Magnolia Mother’s Trust program now in its ninth year
The Magnolia Mother’s Trust (MMT) provides $1,000 a month for 12 months to extremely low-income families headed by Black mothers in Jackson, Mississippi, with no restrictions on how the money is spent. Launched in December 2018 by the nonprofit Springboard to Opportunities, the program is now in its ninth year and is the longest-running guaranteed income program in the United States, according to the organization.
Springboard to Opportunities CEO Aisha Nyandoro co-founded the organization in 2013. The group works with families living in federally supported affordable housing in Jackson, an approach Nyandoro described as a “radically resident-driven approach.” By 2017, she said she became concerned that the group’s existing programs — after-school activities, workforce development, and reading circles — were not changing poverty outcomes enough.
A conversation with a mother in the program shifted her thinking, Nyandoro said.
“I was like: ‘Oh, what are you doing this weekend? Are you doing a movie with the kids?’ In conversation, that’s just standard theater,” Nyandoro said. “And this mom looked at me, and she was like: ‘Let me tell you – I can’t afford something like a pizza.’ And in that moment, it clicked.”
Nyandoro said the organization asked residents what they were missing. “That question just opened up all these stories,” she said. “When we sat down and listened, I said: ‘Oh my God, all of this can be stopped with money.’”
The first cohort launched in December 2018 with 20 mothers. Nyandoro recalled that many participants initially thought the program was a scam: “It was a novelty – someone is just going to give you a thousand dollars a month for 12 months and open 529 accounts for your kids? So many of our moms thought that it was a scam.”
The MMT is explicitly limited to Black mothers. Nyandoro said the program is guided by guaranteed income’s design principle of targeting the “financially most harmed within a community.”
“Here in Jackson, Mississippi, the financially most harmed are Black women, specifically Black mothers, and that is because of the policies and the systems that we have put in place that make it virtually impossible for them to earn at the same level as their counterparts,” Nyandoro said.
Amaya Jones, a participant who experienced homelessness while pregnant, said she “burst out into tears” when she learned she had been selected for the program. “I went from full-time to part-time to barely making ends meet,” Jones said. “I was like: ‘Oh, my God. Lord, you hear my cry.’ It was rainbows after bad weather.”
Jones said the payments allowed her to take her children out of town and spend more time with them. “It was a sigh of relief,” she said. “I was actually able to take my kids out of town, stuff I wouldn’t be able to do. It’s more time with my children. It’s still helping me today because I’m not struggling and I can prepare myself for the future.”
Jones also described the program’s social component. Participants attend meetings and discuss topics such as mental health. “I found new people who lived in the apartments, because I knew no one,” she said. “It’s like a very big sisterhood and familyhood to this day.”
Kenja Patton, selected for this year’s cohort, said the program gave her the freedom to take her son, who is asthmatic and had an extended hospital stay, to Disney World for his kindergarten graduation. Patton said she had to leave one of her jobs during her son’s hospitalization.
This year’s cohort launched in May 2026. Nyandoro said the mothers in the current group face compounded pressures from the affordability crisis and federal policy changes, including what she referred to as the “big, beautiful bill.” She described participants’ reaction to being selected as “exhalation.”