Thank you for helping!
- 💬 Talk about Guaranteed Minimum Income with your friends, family and loved ones
- 📖 Learn more about our history of GMI
- 📊 See recent GMI study results
- 🏛️ Ask your public representatives about direct cash transfer programs in your area
You can also help by buying from local stores and businesses. The shops below exist because the people who run them had the support and stability to create what they wanted to see in the world — exactly what GMI gives families. Imagine how many more there could be if we Share their American Dream.
Hannah Gumbo
Lafayette Parish, Louisiana
Just after I published "Stay Gold, America,” I received an unexpected package in the mail from a colleague in Louisiana:
His partner, Hannah Gumbo, makes a lot of great rural Louisiana inspired Americana art, and there were exactly five of Hannah’s “Stay Golden” pins included — one for each member of our family. What a delight! I immediately went to the store and bought 50 more... because we want to reach all 50 states with GMI studies.
I contacted Hannah hoping we could work together on the website design, and she agreed! The ⭐ logo you see on each page is Hannah’s work.
We also made a lot of those pins to share. No matter what happens, please don’t lose that youthful enthusiasm for life we are all born with... Stay Gold.
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Steel Lynx
Madison County, Indiana
Geoff didn’t set out to become an entrepreneur. By 2016 he’d been laid off three times from three different tech companies, despite a master’s degree and a resume full of titles. Corporate ladder-climbing is a valid destination for some people, but it was becoming clear it wasn’t his. One morning, stuck in a tense project call while driving his daughter to daycare, she offered a simple observation from the back seat: “Daddy, they don’t seem happy.” “No sweetie, not at all...”
Steel Lynx started years earlier as a small Etsy hobby, making Möbii fidgets long before the spinner boom. Those little woven rings quietly found their way into people’s routines — as tools for focus, for boredom, for anxiety, and for keeping hands busy (including curbing hair-picking habits). Geoff loved building something tangible, and he loved the idea of building something of his own.
What finally made the leap possible was runway. A severance package bought a few months to try, and when COBRA ended, Medicaid (and later ACA coverage with subsidies) kept his family protected from the kind of hospital bill that can instantly end a dream. That basic stability meant he could keep building.
Running a handmade business as a single dad came with late nights and off-season slowdowns — but it also meant more field trips, more classroom volunteering, and more time with his daughter while she grew up. Steel Lynx is still small by design: a family business making bright, durable Möbii fidget jewelry and toys one piece at a time.
Steel Lynx
One Drop YoYos
Lane County, Oregon
David Metz and Shawn Nelson opened a design business in 2001, and one day a University of Oregon design student walked in with a class project and an idea... could they help him make a yo-yo? They said yes, built one, tried to sell it, and it was an instant hit — the first product in what became their One Drop YoYos line.
One Drop is a small, stubborn miracle — the only U.S. manufacturer of yo-yos, operating out of a ~2,500 square foot shop with a tiny team, making batches of a few hundred at a time and turning out thousands of yo-yos each year. They don’t need to pretend they’re a giant factory to do factory-grade work — modern yo-yos are precision objects, and One Drop treats them that way: aluminum shaped on CNC metal lathes, a ball bearing on the axle for long spin times, intricate anodized colors, and a final box that proudly declares “Made in Eugene.”
And they don’t just assemble something “American-ish.” They commit to the whole ecosystem: sourcing aluminum from a supplier in Utah, running American-made machines, and partnering with other U.S. small businesses like the anodizer in Ohio to finish each run. Metz puts it bluntly: this will never be outsourced. If they can’t make it here, they won’t make it at all.
In 2025, One Drop’s “State” series of semi-responsive yo-yos intersected with “Stay Gold, America” — a project built around the simple idea that winning doesn’t have to come at the expense of everyone else. We can all win, together.
So we teamed up with One Drop to help bring the Deepest State to life faster than planned, and to lower the first-run retail price so more people could get one.
A yo-yo is a very simple promise. It goes out — and with the right tug, it comes back. One Drop makes that promise out of American aluminum, in a small Oregon shop, proving that “made here” can still mean something… especially when we choose to build an America where more people get a fair shot at making anything at all.
One Drop YoYos
Starshaped Press
Cook County, Illinois
Betsy and I had a great time appearing on Denver Frederick’s Business of Giving podcast in June 2025. In the interview, Betsy was asked how our children guided our approach to philanthropy:
Raising kids obviously has many challenges, and one is, how do you raise your kids to… obviously we’re very comfortable and have been since they were born, and they would have questions like... “Are we rich?”
Well, we have everything we need! That’s how I’ve always phrased it to them. That, I think, extends out into our GMI stuff. We have everything we need; how do we make sure everybody has what they need? Do you have a comfortable place to live? Do you have enough to eat? Do you have healthcare? If you have the basics, you’re in a good place in life, and everybody should have that opportunity.
After the podcast, Betsy saw a social media post with a beautiful print of those exact words.
We have everything we need. Why can’t everyone else have the basic things they need, too?
Starshaped Press is operated by Jennifer and Jo in Cook County Illinois, where a recent county level GMI study was conducted.
We’re working together to produce a run of these prints to share with friends and collaborators.
“We each come by the gifts we have to offer by an infinite series of influences and lucky breaks we can never fully understand.” — MacKenzie Scott