The Hope Center is an action research center built on a simple conviction: students are humans first, and their basic needs are central conditions for learning. For nearly a decade, its team has worked with colleges, state systems and policymakers to understand basic needs insecurity and change the structures that cause it. 

We’ve been learning from that work for some time. Dr. Anne Lundquist, Director of The Hope Center, serves on BetterMynd’s advisory board, and several BetterMynd partner campuses have worked with Hope in the past. Formalizing the relationship lets us offer that expertise to every campus we serve.

Through the partnership, BetterMynd campuses can enroll in Hope Impact Partnerships (HIP), The Hope Center’s technical assistance program, as an add-on to a new or renewing BetterMynd contract. Participating campuses receive: 

• The Hope Center Student Basic Needs Survey, covering food, housing, mental health, child care, transportation and more, with results in an interactive dashboard that compares your campus to similar institutions 

• Cohort-based learning through webinars, workshops and office hours on topics like using data to build momentum, communicating results to campus stakeholders, the CAS standards for basic needs programs, and sustainable funding 

• One-on-one coaching twice a year for goal setting and action planning 

• A session each semester designed specifically for BetterMynd campuses, focused on where mental health and basic needs intersect and how schools are using BetterMynd data alongside survey results to support students 

• A community of practice with other institutions doing the same work 

Everything runs through a single contract and a single payment with BetterMynd, at preferred pricing available only through the partnership. New cohorts begin each August and January. 

Basic needs insecurity is structural. It lives in financial aid rules, funding gaps, stretched staff and offices that don’t always talk to each other. A student might be known to the food pantry, the financial aid office and the counseling center, with none of them seeing the full picture. 

HIP is designed to close that gap. It gives campuses their own data and a structured way to bring financial aid, student affairs, counseling and basic needs staff around it. Past HIP partners describe what that looks like. At a public two-year community and technical college, the mental health team and the basic needs office recognized they needed to work more closely together; their emergency grant process is now a shared effort between both, and the college added counseling capacity and a Wellness Center on its second campus. 

That kind of change comes from people on campus who have the information they need and the backing to act on it. The Hope Center brings the research and the roadmap. BetterMynd brings high-quality online therapy that extends the care campus counseling teams already provide. 

Students are humans first. We’re proud to build on that idea alongside The Hope Center.