Basic Needs, Real Costs: Collaborative Care
By Cristian Ulisses Reyes, NASFAA Policy Staff
This blog is the third in a three-part series led by our 2025 DME Policy Intern, Cristian Reyes, focused on basic needs insecurity in higher education. In this post, we’ll explore the effectiveness of collaboration between basic needs and financial aid practitioners to support holistic student success.
In higher education, we often talk about increasing access and improving student success, but access and success mean little if students can’t meet their basic needs. Over the past several years, conversations around food, housing, transportation, and mental health insecurity have moved from the margins to the mainstream. Colleges and universities have made important strides to support students holistically, but one of the most impactful, and still underdeveloped, strategies is the intentional collaboration between financial aid offices and basic needs programs
It is essential for these campus functions to come together if we want to build systems that serve the whole student. Financial aid offices and basic needs centers often operate in parallel, serving the same students but through different lenses. Financial aid professionals manage the critical work of disbursing federal and state aid, advising students on complex eligibility requirements, and helping them stay enrolled. Basic needs staff, on the other hand, are on the front lines of student wellness, working to connect students to food pantries, emergency grants, transportation assistance, shelter, and more. Both roles are essential. But without communication and collaboration, they can sometimes work at cross-purposes, placing the burden on students to navigate two disconnected systems at a time when they are already in crisis.
Rachel Sumekh, founder and CEO Emeritus of the national nonprofit Swipe Out Hunger, emphasized how harmful this disconnect can be. “We don’t want financial aid to reduce a student’s aid just because they received support through a basic needs program,” she said. “That support isn’t a ‘bonus’. It’s survival. Financial aid and basic needs professionals must be in conversation to avoid unintentionally hurting students.” She recalled how a campus once tried to deduct donated meal swipes from a student’s financial aid package, treating it as duplicative support. Only after engaging with basic needs staff did they realize this was not only inappropriate, it was harmful. “That conversation helped build trust and prevented harm,” Sumekh said. “It’s better to ask questions and collaborate than to make assumptions about what a student is eligible for.” Fortunately, the FAFSA Simplification Act enacted in 2020 excludes emergency assistance from the determination of financial aid eligibility, and awareness of this provision in the basic needs and financial aid spaces is growing.
This kind of collaboration cannot be reactive. It must be built into the structure of how campuses support students. That means financial aid professionals must be familiar with basic needs services on their campus, and vice versa. Each office has unique access to information, resources, and systems that the other can benefit from. For example, financial aid staff often know which students are experiencing financial hardship but may not have food security data or insight into housing instability. Basic needs practitioners may be helping students secure emergency grants or navigate homelessness, but they may not know how to interpret financial aid offers or the strict data-sharing rules that apply to financial aid application data. Sharing knowledge and coordinating approaches ensures students receive consistent, comprehensive support, not conflicting messages or bureaucratic barriers.
Collaboration also includes building policies and communication strategies together. Imagine if financial aid applications and communications included a simple, voluntary question like: “Have you skipped meals to afford tuition?” Or if every financial aid website prominently linked to campus food pantries, housing resources, or emergency grant applications. While schools cannot require students to complete additional forms to access federal aid, they can take steps to voluntarily integrate basic needs support into their communications. Embedding these connections helps normalize the use of support services and reduce the stigma that often surrounds them. “We’ve come a long way,” Sumekh noted. “There’s a generational shift happening. Students are more open to asking for help. But we need to meet that shift with sensitivity and support. It’s not enough to offer resources; we have to build a culture where accessing those resources is seen as a strength.”
This culture of care must also be rooted in data. Financial aid leaders should seek out data from basic needs teams to better understand the scope of student challenges and to advocate for institutional or policy-level changes. “Ask basic needs staff for their data,” Sumekh urged. “How many students visit the food pantry? What’s the demand for emergency grants? What support is being underutilized because students don’t know it exists?” These numbers tell a story not just about resource use, but about who your students are and what they’re up against. This data can strengthen campus planning, support external funding proposals, and guide equitable policy implementation.
Perhaps most importantly, collaboration between financial aid and basic needs professionals is not simply about efficiency or compliance. It’s about equity. The students most affected by basic needs insecurity, like first-generation students, students of color, parenting students, and those from low-income backgrounds, are also those least likely to have safety nets to fall back on. When our systems operate in silos, these students fall through the cracks. When we work together, we reduce friction, close gaps, and create an ecosystem of support that allows students not just to survive, but to thrive.
As we conclude this series, the message is clear: holistic student support requires holistic institutional collaboration. Financial aid and basic needs programs are not separate efforts, they are two sides of the same coin. Both exist to remove barriers, retain students, and promote graduation. It’s time we start treating them as essential partners in that mission. We call on campus leaders, financial aid directors, basic needs coordinators, and frontline staff to begin (or deepen) the work of collaboration. Meet regularly. Learn about how you can share data within the confines of the law. Align messaging. Revisit policies together. And most of all, center students, especially those facing the most adversity, in every decision.
Publication Date: 10/8/2025
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