hundred residents with a variable guaranteed income for two years, while Pittsburgh mayor William Peduto has launched a pilot to provide $500 a month for two years to two hundred residents, including a hundred Black women with incomes at or below 50 percent of the area median income.

"I am deeply appreciative of this seed funding, which will allow a group of Madison families to chart their own path toward financial stability," said Madison mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway. "Because affordable housing is such a critical issue in the city of Madison, my staff is exploring how we can design and implement a pilot that places housing affordability and security at the center of this conversation."

"We are a nation in crisis, and the last one of this scale yielded dramatic social reform; this is our New Deal moment," said Tubbs. "We need a social safety net that goes beyond conditional benefits tied to employment, works for everyone, and begins to address the call for racial and economic justice through a guaranteed income. These pilots and the resulting evidence will be instrumental in shaping what the 2021 social contract looks like in America."

(Aja Brown photo credit: Mayors for a Guaranteed Income)