Bil­lion­aire George Soros made a 35 mil­lion dol­lar dona­tion in a New York State back to school pro­gram. New York State fam­i­lies that use food stamps found another 200 dol­lars in their accounts today thanks to the donation.

From Time Mag­a­zine, reporter Gilbert Cruz explains how the dona­tion used a part of the US eco­nomic stim­u­lus plan.

Soros was aim­ing his dona­tion at a part of Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s stim­u­lus pack­age that hasn’t gar­nered much atten­tion until now: a four-to-one fed­eral match­ing pro­gram designed to help states assist poor fam­i­lies. This $5 bil­lion pot of cash was set aside as an emer­gency fund to sup­ple­ment the 12-year-old Tem­po­rary Assis­tance for Needy Fam­i­lies (TANF) pro­gram, i.e., the one that Bill Clin­ton boasted in 1996 would end “wel­fare as we know it.”

TANF typ­i­cally pro­vides cash-assistance to fam­i­lies with no jobs. But as the reces­sion has wors­ened, sev­eral states have seen a rise in the num­ber of peo­ple need­ing wel­fare and food stamps. The stim­u­lus fund allows states to do sev­eral things with their share of the $5 bil­lion pool as long as they — or pri­vate groups such as Soros’ — pony up 20% of the over­all cost. The Feds cover the remain­der. States can (a) pro­vide more cash pay­ments to fam­i­lies, (b) sub­si­dize addi­tional jobs, or © set up one-time, non-repeating ben­e­fit pro­grams. New York’s Back to School ini­tia­tive, which used Soros’ pri­vate dona­tion as its ini­tial seed money, uti­lized the third option, appeal­ing to the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices, which runs TANF and its emer­gency fund, for the addi­tional $140 million.

Some munic­i­pal­i­ties are using the money to cre­ate jobs. In Perry County, Ten­nessee, for exam­ple, 300 pri­vate– and public-sector posi­tions are being sub­si­dized through the use of sev­eral mil­lion dol­lars’ worth of the state’s emer­gency fund allot­ment. Some of these are just tem­po­rary, a short-term pick-me-up for the laid-off. Else­where, offi­cials are eye­ing the emer­gency fund for longer-term aid. Los Ange­les, for exam­ple, has plans to kick off a year-long employ­ment pro­gram that will give sub­si­dized jobs to up to 10,000 people.

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