How is HudsonUP funded?

“How will you pay for that?”

This is a question that advocates of Universal Basic Income are used to hearing, with the common fear that UBI programs involve raising taxes on regular people.

To be clear: The HudsonUP pilot does not use any taxpayer money, and it’s fully independent from the local, state and federal government (Hudson Mayor Kamal Johnson is a member of our Advisory Board, but the pilot is not affiliated with Hudson’s government).

So where does the money come from?

HudsonUP is funded by philanthropists. To do the math, the program gives 25 people $500 per month for 5 years. That’s $750,000. The money comes in part from the Spark of Hudson, a new organization reimagining education in Hudson, founded by Susan Danziger and Albert Wenger. $300,000 comes from Humanity Forward, the nonprofit run by former presidential candidate Andrew Yang. Finally, NBA player J.J. Redick made a generous donation to bring us up to our full funding. That means all the money for HudsonUP comes from private philanthropic sources, not taxpayer money.