Section 1: Overview

Supportive Factors

• Adequate staff capacity for startup. It will be a few hundred hours of work before a consumer uses their first voucher.

• Adequate staff capacity for management. Managing the program is less work than creating it, but it still requires ongoing time investment.

• Experience with grant applications and obtaining funding. Transportation voucher programs are relatively inexpensive, but they still require funds to operate. Fortunately, there are ways to acquire funding for this type of program.

• Transportation in your area is limited. If there are few transportation options in your area, consumers already get rides from friends or family, or your community has a strong culture of volunteering.

• There are no existing voucher programs in your area (if there are, consider partnering).

• Staff have the skills to build partnerships and negotiate with providers.

• Staff have strong internal systems for tracking data and managing paperwork.

• Local transportation providers (if they exist) are willing to work with you.

• Local government agencies are supportive or interested.

Assessing Readiness

If many factors on this list are present, a transportation voucher program might be a good fit for your CIL! If very few factors on this list are present, you may need to do some additional work before you start. Over time, you can, for example, slowly build staff skills and capacity, build rapport with providers or local government agencies, or improve your applications for funding with multiple attempts. If you have another existing program to draw from that could supplement a voucher program, then you might go in a different direction. Transportation voucher programs are broad and can look different based on the resources available to you.