This fall, The Hope Center for Student Basic Needs at Temple University is partnering with Trellis Strategies to align a few key questions across our flagship surveys—the Hope Center Student Basic Needs Survey and the Trellis Student Financial Wellness Survey—along with accompanying programming and support into a coordinated effort that simplifies participation and strengthens insights for institutions, researchers, and policymakers nationwide.
This alignment supports robust data analysis and institutional benchmarking, equipping colleges and universities with critical insights into the connections between financial stress, basic needs insecurity, academic persistence, and overall student success.
Why We’re Better Together:
A Unified Path Forward. Whether your institution participates in the Student Financial Wellness Survey (SFWS) or the Student Basic Needs Survey, you’ll benefit from the combined expertise of both Trellis and Hope. From survey planning to translating findings into real-world solutions, we’re here to help you drive meaningful change for your students.
More Actionable Data & Collaborative Research. By aligning our methodologies and key questions, we’re creating a shared research framework that yields richer, more useful insights. This collaboration enables institutions to better understand how financial wellness and basic needs insecurity intersect—empowering the broader field, including researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, to design interventions and policies that reflect the lived experiences of students.
Expanded Benchmarking. Join a growing community of over 600 colleges and universities committed to improving student outcomes. By participating in either survey, your institution contributes to a national benchmarking effort across critical dimensions like food and housing security, transportation, technology access, mental health, and financial wellness—all while gaining insights tailored to your campus.
The Hope Center will continue to partner with institutions to assess their students’ basic needs and engage in programming, action planning, and coaching to improve basic needs supports on their campuses through the Student Basic Needs Survey and Hope Impact Partnerships.
Closer collaboration between the two organizations will provide all of our partner institutions access to the expertise of both organizations, insights about the state of basic needs across the country from both surveys, and opportunities to engage in collaborative programming.
About The Hope Center Survey:
Since 2018 (formerly as the #RealCollege Survey), we’ve partnered with over 600 institutions and nearly 600,000 students to become the country’s largest and longest-running basic needs survey in higher education. Our survey provides institutions with data on:
Prevalence of food, housing, and technology insecurity
Students’ enrollment decisions, benefit utilization, and barriers
Mental health and well-being via validated measures (GAD-7, PHQ-9)
Inclusive demographics and lived-experience context
In 2021, we expanded the survey to include new domains (transportation, technology, child care) and refined our mental health and barrier questions, reflecting direct student and institutional feedback. In 2023, we integrated the survey into our Hope Impact Partnerships (HIP) program, offering deepened learning communities, coaching, and action-planning support alongside the data.
About Trellis Strategies’ Student Financial Wellness Survey:
Trellis Strategies is a leading nonprofit research and technical assistance firm focused on advancing postsecondary education and strengthening the workforce. With a deep commitment to understanding the modern learner experience—from application through graduation—we provide institutions with actionable insights that inform strategic decision-making and improve student outcomes.
The Student Financial Wellness Survey has provided holistic insights into how finances affect students’ ability to persist and succeed in postsecondary education. Drawing from both national and campus-specific data, SFWS helps institutions:
Measure financial fragility, debt behavior, and strategies students use to pay for college
Understand how basic needs insecurity, work, and time poverty intersect with academic demands
Identify disparities across student populations, including parenting status, enrollment intensity, and varying personas
Explore the role of mental health, social support, and financial stress in student decision-making
Since 2018, the SFWS has been offered on over 300 campuses, surveying more than 3.8 million students and generating insights that drive institutional transformation.
For questions or to learn more, please contact hip-info@temple.edu.