Closegap & Morgan Stanley: Where innovation arises & how it gets funded

Episode Notes:

• Follow Rachel Miller on LinkedIn

• Follow Joan Steinberg on LinkedIn

• Learn more about Closegap

• Read the Closegap case study referenced in the episode

• Learn more about the Morgan Stanley Alliance for Children’s Mental Health

• Learn more about The Alliance’s Innovation Awards

• See the video Morgan Stanley worked with Closegap to produce

• 2021 Study from the CDC on high school students who felt sad or hopeless

• 2022 study from the National Library of Medicine on child and adolescent mental health

• “Just over half of U.S. public schools offer mental health assessments for students; fewer offer treatment” from the Pew Research Center

• Study from Candid on overall foundation investments into mental health causes

Transcript

Before we get started, please be aware that this episode covers sensitive topics like suicide, abuse, and self harm in the context of creating and funding interventions and solutions. Listener discretion is advised.

One of my favorite quotes is from Mr. Rogers, where he says, when I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.

But this quote is meant to calm children down. For adults, it's a call to action. We need to be those helpers. And one area where we desperately need more helpers is the realm of children's mental health. The numbers prove it.

Forty five percent of high school students in the US reported feeling sad or hopeless, according to a twenty twenty one survey from the CDC. That's a twelve percent increase since twenty eleven. Between two thousand and nine and twenty nineteen, suicidal behaviors among high school students increased more than forty percent according to a twenty twenty two study from the National Library of Medicine. And only half of US public schools offer mental health assessments and fewer offer treatment, according to a twenty twenty two study from the Pew Research Center.

One final number for you: one point three percent. According to a study published by Candid, only one point three percent of overall foundation investments went towards mental health causes between twenty fifteen and twenty eighteen. It stands to reason children's mental health made up a fraction of that one point three percent.

Thankfully, things are starting to change. Teachers, counselors, and public officials are stepping into help. But those helpers need support of their own. They need much more than that one point three percent.

Welcome to Impact Audio. I am Sam Kaplan, Vice President of Social Impact at Submittable.

One organization supporting teachers and counselors today is Closegap. Closegap is a nonprofit that develops software designed to help students share their mental health status on their own terms. Their software provides a safe place for students from kindergarten to twelfth grade to express how they're feeling, and it helps teachers and counselors know when and how they can step in and provide support.

The folks at Closegap make tools for the helpers, and the folks at Morgan Stanley helped fund the creation of those tools. Since twenty twenty one, the Morgan Stanley Alliance for Children's Mental Health has run the annual Innovation Awards, where they award five one hundred thousand dollars grants along with other forms of support recipients.

In twenty twenty three, Closegap was one of those five.

And if we can understand how Closegap innovates and how Morgan Stanley helps fund that innovation, perhaps we can all empower more helpers to do their important work.

This is the first of two episodes providing an inside look at the relationship between Morgan Stanley as a grantor and Closegap as a grantee as they work together to address our ongoing youth mental health crisis.

This episode will focus on Close Gaps founder and CEO, Rachel Miller, as she explains the nuances and challenges of being both a 501c3 nonprofit and a tech company.

We'll also hear from Joan Steinberg, Morgan Stanley's Global Head of Philanthropy and President of the Morgan Stanley Foundation, as she provides her perspective as a funder. Next episode will be my full Uncut Conversation with Joan, where we discuss the reasons why youth mental health is so important to Morgan Stanley, how they structure the Innovation Awards.

So without further ado, let's hear more from the helpers.

Rachel Miller founded Close Gap in twenty seventeen based on a core insight.

Nearly half of American youth will face a diagnosable mental illness before turning eighteen, and the average delay between the onset of mental health symptoms and intervention is much too long. There's a clear gap in treatment that needs addressing, so she and her team created a solution. Here's Rachel.

We've built a free mental health check-in, and we call it a check-in. Really what it is, is this immersive, safe, digital space where students actually wanna spend time. It's developmentally appropriate from kindergarten all the way to grade twelve.

And we ask a series of questions. So we ask, how are you feeling?

How do those emotions show up in your body? Very cognitive behavioral therapy related. And then we ask foundational questions like, hey, what's going on in your friend group? How's everything going at home?

Are you overwhelmed with your workload? And again, these are all based on the age group itself. And then we take that information and we triage it and we organize it and we make it really simple for teachers and school counselors and all the amazing adults who are already doing this work. We make it easy for them to intervene in real time.

And the really important aspect of this, like why a solution like this is so needed, even though it seems quite simple and it is, is that the average delay between the onset of mental health symptoms and intervention is ten years.

So if a young person shows some sort of depressive symptomology or a behavioral issue or some sort of need, on average, it's gonna take us ten years to get support in place. So we're really bad at early intervention. And so that's really the problem we're solving is, hey, we're gonna make it so insanely easy for young people to share what's going on with them and equally as easy for school staff to intervene so they can get support in real time.

Rachel explains that the CloseGap team aims to create space for children to express themselves in ways they feel comfortable.

It's really about building that safe digital space where whatever is there can bubble up. And, you know, on a day to day that looks like, you know, one check-in could be a second grader whose goldfish just died. And so they have an opportunity to talk about that. And then the teacher comes up and says, hey.

I I noticed what you shared. Let's talk about it for a moment, and then we get back to learning. And then for another student, it could be, you know, hey. I saw a movie where someone was cutting themselves, and I started thinking about doing that.

And I've been getting in fights with my mom a lot lately, and sometimes it makes me wanna hurt myself.

And then that student can talk to the school counselor. So really our job is to meet the student where they are, regardless of the quality or the severity of need. It's creating that place where they can share and then letting all of the adults who are already there and primed to offer support know what's going on.

Each member at Close Gap has personal experience with mental health challenges, and they use that experience to create the tools that they wish they had when they were younger. Rachel shares her story.

For me, like so many of our young people today, I struggled deeply with my mental health when I was younger. And the way that showed up for me was suicidality, several suicide attempts, self harm, and just a great deal of risk taking behavior as I got older, substance abuse issues.

And for me, like so many young people, most of that comes from navigating some sort of adversity.

So for me, it was being born into a dysfunctional family that just struggled a lot, like so many people.

And I think whether or not the adversity is familial or societal or what have you, young people are kind of thrown into these situations. Developmentally, they are unable to navigate themselves.

And so they either don't have the emotional support they need, they don't have enough adults that they can lean on, or they don't have the emotional toolkit. So like emotion labeling, emotion identification to navigate these situations. You know, most adults don't even have that emotional toolkit. You know, it was really about building a tool that made it easy for young people to ask for help if they need it and then easy to develop some of these skills because, you know, I'm not so sure we should eliminate adversity altogether. I don't even think that's possible.

But young people are gonna have to navigate things that are extraordinarily challenging, and developmentally, they aren't well positioned to handle them. And so we need to make sure that young people have these skills. I think the young people today are navigating things that we can't even imagine with social media, with the pandemic.

I think what I found that's particularly interesting and I think surprising for folks is that we tell this narrative that young people don't want to talk to us. We have this narrative of like, Oh, you know, teenagers won't talk to us, and they don't wanna share with us, and we annoy them, and they don't wanna talk. And what I found is that is so utterly untrue. Actually, young people need us deeply.

They want to talk to us, but they need to do it on their own terms. Right? And when we're thinking about young people today, they're digital natives. They're used to, you know, living out so much of their lives online.

And so it only makes sense to create a safe digital space where they feel comfy sharing. Of course, they're gonna share with us in a space like that. That's really what we find with Closegap is that young people really show up and share what's going on.

According to a case study on their site, Close Gap helped a school counselor intervene at a critical moment. A reserved student was struggling with suicidality and didn't feel comfortable walking up to the counselor's office and knocking on the door.

Closegap gave that student a safe space to express their mental health challenges so that counselor could reach out and help. The counselor describes the value of Closegap by saying that it's simply a quick check-in where the students click a few boxes, and then a helper can step in and provide support. We'll link to the full case study in the show notes.

To provide this solution though, closed gap has to be many things at once. A nonprofit that has to seek funding, a technology company that serves the education sector that's often called EdTech, and a youth mental health solution that can connect children in need with adults who can help. Rachel describes this intricate balancing act.

I think with kind of being at the intersection of ed tech, youth mental health, and also being structured as a nonprofit, you're playing several games at once. So one of them is the ed tech game where you have to build a technology solution that teachers and school counselors and school admins are willing to use, and you have to build all of the technical infrastructure around that solution. And then at the same time, we have to play the game of a nonprofit company. So even you know, regardless of being technology or otherwise, we have to play the nonprofit game of applying to grants, trying to get funding, and using a huge amount of team time and resources and energy on just trying to fund the thing that needs to exist.

And then in addition to that, we're kind of on the intersection now of like behavioral tech and youth mental health and this very nascent field of, okay, how are we gonna use technology to support our young people? And so we get to play the game of how do we take psychological modalities and translate them into a technology solution. I'm really finding that the funders that are attracted to what we're doing are attracted to that complexity and recognize that it's necessary. Actually, when you're trying to solve a huge social problem, it's gonna be very complicated, and you actually quite literally, you do need to play in all of these ecosystems to really push a solution like this forward.

One funding stream that came through for Closegap in twenty twenty three was the Children's Mental Health Innovation Awards put on by the Morgan Stanley Alliance for Children's Mental Health.

We spoke with Joan Steinberg, Morgan Stanley's global head of philanthropy and president of the Morgan Stanley Foundation, to learn more about their innovation awards and how they identified Closegap as a winner. The Children's Mental Health Innovation Awards started in twenty twenty one and disperses one hundred thousand dollars grants to five winners each year. The winners are chosen by a panel of children's mental health experts after a few rounds of review.

As one of the twenty twenty three winners, Close Gap received one of the one hundred thousand dollars grants along with many other forms of support like help with publicity and further fundraising. In my conversation with Joan, before we got too deep in the details, I was curious. Why does Morgan Stanley, the eighth largest bank in the world by market capitalization, cares so much about children's health? Joan explains Children's Health has deep roots Morgan Stanley.

Before I started here, we were already working on children's health. So I think it's important to note that children's hospitals were part of our grants even when the firm first got formed and when our foundation was formed in the 1960s. But I think what it really boils down to is employees have always been a critical part of how we give back in our communities, and children is a natural focus area when you think about our own employees, many of whom are parents, and it just became kind of the common and central theme to our giving. And so since I got here, which is years ago, almost thirty years ago, it's really become more central.

And I think about five years ago, we were looking at what we do, and we've done a lot around children's physical health. And there were a couple statistics that really stood out, but the one that really got us was at the time, and it's only gotten worse if that's possible, suicide was the leading cause of death among children ten and over. And we felt as children's health funders that we were doing something wrong if we weren't concentrating on the thing that was sort of killing the most kids and could be prevented. And that's when we really started looking at children's mental health and expanding our definition of what health meant and making sure that mental health was in the front of our minds as we thought about what you could do to really give kids a healthy start.

The Morgan Stanley Alliance for Children's Mental Health, often just called the Alliance, is composed of youth mental health experts and organizations from around the globe. Joan describes how this group chooses Innovation Award recipients.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of eight hundred charities apply for the Innovation Awards. So we're not able on first read to tell you who's gonna make it to the end. We really have to read through every application. And then most importantly is I don't decide.

Have a team of experts who are pulled from our alliance. Almost all of them are mental health professionals, and they're the ones who actually read and review these. So I might think something's innovative, but they're the experts who can tell us what's actually there. I think what we're looking for isn't, oh, it's tech innovation.

We're actually looking for people who are solving the problems of mental health within kids in interesting and innovative ways and in ways that others can pick up and run with. Because our goal isn't to support some new technology or some new measurement. Our goal is to figure out how we as a society figure out better ways to maintain the health of our young people.

I was curious, what was it about Closegap that stood out to Joan and the Alliance's team of reviewers? Turns out, it was the same thing I picked up on, a clear problem with an innovative solution based on lived experience.

There's a couple of things about CloseGap that really were of interest to us. It's a really cost effective way for schools to be able to identify kids who are struggling, and that might be enough, except they really thought about what you do with the data. And I think that was really important to Rachel realized that schools are overwhelmed, they have all these kids that they have to manage through, what are the tools you can give them to identify the kids who need the help the most, and then how do you think about the resource connection? And so I really liked the way they thought about that.

She was onto something, the number of schools who asked for their help during COVID and helping to think about and identify their kids. And also that the technology they use is simple, but is effective for young kids all the way through to high school kids in identifying what's happening with them. They have been successful at identifying the kids who really needed it, getting them sort of same day and immediate care. And that's allowed them, I'm sure, save lives just by using technology effectively in an education environment.

I know that often innovative solutions like Closegap don't get off the ground because they struggle to secure the sort of funding they need to scale. So I was curious about Closegap's experience applying for the Innovation Awards in twenty twenty three. Rachel walks me through the process.

Close Gap was a part of their second cohort, and we knew about the first cohort. So we knew about the grant through our network, you know, for all youth mental health organizations. I think we all knew about it. It was like, woah, Morgan Stanley's on the scene and wants to support our work. So we knew about the first one, we did not apply, felt like we weren't far enough along potentially. And then when the second year came along, we were still a little worried, honestly. We're an early stage nonprofit.

You know, we're at the intersection of mental health being a nonprofit five zero one c three and an ed tech company. So sometimes it's a really complicated pitch, like not everyone gets it. And so we weren't sure if we should apply and then we thought, you know what? We're going for it.

And I'm so glad we did because the first round I think was quite a large grant proposal. It took us a fair amount of time. And then the second round was an extension of that first grant proposal, which is typical. You submit your first one and then you offer more information later.

And then we had to There was a third round interview, I remember, with the entire team and I was so nervous. We were already thrilled we had gotten that far, but I was so nervous. It's like the interview stage, are we gonna make it? And everyone on the Morgan Stanley Innovation Award team is incredible.

So supportive, really devoted to the work. You can just feel it. They know a great deal too. So for me, it was really encouraging to know, okay, these folks have done their research, they understand what it is they're trying to fund, they understand the space.

So that was really encouraging for me.

So we went through that third round and then I believe that's when we found out that we got it some weeks later. And then, you know, there were, you know, financials that we had to submit and all of this. So it's Morgan Stanley. It's a bank. You know, it's quite a rigorous experience, but it was supportive though all the way through.

The funding Closegap received had an immediate impact on their operations, as Rachel describes.

So the grant itself, the one hundred thousand dollars enabled us to improve school implementation.

So we, you know, we grew by 10x at the start of the pandemic. So we were serving ten thousand students. The pandemic hit, we went to serving a hundred thousand students in a six week period and which is so exciting and our systems broke and typical tech story. But really what that means is that the aftermath is that you have to catch up operationally and you have to build the company that supports that amount of users and that number of schools because working with schools requires quite a bit as well. So what the grant enabled us to do was just what I would say is like catch up operationally, like get in place so we can actually serve this number of students and this number of schools.

But Rachel was quick to add that the impact of winning an innovation award goes way beyond just the funding.

I think the Morgan Stanley grant gave us a great deal of credibility.

That's absolutely true. And so I think just being able to say, hey, we were funded by Morgan Stanley is a huge deal. And really why it's such a big deal is there are so many grant making institutions out there that have tons of money that they should be deploying more often. That's another topic, but more often to nonprofits.

But part of their obstacle is that they don't always have the resources and the expertise to vet organizations. So there's tons of capital that should be being deployed, but they don't have the expertise to vet. And so for us, Morgan Stanley went through that huge vetting process. And so for other organizations, they could say, okay, like Close Gap has been vetted by Morgan Stanley, we can make a grant now.

And so for us, that was really huge, just kind of boosting that credibility and, you know, a bit more brand recognition. The other thing that we got, which is really important for any, you know, early stage company or nonprofit is some PR support. So, you know, as a nonprofit, we are not spending money on PR. We're spending money on, you know, trying to get in the hands of more schools, improving our technology, everything else that we're spending money on.

And so Morgan Stanley came in and we created a video and we did a few interviews and we met with their marketing and their comms teams and we really talked about, okay, how are we gonna get Closegap out there? And so that was a huge value add because we just, at this stage, we can't be spending money on that. And so their expertise in that regard was really valuable.

I think this is such a clear explanation of all the ways that a grantor can impact a grantee. It's not just the money, it's the support and the boost in credibility. Doors are opening in a closed gap that otherwise might not have without the Morgan Stanley collaboration.

That's exactly what we wanted the Innovation Awards to be, right? So there is cash, it's a hundred thousand dollar grant. But to us, that was kind of the least effective part of it. I mean, money's great, but we really wanted to build this around using our channels, our voice, and our networks to get other people's eyes on the organizations that we'd identified. And that's what we wanna see, right? Which is folks like Rachel getting recognized, having where we can apply sort of our PR sense, whether it's social media, like what are the things we can do to sell her? How do we bring our clients and others who might be willing to invest in nonprofits to the table.

We partnered with groups like Mindful Philanthropy and shared some of our winners so that folks can see what great charities look like in action. But we also are aware that for new entrepreneurs who may have just started their nonprofits, they might also need some strengthening, there might be some capacity building. So we also offer sort of a cohort series and help train those entrepreneurs in scalability for nonprofits, marketing, public relations, fundraising, strategic planning, you know, what are the things that kind of help a nascent or smaller organization get to the next level? And we try to provide all of that learning as a part of getting the award.

Of course, once you receive funding, you need to put it into action and start measuring impact. I asked Rachel how the team at Close Gap is measuring impact and how they communicate that impact to funders like the Alliance.

So we have a few different ways that we measure impact. We we measure impact on the student level and the school staff level and the school level.

So what that looks like is our students is there an increase in the ability to label and identify emotions and then regulate them when they come up?

Is there an increase in trust between students and school staff?

Is there an increase in school staff's ability to understand the needs of students and intervene on them in real time?

So all of that we're serving within the check-in with, it's qualitative and quantitative. So that's the sort of way that we're measuring impact with the tool. And then on top of that, we're also measuring how many times were we able to prevent a suicide. So something we've learned quite a bit over the past year is that we continue to support students who have already planned their suicides.

So they have they have decided that's what they're going to do. There is a plan in place.

And then right before they act on it, they say something in the check-in. And not necessarily, hey. I planned my suicide, but something a little goofy, off enough to where the school counselor goes, well, that's weird. Let's talk to this student. And then it comes out and they're able to support the student. We have so many success stories about the student continuing to see the school counselor, which is what we want. We wanna facilitate that relationship.

And so we're starting to track that a lot too. So when we're preventing these suicides, what's happening here?

Right? So to like really open that up and understand what's happening so we can continue driving that. And then we also measure how many things have we uncovered that wouldn't have been uncovered otherwise.

So we're we're quite good at uncovering bullying and sexual assault and violence and other forms of adversity that for whatever reason just fly under the radar, and there are reasons that they fly under the radar.

How are we helping those things to bubble up? So that's a lot of what we're measuring now too.

And from what they can measure, Closegap is changing and saving young lives. Rachel shares some results and lessons her team has learned.

So schools who have used closed gap have prevented suicides and uncovered cases of sexual assault, bullying, trouble at home, violence, and other needs that would otherwise go unnoticed that were otherwise going unnoticed.

And so what we find is, yes, young people do show up and share. What we're learning, particularly with adolescents, is there are some things that they wanna talk about directly. So they will throw it in their check-in, hey, this is what's going on. I wanna talk about it. The school counselor reaches out, very direct conversation.

We're finding that there are other topics that they don't wanna discuss. So one of those is sexual health and sexual identity and romance. So think back to when you were an adolescent, the person you had a crush on occupied like ninety percent of your brain space. We all remember that, like being young and going through puberty and all of these things, right?

It's just a really, it's a lot to navigate at once. And we're finding that young people do not wanna talk about that. However, they want curated resources that help them learn on their own. If they're thinking about sexual identity or thinking about gender identity, they can go to a resource and they can read about it.

And then maybe journal about it and move through their own self guided process. And so what we're learning is, yes, they want to talk to school counselors and teachers about some things, but other things are off limits. However, they still need the support. It's just in private.

One of my favorite questions to ask grantees is what they would do if they were given a million dollars in funding and no strings attached. It's a great way to understand their vision and what issues they find most pressing.

When I pose this question to Rachel, here's what she says.

What would I do? I would hire a much larger team. You know, really what we found is we're serving about two hundred thousand students, and we have about seven thousand schools that wanna use CloseGap. So there's a huge demand. That would be about two million students, maybe a little bit under two million.

So there's about two million students that could very easily use closed gap. The schools are ready to implement, but there's a bottleneck in our team. We're a small team. So there's a huge demand, but we don't have a big enough team to meet it just yet. We're on our way.

So I would hire three software engineers. I would hire a full time designer. I would hire a full time illustrator. I would hire a salesperson. We have an earned revenue stream that enables us to be sustainable as a nonprofit. So I would hire the person that would drive that forward, and I would probably pay everyone on the team just a bit more in this moment.

When I hear that answer, I hear that there are helpers, teachers and counselors who need much more support. And Rachel has a plan. With the help of Morgan Stanley and other like minded funders, she and the team at Close Gap can make that plan a reality.

In twenty seventeen, Rachel and her team at Close Gap started creating an innovative solution based on their lived experience. Then they worked hard to make it a reality by balancing the unique circumstances of being a 501c3 and an edtech software company dealing with children's mental health. Six years later, Closegap wins an innovation award from the Morgan Stanley Alliance for Children's Mental Health to help spread their solution to even more schools. In this story, there's a need for both helpers and those who support those helpers. In the case of children's mental health, teachers and counselors can't go it alone. They need better tools.

And building and scaling better tools requires funding and other forms of support. In short, real impact requires close partnerships like the one that exists with Closegap and Morgan Stanley.

If you're a funder, I encourage you to consider supporting children's mental health causes.

Next episode, I speak with Joan to dive deeper into why mental health is such an underfunded cause and how the Alliance structures their Innovation Awards. The Innovation Awards from the Morgan Stanley Alliance for Children's Mental Health aims to identify and fund transformative mental health care solutions for children and young adults across the US.

The Alliance recently announced its third cohort of winners, which each received one hundred thousand dollars to scale their solutions. This year, the Alliance also launched an education and capacity building program called the Leadership Learning Series, which will provide more than one hundred additional nonprofits access to expert led learning sessions and networking opportunities.

If you're interested in applying for next year's Innovation Awards, applications will open in spring twenty twenty four, and all registered five zero one(three) public charities based in the US are eligible to apply.

If you'd like to learn more about Close Gap, visit closegap dot org. That's all from me today. Thank you for listening to Impact Audio, produced by your friends at Submittable.