Dignity by Design

Financial assistance programs are created to help people. Yet the process of receiving that help can sometimes leave them feeling exposed, diminished, or separated from everyone else.

The forms can be intrusive. The language can be uncomfortable. Families may have to repeatedly explain their circumstances, ask for additional consideration, or disclose deeply personal information to multiple people. Even after assistance is awarded, additional costs can quietly create divisions between those who can participate fully and those who cannot.

When I developed the Indexed Tuition program at Jewish Leadership Academy, I wanted to create something different.

The financial model needed to be responsible, consistent, and sustainable. But it also needed to reflect an equally important principle:

A family's dignity should not be the price of receiving help.

The Organizations That Shaped My Thinking

Two organizations strongly influenced how I approached this work.

Masbia operates what has often been described as a "restaurant without a cash register." Its guests receive nutritious meals in a welcoming, restaurant-style environment. They are seated and served rather than processed through an experience that announces their need to everyone around them.

The brilliance of the model is not simply that Masbia provides food. It considers how people experience receiving that food.

Chesed Chicago, from my native Chicago, similarly describes its mission as providing assistance with "kindness, dignity, and respect." Its extensive range of services recognizes that financial hardship rarely exists in a single, isolated category. A family struggling with tuition may also need help with food, clothing, medical expenses, utilities, or other necessities.

Both organizations taught me an enduring lesson: helping people is not only about what we provide. It is also about how we provide it.

That idea became foundational to the Indexed Tuition program at JLA.

Replacing Uncertainty With Transparency

For many families, the hardest part of considering an independent school begins before they ever apply.

They see the published tuition and assume the school is beyond their reach. To find out otherwise, they may have to submit an application, disclose extensive financial information, and wait for a decision — all before knowing whether enrollment is remotely feasible.

We wanted families to have greater clarity from the beginning.

We therefore created an anonymous online Indexed Tuition calculator. By entering a limited number of financial data points, prospective families could receive an initial estimate of the tuition tier that might apply to them. They did not have to identify themselves or initiate an uncomfortable conversation simply to understand whether JLA might be financially possible.

The calculator did not replace a complete review, but it gave families something important: the ability to explore their options privately and on their own terms.

Transparency, in this context, was more than a convenience. It was a form of respect.

Asking What Was Necessary, and Nothing More

We also developed our own Indexed Tuition Application Portal, known as ITAP.

Traditional financial assistance applications can be lengthy and invasive — and designed as though one size fits most. They sometimes ask questions because those questions have always been asked, not because every answer is truly necessary to make a responsible determination.

Our goal with ITAP was to ask for the information we genuinely needed and avoid asking for information we did not.

Where possible, the system extracted relevant data from uploaded tax returns and available public information. This reduced manual entry, limited repetition, and made the process less burdensome for families.

Technology is often described as innovative when it makes an organization faster or more efficient. But its more meaningful use may be making an experience less taxing for the person on the other side.

Efficiency helped us administer the program. Empathy guided how we built it.

Creating One Student Experience

The Indexed Tuition model was not only about determining what a family would pay. It was also about ensuring that the amount they paid did not determine the education their child would receive.

JLA established an essentially all-inclusive tuition. Fresh meals, laptops, books, classroom supplies, extracurricular activities, educational trips, and the school's major travel experiences were included. Every student could participate in the same core opportunities and experiences, regardless of the tuition tier assigned to their family.

This was an important design choice.

A school can provide substantial tuition assistance and still unintentionally create visible distinctions between students. If trips, technology, meals, supplies, or activities require separate payments, the differences between families can quickly reappear.

Children notice who participates and who does not. They notice who has to ask. They notice who receives something different.

An inclusive community cannot eliminate every economic difference, but it can avoid unnecessarily placing those differences on display.

The objective was not simply to make tuition affordable. It was to create one student experience.

Anticipating the Needs Families Might Not Voice

Even an all-inclusive model cannot cover every expense. Uniforms and optional transportation, for example, remained separate.

But I did not want families to discover those costs later and then have to decide whether to ask for additional help. When we knew that a family might benefit from assistance — based on their ITAP application — I tried to offer reduced costs proactively, before the family felt that they had to request assistance, and ideally before the family developed anxiety in anticipation of additional expenses.

The same thinking applied to our month-long high school experience in Israel. Students naturally needed some personal spending money during the trip. For certain students whose families were experiencing financial need, I arranged for that money to be provided — in coordination with the parents — without identifying it to the student as assistance from the school.

They did not need to know why it was available or how it had been arranged. They simply needed to be able to participate alongside their classmates.

"Sometimes the most dignified assistance is the assistance a person never has to ask for, and never has to explain."

Dignity Is an Operating Principle

Organizations frequently include dignity, compassion, and respect among their stated values. But values become meaningful only when they influence operational decisions.

If dignity is truly a priority, it should affect: the questions we ask; the language we use; the information we require; the technology we develop; the costs we include; the assistance we anticipate; and the way people experience every interaction with us.

That does not mean abandoning financial discipline or treating every situation identically. A sustainable assistance program still requires careful analysis, consistent standards, and responsible stewardship.

But rigor and compassion are not competing objectives. Thoughtful systems can provide both.

The Indexed Tuition program was designed to determine a fair and affordable tuition amount for each family. Its deeper purpose, however, was to allow families to pursue an exceptional education without being made to feel lesser for needing a different financial path to reach it.

That is the leadership lesson I carry from the experience:

Dignity should not depend on the discretion of a kind person at the end of a process. It should be built into the process from the beginning.