For many college students, finishing degrees starts with applying for food stamps or taking advantage of  campus food banks.

Paul Fain of Inside Higher Ed has some information on a nonprofit group that directs financially strapped students get assistance:

Elizabeth Mason, the CEO and co-founder of Single Stop, said that just $300 per student can “seismically shift retention and graduation rates.” That’s because many students face “heartbreaking choices” between buying groceries and staying in college.

Single Stop is a nonprofit group that offers a wide range of financial advising to community college students, with an eye toward unclaimed benefits. The group seeks to be comprehensive about advising in ways that are virtually impossible at cash-strapped two-year institutions, where students often face daunting bureaucracies and long waits at the financial aid office.

The event held here on Capitol Hill was a bit of a coming out party for the group. Thanks in part to alliances with ACCT and 17 community college partners, Single Stop has connected 48,000 community college students with $97 million in financial support they would not have otherwise collected. Those services included tax credits, food stamps, energy bill subsidies, financial counseling and pro-bono legal help.

The average annual income of the students Single Stop sees is $7,000. More than three-quarters are first-generation college students and fully 40 percent are parents.

Goldrick-Rab, working with two graduate students at Madison, wrote a new report about Single Stop’s model. While the study was commissioned by Single Stop and ACCT, with support from the Kresge Foundation, Goldrick-Rab said she brought a skeptical approach to the research.

“This is our work and this is what we think about this program,” she said.

Goldrick-Rab and her co-authors visited Single Stop operations at Miami Dade College, Hostos and other institutions in the City University of New York (CUNY) System. While she said more research is needed, initial findings show that Single Stop is making a substantial impact.

For example, 73 percent of CUNY students who received assistance from Single Stop re-enrolled for another year of college, she said, a rate that generally outpaces that of other lower-income student populations.