On July 22, 2010, the Corporation for National and Community Service awarded SIF grants to 11 organizations. The grantees have strong track records of successfully identifying and growing high-performing nonprofits and their proposals offer a set of compelling ideas for how to use innovation and evidence to tackle social challenges in a new way.

The grantees will address urgent needs in three key issue areas – economic opportunity, healthy futures, and youth development and school support. The portfolio includes $74 million in secured match funds. Combined with federal resources, $123 million will be targeted toward projects that train the unemployed, increase access to heath services for the underserved and prepare youth for acdemic achievement and employment.

Below is a description of the 11 grantees (or intermediaries) and the work they will support, as well as information on their track records of success.

• Click here to read a fact sheet on the 2010 SIF grantees (PDF)

Jobs for the Future

Partnering with Jobs for the Future, the National Fund for Workforce Solutions (NFWS) will expand its targeted training and technical assistance to at least 23,000 low-income individuals over three years while also addressing the critical skill needs of more than 1,000 employers. The funds will dramatically increase economic opportunities for disadvantaged workers and job seekers through investments in regional workforce collaboratives that partner with employers to identify jobs and career pathways in high-growth industries.

Federal Award:	$7.7 million over two years
Geographic Focus:	Current NFWS regional collaboratives will compete for 12-16 grants to expand career training and education opportunities. In addition, 6-8 new sites, primarily in high-need communities in the South and Southwest, will be selected on a competitive basis.
Collaborating Partners:	Council on Foundations; Workforce Learning Strategies
Collaborating Funders:	Annie E. Casey Foundation; California Endowment; Ford Foundation; Hitachi Foundation; John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; Prudential Foundation; Walmart Foundation; Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation; Microsoft Corporation

The National Fund for Workforce Solutions (NFWS) and Jobs for the Future, collaborating with nine national and 200 local and regional funders, will expand to serve an additional 23,000 participants over three years in 24 high-need communities. The NFWS will dramatically improve economic opportunity for disadvantaged workers and job seekers through investments in nonprofit workforce collaboratives, which are led by a diverse group of organizations, including employers. These regional collaboratives and their workforce partnerships are addressing the gaps and weaknesses in workforce education and training at the local level.

The grant will support new regional start-up collaboratives in 6-8 communities in the South and Southwestern part of the U.S. and broaden the impact of current collaboratives in 12-16 communities where NFWS investments have already brought key stakeholders together around partnerships that serve the needs of both workers and employers. The project will provide for an evaluation of the model’s impact to generate new knowledge about how to address the economic needs of low-income job seekers and the skills needs of employers in particular industry sectors.

Track Record:

• NFWS currently works with over 80 workforce partnerships and more than 900 employers in 23 communities. In 2009, 9,735 participants received degrees or credentials, 4,058 secured jobs, and 81 percent of participants are working full-time.
• $23.7 million in commitments from national NFWS funds has leveraged over $100 million from more than 200 local and regional funders.

Local Initiatives Support Corporation

The Local Initiatives Support Corporation will grow Financial Opportunity Centers – a workforce development and asset-building model that boosts earnings, reduces expenses and coaches low-income families on how to make better financial decisions – to five new cities and 7,500 total participants. The Centers are a core component of the organization’s strategy to build sustainable communities.

Federal Award:	$4.2 million over one year
Geographic Focus:	Chicago, IL; Cincinnati, OH; Detroit, MI; Duluth, MN; Houston, TX; Indianapolis, IN; Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN; San Diego, CA; San Francisco Bay Area, CA
Collaborating Partner:	Economic Mobility Corporation
Collaborating Funders:	Citi Foundation; John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; Annie E. Casey Foundation

The Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) will expand by five cities and by 75% (from approximately 4,000 to 7,500) the number of individuals and families served by an innovative workforce development and asset building model called Financial Opportunity Centers (FOCs). The FOC model focuses on improving the financial bottom line for low-to-moderate income families by helping people boost earnings, reduce expenses, and make appropriate financial decisions. A rigorous design to be conducted at Chicago FOC sites, and additional analysis of other expansion sites, will provide greater evidence about the model’s impact on employment, earnings and savings. The studies, to be conducted by the Economic Mobility Corporation, are being designed to inform workforce policy more broadly.

Track Record:

• The FOC model, piloted in Chicago, Illinois, has demonstrated evidence of effectiveness, including positive impacts on long-term job retention, net income, net worth, credit score and overall financial stability. Results from one evaluation showed that 56% of participants recorded gains in net income, 42% showed increases in credit scores, and 43% increased net worth.
  
• The FOC model has several innovative features:
  • Bundling. FOCs provide participants with a “bundle” of services across three critical and interconnected areas: 1) employment placement/skill improvement; 2) financial coaching; and 3) accessing income supports. Early evaluation of this approach found that 25% of clients achieved a "major economic outcome" – a result three times higher than the 8% of those receiving only one service.
  • Use of Community-Based Organizations. The community-based organizations that offer FOC services are often perceived as more trusted, familiar, accessible and able to provide a more individualized level of assistance than government-run providers.
  • Use of Coaches. FOC staff serve as coaches, not case managers, with responsibility for empowering participants to set financial goals and develop an individualized pathway to economic independence.

Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City

The Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City and the NYC Center for Economic Opportunity (CEO) will replicate five effective anti-poverty programs originally piloted by CEO in eight urban areas. By advancing the education, employment and financial savings of low-income adults and families, the programs will combat poverty across a diverse cross-section of America.

Over the past four years, the NYC Center for Economic Opportunity has invested over $400 million to implement and evaluate more than 40 anti-poverty innovations, in partnership with the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City (Mayor’s Fund), MDRC, City agencies and local non-profits.

The SIF grants will replicate five evidence-based economic opportunity programs in up to eight urban areas – Kansas City; Memphis; Newark; New York; Northeast Ohio (Greater Cleveland, Youngstown and Akron); San Antonio; Savannah; and Tulsa. Each city has proactively identified the programs that fit with their local economy and in total, 16 programs will be operated. The programs aim to achieve transformative change across diverse cities and population groups on critical measures of economic opportunity, including education and vocational skills, employment outcomes, savings, and other measures of family well-being. The five programs include:

• Jobs-Plus: a site-based employment initiative for public housing residents;
• Family Rewards:a conditional cash transfer program to reduce current and future poverty;
• $aveUSA: a savings program linked to the Earned Income Tax Credit;
• Young Adult Internship Program: a paid work exploration and education program for disconnected young adults; and
• WorkAdvance: a sector-focused training and advancement program for low-wage workers.

A competitive selection process will be used to identify subgrantees. City-specific selection committees, which include local stakeholders, the Mayor’s Fund, CEO, MDRC, and national experts, will review applicants' alignment with specific program models, programmatic and organizational capacity, and commitment to rigorous evaluation.

Track Record:

• The partner organizations have been leaders in replicating effective approaches.
  • The Mayor’s Fund played an instrumental role in establishing the national coalition of Mayors Against Illegal Guns – now a separate nonprofit organization involving more than 500 mayors from over 40 states to stop the flow of illegal guns into US cities.
  • CEO replications and national impacts include: 1) establishing a local Office of Financial Empowerment (OFE) which now co-leads a national coalition of cities that advances innovative financial empowerment initiatives for low-income individuals; 2) developing a new poverty measure recently adopted by the U.S. Census Bureau; and 3) adding work incentives to conditional cash transfer programs – an effort that has been replicated by other countries.
  • MDRC has worked in more than 500 communities and specifically assisted with the replication of the After-School Project, which instituted enhanced reading and math instruction models in 50 schools and community-based after-school centers in 13 states.

REDF

REDF will create job opportunities for thousands of Californians with multiple barriers to employment – including dislocated youth, individuals who have been homeless or incarcerated, and those with severe mental illness – in sustainable nonprofit social enterprises in low-income communities throughout the state. The project includes testing to determine the potential of these enterprises as scalable employment vehicles.

REDF is the only intermediary in the country that provides grants and technical assistance exclusively to nonprofit social enterprises that employ low-income people with multiple barriers to employment, including, dislocated youth, individuals who have been homeless or incarcerated, and those with severe mental illness. Through the SIF grants, REDF will:

• Employ at least 2,500 low-income young people and adults with multiple barriers to employment in nonprofit social enterprises (a figure that will expand to 8,000 by 2020 as enterprises achieve sustainability);
• Expand their work to include multiple low-income communities in California, such as Fresno, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Diego;
• Conduct a rigorous Social Return on Investment (SROI) analysis and impact analysis to quantify the effect of social enterprises on employee income, receipt of public and employer benefits, education, taxes and incarceration; and
• Produce a growth plan and guide for replication that will inform both the expansion of REDF and the social enterprise model, with the goal of employing tens of thousands of people in the identified target population throughout the U.S.

Track Record:

• Assisted more than 40 nonprofit social enterprises that have employed and increased economic opportunity for more than 5,500 individuals. Types of enterprises include: landscaping, electronic waste and other recycling, outsourced property management, apparel screen printing, stadium concessions, and janitorial.
• Evidence found that among those employed in REDF-assisted enterprises who were interviewed 18 to 24 months after hire, 77% had worked in the previous six months and between time of hire and follow-up, and the average wage increased by 31%.

Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky

The Foundation for a Health Kentucky will improve access to needed health services, reduce health risks and disparities, and promote health equity in 6-10 low-income communities in Kentucky. Subgrantees will focus on testing innovative strategies to increase physical activity, improve nutrition, curb smoking and other unhealthy habits, and, increase access to health services in underserved communities.

Using the SIF grant, The Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky will improve access to needed health services, reduce health risks and disparities, and promote health equity in 6-10 low-income communities in Kentucky. Subgrantees will focus on testing innovative strategies to increase physical activity, improve nutrition, reduce smoking rates and increase access to needed health services, including dental and behavioral health, in underserved communities

The Foundation’s approach is characterized by funding and intensive training and technical assistance to community groups with innovative ideas for improving the health of their community. It draws on local knowledge to identify pressing health needs and supplements local initiative efforts with local health statistics to help focus investments on pressing challenges. Working collaboratively with communities, indicators of health progress are developed and tracked. The grant will expand the Foundation’s work and increase the rigor of evaluation applied to each innovation. Evaluation methods well-suited to community-based programs will be utilized, including participatory evaluation and logic model case studies. The Foundation has one pre-selected subgrantee:

• Barren River District Health Department – $250,000; this competitively selected entity will support a comprehensive community dental program that: 1) educates an estimated 7,000 local residents on dental health, 2) provides referrals and follow-up to an estimated 2,000 pregnant women, children and adults, 3) improves access to care, and 4) eliminates access barriers for 800 residents through the use of a mobile dental clinic, among other strategies. The logic model undergirding the initiative has demonstrated preliminary evidence of effectiveness and the oral health treatments to be implemented are evidence-based.

Track Record:

• The Foundation initiated the Local Data for Local Action program to offer grants, data and technical assistance to community-based coalitions working on pressing health issues. Grantees are diverse and have included local health departments, a state university, and a county board of education.
• The Foundation sponsors targeted research, forums, training programs, and technical assistance. The Foundation funds KYhealthfacts.org, populated with data analyzed by the Kentucky State Cabinet for Health and Family Services and epidemiologists at the University of Kentucky. This information helps guide and ground local proposals and the Foundation investments.
• Prior Foundation investments have contributed to development of a model for in-home care of the state’s frail elderly population; launch of a pilot e-prescription program; and expansion of school-based primary and dental care for low-income families with limited transportation.

Missouri Foundation for Health

The Missouri Foundation for Health will invest in 10-20 targeted low-income communities across the state to reduce risk factors and the prevalence of two preventable causes of chronic disease and death: tobacco use and obesity. The project draws on an integrated community change model blending two transformative models of prevention on obesity and tobacco control.

The grant will support Missouri Foundation for Health (MFH) efforts to implement the Strategic Innovation in Missouri (SIM) project. The project will invest in 10 to 20 targeted low-income and high-need communities in the state, some of which are beyond their current service area. The goal of SIM is to improve the health of Missourians by reducing risk factors and prevalence of the two most preventable causes of chronic disease and death: tobacco use and obesity. To achieve this goal, a team of qualified MFH staff will administer a competitive application process based on the expansion and replication of the Community Health Improvement (CHI) model across Missouri. CHI is an integrated community change model blending two transformative models of prevention on obesity and tobacco control. Potential innovations to be funded as a result of the project include farm-to-school food programs, workplace changes supporting physical activity and tobacco cessation, and campaigns promoting nutrition and reduction of tobacco use, point-of-sale advertising of tobacco products and smoke-free policies. The potential impacts of the project on individuals and communities include:

• Short-term: Increase in access to services for community residents; increase in local health policy changes in targeted communities; increase in understanding of health effects and preventive activities and expansion of CHI into identified sub-grantee communities.
• Intermediate-term: Decrease in current smoking rates and exposure to indoor tobacco smoke; increase in physical activity and higher rates of consumption of five fruits and vegetables per day.
• Long-term: Decrease in rates of diabetes, asthma, high blood pressure and reports of fair or poor health status; replication of CHI in additional Missouri communities.

Track Record:

• The Foundation has implemented two related funding programs – Healthy & Active Communities, and Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Initiative – in more than 50 communities in Missouri. As a result, more than 250,000 Missourians have been reached and 215 local policies have been changed.
• Current grantees include long-established local coalitions, multi-tiered community health centers serving multi-county areas, major university systems, local public health departments, hospitals, and small independent nonprofits providing critical health services not typically reimbursed by third parties.
• Community partners are diverse and include major universities and research centers (Washington University in St. Louis, University of Missouri-Columbia, University of Missouri-St. Louis, RAND Corporation), statewide coalitions (Missouri Convergence Partnership, Missouri Council for Activity and Nutrition, Tobacco-Free Missouri), governmental bodies (Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services) and other area foundations (Incarnate Word Foundation, Healthcare Foundation of Greater Kansas City, Gateway Center for Giving, Deaconess Foundation).

National AIDS Fund

The National AIDS Fund will support innovative strategies that increase access to care and improve health outcomes for at least 3,500 low-income individuals living with HIV/AIDS. The project will employ rigorous evaluation, informing the implementation of the White House National HIV/AIDS Strategy and offering lessons that reduce barriers to care for a broad range of people living with HIV/AIDS and other chronic diseases.

The National AIDS Funds’ (NAF) Access to Care Initiative (A2C) aims to increase the number of HIV positive individuals receiving care. The project will identify innovative, evidence-based interventions that help clients and systems reduce barriers to care. An estimated 600,000 individuals with HIV/AIDS are not receiving care.

The grant to NAF will support 7-9 innovative partnerships – collaborations of nonprofits, researchers and others – to improve individual health outcomes and strengthen local services systems, connecting at least 3,500 low-income and marginalized individuals with HIV to high-quality health care and the supportive services they need. The focus population will be communities of color who are both disproportionately affected by HIV and suffer worse health outcomes as a result of barriers to care. Subgrants will target high-incidence cities including, Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark NJ, New York City, San Francisco/Oakland, Washington D.C., San Diego and Boston, and, Southern states, such as Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, North and South Carolina.

Rigorous evaluation, to include a three-month “formative” design phase, will be led by external researchers. Findings are expected to inform federal policy, including existing federal funding for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, and the implementation of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy’s recent National HIV/AIDS Strategy. Lessons from the initiative will also inform efforts to increase access to care among individuals with other chronic diseases.

Track Record:

• Working through a network of over 30 Community Partnerships across the states and other partners, NAF provides grants and support to over 400 community-based organizations annually and has leveraged and invested over $160 million in HIV services over the past 21 years from its Challenge Grants program.
• NAF has extensive experience in managing major grant making initiatives that address HIV/AIDS-focused needs in communities and populations most affected by the epidemic, including translation of prevention science to community, support of HIV prevention and advocacy activities in the southern US through Southern REACH and the Gulf Coast Relief Fund, and development of access to care programs in both urban and rural communities throughout the U.S.
• Through its AmeriCorps/Caring Counts Program, NAF has trained and supported over 500 youth and adult Corps members who work with local organizations to provide direct services to people living with HIV/AIDS.

New Profit Inc.

New Profit Inc. will collaborate with five to six innovative youth-focused nonprofit organizations with existing evidence to yield significant improvements in helping young people navigate the increasingly complex path from high school to college and productive employment. The project will expand the reach of these nonprofits to improve the lives of nearly 8,000 young people in low-income communities throughout the country.

New Profit Inc. and its collaborative partners will implement the Pathways Fund, a vehicle to select and invest in a portfolio of some of our nation’s most promising social innovations focused on transitioning low-income youth from high school to post-secondary education and productive employment. These organizations will deepen their impact in existing locations and collectively replicate to several new cities in the next five years, reaching areas of the country that have not yet benefited from their innovative programs.

An open and competitive process will yield a portfolio of five to six high-performing nonprofit organizations whose work addresses issues surrounding youth development and school support. The Pathways Fund will build upon the tens of thousands of young people already supported by the members of the portfolio, and provide these organizations with an opportunity to expand their programs to serve 6,000 to 8,000 additional 14-24 year olds annually. Overarching goals of the Pathways Fund will include improvement of the following measurable outcomes: increases in high school graduation and GED attainment; increases in college enrollment; increases in college credit accumulation rates; and achievement of living wage employment.

New Profit has competitively pre-selected three nonprofit organizations:

• College Summit – $2 million; College Summit builds the capacity of high schools to raise their college enrollment rates, and ignite the kind of college-going culture that helps all students stay on track academically and graduate college-ready. Since 1993, College Summit has reached 72,000 students and trained more than 700 high school teachers in college application management. College Summit has preliminary evidence of effectiveness.
• iMentor – $750,000; iMentor’s mission is to improve the lives of high school students from underserved communities through innovative, technology-enabled mentoring. Since 1999, iMentor has matched and supported more than 7,000 one-to-one mentoring relationships in New York City and through their technology platform, iMentorInteractive, the organization works with 60 mentoring programs in 20 states enrolling 4,500 mentor-mentee pairs. iMentor has preliminary evidence of effectiveness.
• Year Up – $2 million; Year Up’s mission is to close the opportunity divide by providing low income young adults with the skills, experience, and support that will empower them to reach their potential through professional careers and higher education. Year Up currently serves more than 1,000 students a year at sites in Atlanta, Boston, Providence, New York City, San Francisco, and the National Capital Region. Year Up has moderate evidence of effectiveness.

Track Record:

• New Profit Inc. has over 11 years of experience investing in effective innovative nonprofit organizations focused on a diverse set of issue areas. New Profit helps its grantees build and create well-defined plans to achieve measurable program outcomes, evaluate program effectiveness, improve performance, and replicate, aiming to help organizations move from preliminary evidence to moderate and strong evidence over the course of its grants. Currently, New Profit's U.S.-based grantees operate programs 163 cities in 41 states and the District of Columbia.
• New Profit Inc. works closely with its portfolio organizations to improve their results on the ground and expand the reach of their programs into new communities. Among the organizations in New Profit’s portfolio are Teach For America, KIPP, Citizen Schools, and Jumpstart.In 2009, organizations in New Profit's portfolio achieved a 35% compounded annual growth in revenue and a 40% compounded annual growth in beneficiaries served.
• New Profit Inc. has a track record of success in moving organizations toward stronger evidence. New Profit typically seeks early-stage organizations with developing program models that have a track record of promising data and are committed to the use of data collection and evaluation for program improvement. Toward the end of New Profit's initial four-year investment, organizations typically have an established program model and are ready to engage in third-party impact evaluation. Organizations that have moved toward stronger evidence include BELL, KIPP, New Leaders for New Schools, and Computers for Youth.

The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation

The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation will combine large grants, strategic business planning, rigorous evaluation and capital aggregation to increase the scale and impact of up to 10 youth development organizations in communities of need across the United States. The subgrantees will focus on improving economically disadvantaged young people’s educational skills and workforce readiness as well as helping them to avoid high-risk behavior.

The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation (EMCF), in collaboration with the Bridgespan Group and MDRC, will provide financial, strategic planning and evaluation support to a portfolio of 8-10 youth development and school support nonprofit organizations working in both urban and rural communities throughout the nation. Subgrants will focus on organizations helping youth ages 9-24: 1) improve their educational skills and academic achievement; 2) prepare for the world of work and make the transition to employment and economic independence; and, 3) avoid high-risk behaviors such as criminal activity and teen pregnancy. EMCF will engage co-investors to ease the burden on subgrantees of meeting their own matching requirements. The Duke Endowment, George Kaiser Family Foundation, Tipping Point Community and the Open Society Foundation have committed $17 million toward the matches of subgrantees that meet their own grant making criteria, and other funders, including The Atlantic Philanthropies, Bank of America, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, have expressed interest in joining this extension of EMCF’s growth capital aggregation strategy.

Over the last decade, EMCF has implemented a grant making approach that identifies highly-promising nonprofits serving disadvantaged youth from low-income communities and makes large, long-term investments to strengthen their evidence base and replicate and expand them so they can serve more young people. At the heart of this approach is a multi-year business plan that guides an organization’s development. EMCF will donate the cost of formulating such business plans. To help facilitate expansion into new target geographies, co-investors will assist with the identification and selection of nonprofit organizations. Subgrantees will be selected through an open, competitive process that includes ample public notice of eligibility criteria, access to a preliminary online application, and rigorous due diligence that assesses a candidate’s service model, leadership and management, and commitment to evaluation, among other criteria.

Track Record:

• Over the last 10 years, EMCF has invested over $220 million in 33 nonprofits that directly serve youth in all 50 states and Washington D.C. The average grant has increased from $90,000 in 2000 to $2 million today.
• EMCF has worked with 19 other investors to create a $120 million Growth Capital Aggregation Pilot designed to help three effective nonprofit organizations – Citizen Schools, Nurse-Family Partnerships and Youth Villages – grow to serve 55,000 youth.
• Other signature investments include the Harlem Children’s Zone, which provides a comprehensive network of programs in New York’s Harlem community that extends from birth through college. One of EMCF’s first partners in youth development, HCZ has expanded from 24 blocks to 100 blocks in Central Harlem and serves over 10,000 youth and individuals annually. An independent evaluation by Harvard University economists found that HCZ’s Promise Academy charter schools significantly reduced the black-white achievement gap in mathematics and English/Language Arts.

Venture Philanthropy Partners

Venture Philanthropy Partners will create a powerful network of effective nonprofit organizations in the Washington D.C. National Capital Region supporting an integrated approach to addressing the education and employment needs of low-income and vulnerable youth ages 14-24.

Operating in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area (the National Capital Region), Venture Philanthropy Partner’s (VPP) youthCONNECT SIF will support an integrated approach to addressing the education and employment needs of low-income and vulnerable youth ages 14-24. At scale, the network of VPP-supported nonprofit organizations – up to eight in total – will directly serve an estimated 20,000 youth. Subgrantees will collaborate and contribute data to a common framework that focuses on increasing education and employment outcomes for low-income youth and decreasing the number of disconnected youth in the region. The potential for impact is much greater, as their leveraged investments focus attention on the challenges facing local youth and rigorous evaluations yield lessons with broad implications for the public and youth development sectors. VPP will host an open competition in year one to award subgrants and have already competitively pre-selected the following organizations:

• College Summit-National Capital Region – $372,000; to further grow its core services and to expand the organization’s college preparation work to grades 9-11 (the “Launch” initiative). College Summit has preliminary evidence of effectiveness.
• KIPP DC – $656,000; to support college preparation of KIPP DC students and expand support to college-going alumni. KIPP DC has moderate evidence of effectiveness. The college preparation curriculum to be utilized was designed by University of Chicago researchers and has preliminary evidence of effectiveness.
• Latin American Youth Center – $500,000; to expand and evaluate the “Promotores” program, where at-risk disconnected youth receive highly-individualized support and mentoring. The program has preliminary evidence of effectiveness. Out of 106 youth served, positive impacts have been seen on re-enrollment in school, the development of job skills, employment and health.
• Year Up-National Capital Region – $207,000; to support the implementation of a health education and access program within Year Up, designed to increase participant retention and improve health outcomes. Year Up has moderate evidence of effectiveness. The healthy behaviors curriculum to be implemented is based off the Healthy Mondays Initiative developed by researchers at Columbia, Johns Hopkins and Syracuse Universities. The health “navigator” position is modeled off an American Cancer Society model, which has demonstrated effectiveness at improving access to care and health outcomes for low-income cancer patients.

Track Record:

• Invested over $30 million in National Capital Region nonprofit organizations, allowing them to expand to 21 more sites and serve 37 new neighborhoods, ultimately increasing services to 16,000 more children and youth.
• Developed a committed and engaged community of investors, recently securing commitments of $38 million from nearly 70 individuals, foundations and corporate partners.
• One signature investment is Mary's Center for Maternal and Child Care, a nonprofit that provided an integrated set of health care, education, and social services to nearly 20,000 children over the four-year term of the VPP investment. Positive outcomes included enhanced immunization rates, healthier babies, and fewer teenage pregnancies, as compared to area statistics.
• Another signature investment is the See Forever Foundation’s Maya Angelou Public Charter School. During VPP’s five-year investment, it grew from serving 85 student to 240 and now, three years later, serves 556 young people through four campuses and an education program at the New Beginnings juvenile detention facility which was recently named one of the best educational programs in a confinement facility.

United Way of Greater Cincinnati

The United Way of Greater Cincinnati, the Strive Partnership and other funders, will address the needs of low-income children and youth from “cradle to career” in the Greater Cincinnati-area though investments in early education, mentoring and literacy programs, college access, career pathways and other innovations.

The United Way of Greater Cincinnati, in collaboration with the Strive Partnership, will support a strong community-rooted effort dedicated to addressing the needs of low-income families in the urban core of Cincinnati and northern Kentucky (Covington and Newport) from “cradle to career.” The grant will build on years of collaborative work to identify what children and youth in the area need to succeed, measure progress through an annual report card, elevate nonprofit performance through the use of new management tools, and replicate tested programs. In year one, the initiative plans to work with 10-15 competitively selected nonprofit organizations. Priority strategies include early childhood education and home visitation, mentoring, service learning, arts education, dropout recovery, children's health, college access, and career pathways.

Track Record:

• The United Way of Greater Cincinnati and Strive Partnership, working with other community stakeholders, developed several documents to guide community investments:
  • The Cradle to Career Roadmap, a document that identifies what children and youth in the area need to succeed; the document has focused nonprofit work and philanthropic investments around a common set of activities; and
  • The Striving Together Report Card, an annual report card that documents education and youth development data for the Greater Cincinnati area, providing a snapshot of the challenges facing low-income communities and tracking progress toward identified outcomes.
• Replication of effective programs by the United Way and partners, including, Books in Action, which improves pre-literacy skills through a focus on books with social and emotional development content, and Health Career Pathways, a workforce initiative that engages employers, educators and others to provide training and support to unemployed or underemployed individuals.