StreetCred Co-Founder Lucy Marcil Awarded $10,000 Quinn Prize
Each year at our Scholars Weekend banquet, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation announces the recipients of the Matthew J. Quinn Prize and the Matthew J. Quinn Youth Leadership Award. Both awards honor the foundation’s first executive director, Dr. Matthew J. Quinn, who served from 2000 to 2010.
This blog post is the second in a three-part series to profile our 2017 recipients (read the first part here). The Quinn Prize, a $10,000 award, is given annually to Cooke Scholars or alumni in recognition of their outstanding achievement in community service. The Quinn Youth Leadership Award, a $5,000 award, is given annually to one or more current Cooke Young Scholars.
Lucy Marcil (Cooke Graduate Scholar ’08) has been selected as a 2017 Matthew J. Quinn Prize recipient for her extraordinary work with StreetCred, a nonprofit she co-founded in 2015. During her medical residency at Boston Children’s Hospital and Boston Medical Center, Lucy learned that 20% of families eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) don’t receive it. Lucy co-founded StreetCred to fight childhood poverty by providing EITC-eligible families with financial literacy training and tax preparation services in connection with pediatric medical visits.
In building the organization, Lucy conducted needs assessments at nine clinics across six states; raised approximately $200,000 in grants, corporate donations, and grassroots fundraising; and hired and supervised a team of seven employees – all while completing one of the most rigorous medical residency programs in the country. Dr. Robert J. Vinci of the Boston University School of Medicine says that Lucy has “demonstrated leadership, outstanding clinical skills and a commitment to her patients that goes beyond what we see in a typical resident in our training program… [With StreetCred], Lucy has thought creatively about developing strategies to lessen the impact of childhood poverty.”
Under Lucy’s leadership, StreetCred has returned over $1,000,000 to families thus far during 2017, with a return on investment of $20 to families for every $1 spent on the program. In this second year of operations, Lucy has expanded StreetCred to four sites in Boston, including a women’s shelter, and is exploring the opportunity to leverage clients’ tax data to help them seamlessly apply for other resources for which the family is eligible – WIC, SNAP, TANF, Head Start, among others. Lucy is also working with clinicians across the country to explore expanding this program nationally.