Partner story

Unite Us: Positioned to catapult impact and change service delivery models in health and social services

By Alissa Black

To catapult its impact and respond to growing needs across the country, our portfolio company Unite Us yesterday announced they’ve raised $150 million in a Series C financing. This will catalyze the company’s ability to bring their platform to all communities across the U.S. by 2023, as well as to accelerate Unite Us Insights and Payments solutions to amplify support and investment for all community partners. The company, now valued above $1.6 billion, plans to use a part of the proceeds from this round to invest heavily in Unite Us Payments, which relies on the Unite Us Platform infrastructure to record and process payments to social care organizations.

Unite Us’ accelerated growth could not have come at a better time. The pandemic has made clear what we’ve known all along: there are deep disparities in health outcomes in the United States, and we need a reliable public health infrastructure to ensure that all people, especially the most vulnerable, get the care they need, when they need it most. For too long, government services have been siloed in ways that prevent equitable, efficient, and effective coordination and delivery of services across needs like housing, mental health, food assistance, job training, and health care. 

Unite Us is meeting this challenge through its coordinated care networks which connect health and social care providers and can serve as the foundation for a sustainable and equitable public health system. During the current health and economic crises, their platform ensures that patients are provided the social services and health resources they deserve to live a healthy life. 

Despite the many challenges that 2020 brought, last year Unite Us accelerated its growth and impact by standing up eight COVID-19 rapid response networks, expanding into more than 41 states and the District of Columbia, growing its team to more than 300 members, and pioneering 23 game-changing partnerships across entire states and regions. Unite Us and its partners worked together to keep people in their homes, coordinate critical supplies to isolated COVID-19 patients, support individuals and families with the food and economic help they desperately needed, and aid state and local government with rapid COVID-19 response strategies. 

At Luminate, we believe that rights-respecting technology can make government services more efficient, effective, and equitable. We initially invested in Unite Us in 2015 because of the founders’ commitment to building a mission-driven, civic tech company to change service delivery for the most vulnerable people in our communities. We continue to believe in Unite Us’ vision to bring together partners from government, health care, and community-based organizations, identify and elevate the needs of local communities, and build an inclusive infrastructure that increases access to resources and improves the health of all communities.

With the ongoing health crisis and long economic recovery, Unite Us is more necessary now than ever. Unite Us is proving the model of positive returns through improved health outcomes and service delivery models, and continued growth and expansion to meet the growing needs of our communities.