Report on the Implementation, Costs, and Impacts of the Findhelp Platform in the North Carolina Community College System. Research Report. RR-A2527-1

Community colleges enroll a diverse set of students who often face challenges meeting their basic needs. This report describes the potential benefits and costs of one low-cost and relatively light-touch tool that colleges might use to increase students' access to basic needs assistance. The authors focus on the Findhelp platform, which is modeled as a "social care network" that connects students through an online platform to services that provide help. Findhelp is a website that lists local resources and services, and it is available to anyone affiliated with an institution partnering with the platform. There is little research on Findhelp and similar light-touch resources, so this research documents how the resource was implemented at four community colleges in North Carolina, its implementation costs, and its impacts on student success following implementation. The authors use information from interviews with the campus staff who implemented the platform, administrative student-level data from the North Carolina Community College System on student persistence and credits attempted and completed, and data from Findhelp on how much individual students interacted with the platform. Overall, Findhelp usage rates were low, though usage varied across the participating colleges. Campus staff were enthusiastic about the potential of the platform, and there is some evidence that student success increased when the platform was implemented. In addition, the platform was relatively low-cost to implement compared with other more-intensive approaches for supporting students' basic needs.