- Place the institution as a regional leader in developing and delivering highly effective multicultural support services to the under-served youth of this area
- The partnership with other regional stakeholders could serve as a model for the successful expansion of support services, across geographic boundaries, for the neediest populations of the Region.
Today, LAYC serves over 4,000 individuals in DC and Maryland and is a national model among nonprofits for its practices measuring outcomes and program evaluation.
Lori Kaplan, Isaac Castillo, and Carol Thompson Cole of YI tell the story from the beginning. Lori Kaplan – Executive Director, LAYC: Latin American Youth Center is a multi-service youth organization. There’s academic programming, along with many holistic services around health issues, housing, violence and gang prevention, and employment assistance. Carol Thompson Cole – President and CEO, YI: We heard about LAYC early on because it had a reputation for being one of the strongest youth development organizations in Washington, DC Lori: Prior to YI, the Youth Center had plans to go into Maryland underway for two years. It was very fortunate that the YI plan came when it did. It gave us the opportunity to think it through and make it stronger. It is not so easy to replicate the youth center. Carol: YI’s investment approach was built on outcomes and a performance-to-milestones approach; but when we started, we found that none of the organizations we were looking to invest in really had that. But LAYC created a great opportunity for us to help design something and to see what was most important in terms of outcomes and measurements. Isaac Castillo – Former Director of Learning and Evaluation, LAYC: YI’s investment is what paid for the creation of my position at LAYC. What’s unique about YI is that they don’t just “talk the talk” when it comes to outcomes and measurement. They put the resources behind it to make sure that the organization they’re partnering with can actually build the capacity to be able to do this stuff. Carol: The goal was to not only measure LAYC’s performance, but provide Lori with the information she needed to determine whether the organization should scale, and which programs they should scale. Isaac: I remember Lori turned to me during my second or third day and said, “I need to get a handle on the race and ethnic composition of all the youth that are accessing our 40 programs and then I need to learn where these youths live.” I was like, “Okay. This doesn’t sound too difficult,” but, in reality, I had to go to each and every one of those 40 different programs and they all had different ways of collecting the information. It literally took me two weeks to just meet with every program. But from that first chunk of data, I was able to tell Lori that 8% of LAYC youth are coming from zip codes or locations in Montgomery or Prince George’s Counties in Maryland. We should expand there because that would likely be where you would see successful expansion. Lori: I saw major changes on the demographic horizon and knew that LAYC needed to change as well. Many of our youth and families were moving to suburban Maryland, while young people and families who originally settled in suburban Maryland were coming to the LAYC seeking support. These families were living there but coming to DC for services, and we knew that things were changing and we had to look at that. Carol: YI team members spent a lot of time at LAYC with Lori in the planning process and in implementation of the plan. Our connections with government officials and social sector leaders in Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties, and others in the field, allowed LAYC to meet the key players and speed along their process of expansion. We also focused a great deal on governance structure and the diversification of funding sources for the organization through introductions to like-minded philanthropists. Lori: I think there were a lot of very honest and upfront conversation to really figure out what the relationship was and how the partnership would work. YI was an investment partner. It really is a two-way conversation and not a traditional power-dominant, one-way conversation. Carol: LAYC was part of our first portfolio of investments, but when we launched our new program, youthCONNECT, we brought them along as part of that network. The relationship has really become a longstanding one. Together, we’re putting a dent in the problems that these young people face and we want to get better, to serve them better. Isaac: Throughout my career, I’ve come in contact with hundreds of nonprofit organizations. Even today, there are many nonprofits that don’t make measurement and evaluation a priority. They don’t elevate it to a level where it’s someone’s job. YI is one of the few funders out there that is willing to put in the kind of resources necessary to make sure that this work happens in a sophisticated and sustainable way. [post_title] => Latin American Youth Center [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => latin-american-youth-center [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2025-09-02 17:12:05 [post_modified_gmt] => 2025-09-02 17:12:05 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://vppartners.org/?post_type=investment&p=135 [menu_order] => 12 [post_type] => investment [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [1] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 3270 [post_author] => 7 [post_date] => 2023-05-31 16:22:14 [post_date_gmt] => 2023-05-31 16:22:14 [post_content] => Mary’s Center aspired to strengthen overall community health by delivering integrated human services to support individual and family well-being and by expanding. In addition to expanding services and facilities at its current location in Adams Morgan, they hoped to expand to Ward 4 of Washington, DC and to several locations in Northern Virginia and suburban Maryland—adjacent to Washington, DC. Mary’s Center now has a clear plan for expansion and organizational growth. It opened its first satellite offices to reach greatly underserved children, youth, and families: one in Ward 4, Washington, DC, in an area previously served by one doctor and one in Silver Spring, Maryland. The new clinics are well positioned to quickly scale impact.Mary’s Center became a Federally Qualified Health Center, bringing funding and critical liability coverage.
[post_title] => Mary's Center for Maternal and Child Care [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => marys-center-maternal-child-care [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2025-09-02 17:13:01 [post_modified_gmt] => 2025-09-02 17:13:01 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://youthinvestpartners.org/investment/investment-snapshot-new-2/ [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => investment [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [2] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 3358 [post_author] => 7 [post_date] => 2023-05-31 18:08:51 [post_date_gmt] => 2023-05-31 18:08:51 [post_content] => PeerForward (formerly known as College Summit) targeted the DC metro area to establish a proving ground for a metropolitan college access model that could potentially send 3,000 students from low-income families living in this Region to college annually—many of whom would not otherwise attend. While PeerForward is a national organization headquartered in Washington, DC, they needed to demonstrate local economies of scale with a viable and replicable regional platform and solution. The DC metro area—with its large school districts, high concentration of college-educated citizens and officials, large investment in schools, region-wide focus on closing the achievement gap, and growing numbers of talented, college-ready students from low-income families—offered PeerForward the most favorable conditions for it to demonstrate a successful regional solution that establishes a platform on which to grow nationally.PeerForward-NCR’s increased effectiveness has allowed the organization to grow from serving 400 to 2,838 students: a 609 percent increase in five years. The organization has established partnerships with seven key universities and twenty-seven schools in DC, Maryland, and Virginia (including three YI investment partners), greatly expanding its impact on the Region’s talented low-income students.
[post_title] => PeerForward (formerly College Summit) [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => peer-forward [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2025-09-02 17:14:02 [post_modified_gmt] => 2025-09-02 17:14:02 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://youthinvestpartners.org/investment/asian-american-leadership-empowerment-and-development-for-youth-and-families-new/ [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => investment [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [3] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 312 [post_author] => 7 [post_date] => 2016-11-03 18:54:15 [post_date_gmt] => 2016-11-03 18:54:15 [post_content] => Many students are leaving high school not fully prepared for employment and college, while local businesses struggle to hire and retain qualified employees. The heart of the issue is that our youth need to reach their full potential and our businesses need to fill positions with talented and skilled employees. YI’s high-engagement investment style blends a private equity model for investing with time-proven best practices from foundations and nonprofits. This allows us to help create long-term systematic change. We are working in partnership with Prince George’s County administration, public schools, local business leaders, philanthropy and a number of nonprofit organizations to create a holistic, collaborative, and sustainable strategy.Our Challenge
Many students are leaving high school not fully prepared for employment and college, while local businesses struggle to hire and retain qualified employees. The heart of the issue is that our youth need to reach their full potential and our businesses need to fill positions with talented and skilled employees.Quick Facts
- According to a Job Opportunities Task Force Special Report, only one-quarter of young people (ages 16-19) in Prince George’s County are employed, compared to over one-third of young people statewide.
- In Prince George’s County, nearly one-quarter of high school students drop out and do not receive a diploma.
- According to the Center on Education and the Workforce, by 2020, 65 percent of all jobs in the economy will require postsecondary education training beyond high school.
Our Goal
By 2021, we anticipate that 2,775 students at Suitland, Oxon Hill, and High Point high schools will be career- and college-ready, with another 400 graduates in the pipeline every year thereafter.The Power of Partnership
By working together—leveraging the resources of businesses, philanthropy, nonprofits, and government—our bold vision can be achieved. Preparing our youth to become the experienced talent needed for growing business opportunities in the County is a compelling investment—for our young people, the community and businesses. Collectively we can achieve far more than what any one of us can achieve on our own.Our Funders
- YI investors and donors of the Capital Kids Portfolio
- Prince George’s County Public School System
- The Peterson Family Foundation
- Kaiser Permanente of the Mid-Atlantic States
- The Washington Redskins Charitable Foundation
- The Economic Club of Washington, D.C.
- Bank of America Private Bank
CHALLENGE
In the District of Columbia, there has been a shortage of teachers, which is reflective of the national “teacher pipeline” crisis of quality teachers stemming from both fewer new entrants to the field and the alarming decline of current teacher retention. Teacher shortages have resulted in vacancies of highly qualified teaching positions for classrooms of all sizes.GOALS
YI’s investment in Ed Forward as a co-investor in Relay will help the graduate school achieve its aspirations to:- Build and scale the D.C. site to increase the number of high-quality teachers in the city in both the District of Columbia Public Schools and D.C. public charter schools.
- Launch its first D.C. cohort in the summer of 2017, scaling to enroll at least 230 new and experienced teachers annually within five years.
- Based on these projections, by year five, Relay’s D.C. campus will produce 110 new teachers each year.
What started as a simple pizza delivery business in the mid-1990s has become one of the nation’s most successful educational systems for youth in the juvenile justice system. Early on, YI caught the vision for Maya Angelou Public Charter School and helped its founders build a strategic roadmap that more than doubled the school’s size and charted a path for growth.
See Forever is a considerably stronger organization than it was in 2002, having transformed itself from an organization running a small charter school to a high-impact institution managing a multi-campus system. Its effectiveness and sustainability have increased substantially as well with the rebuilding of its two boards of directors and the implementation of a system to measure results.
At Maya Angelou, students develop the academic, social, and employment skills they need to build rewarding lives and promote positive change. The high school provides a comprehensive education in a non-traditional setting to all students, including those who have not been successful in their educational experiences. Many have been involved in the juvenile justice system. The goal of this partnership was to help See Forever:- Expand the number of charter schools it operates
- Improve program quality and outcomes
- Serve as a national model to increase the impact and reach of its approach
Now TFA corps members—alumni teachers, principals, school system leaders, elected officials, non-profits, policy and advocacy professionals, philanthropies, business, (including law, and medicine) bring about transformative change for students and communities daily. Through diverse networks the academic and personal growth of students is advanced.
[post_title] => Teach For America [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => teach-for-america [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2025-09-02 19:00:44 [post_modified_gmt] => 2025-09-02 19:00:44 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://yip.newsite.co/?post_type=investment&p=5047 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => investment [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [7] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 304 [post_author] => 7 [post_date] => 2016-11-03 18:48:03 [post_date_gmt] => 2016-11-03 18:48:03 [post_content] => Child and Family Network Centers delivers quality education to Alexandria’s at-risk kids. It is the only nonprofit in Alexandria, Virginia, providing free, quality, bilingual preschool and family support to members of the community. Child and Family Network Centers envisioned expanding the organization to increase the number of at-risk children receiving high-quality, free preschool education and to demonstrate its program as a regional and national model for community-based family service. They aspired to:- Expand from eight classrooms serving 140 families in Alexandria to 17 classrooms serving 270 families through expansion to the West End of Alexandria and South Arlington;
- Improve the current organizational structure, particularly in the areas of development, communications, outcomes, technology, and human resources; and
- Enhance programmatic initiatives, including converting to full-day preschool education and expanding support services through partnering or direct service (i.e., before/after care, health care, legal/immigration, mental health, financial/banking advice, etc.).
Child and Family Network Centers’ greater effectiveness led to a 73 percent increase in the number of children served, from 120 to 207, over four years and program expansion into two new neighborhoods.
It greatly increased the impact of its programs by transitioning all remaining half-day programs to full-day and adding health services and financial literacy programs. Child and Family Network Centers maintained and/or attained accreditation by the National Association for the Education of Young Children at all locations. Their influence spread through the region. CFNC has been recognized as a model program by the Montgomery County Department of Human Services and the Maryland Department of Education. Their students’ average overall developmental growth far exceeded the national average, particularly for children whose first language was not English. [post_title] => The Child & Family Network Centers [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => the-child-family-network-centers [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2025-09-02 17:19:34 [post_modified_gmt] => 2025-09-02 17:19:34 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://vppartners.org/?post_type=investment&p=129 [menu_order] => 6 [post_type] => investment [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [8] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 313 [post_author] => 7 [post_date] => 2016-11-03 18:54:57 [post_date_gmt] => 2016-11-03 18:54:57 [post_content] => Believing that all children deserve a quality education, SEED opens college-preparatory, public boarding schools designed for students who need a 24-hour learning environment to achieve their full potential. The SEED model provides a rigorous academic program, life skills curriculum, and college transition and support services. SEED schools are more than simply schools—SEED is an integrated program that brings, under one roof, academic, residential, mental health, physical health, social, and enrichment programs. The SEED Foundation and the SEED School of Washington, DC have demonstrated a successful educational model. The investment in SEED hopes to expand a unique approach that offers students an educational enrichment opportunity they would otherwise not have, thus breaking the cycle of poverty. At the time of the investment, there were no other successful urban boarding school models. The goals were to:- Triple the number of students attending a college preparatory, urban public boarding school in the greater Washington, DC area
- Refine and enhance The SEED School’s model and outcomes
- Define a range of funding models for building capital-intensive urban boarding schools and other capital-intensive nonprofit services
- Expand into other states where legislation has been passed to support charter schools or other alternative forms of public education, where precedent exists for innovative educational solutions for children and adolescents, and where capital-funding opportunities may already exist
The SEED Foundation made considerable progress in fully integrating the academic and student life programs at SEED Public Charter School (SPCS). The boards for the Foundation and the school have continued to work to align strategic priorities, increasing focus on the use of data to improve outcomes.
[post_title] => The SEED Foundation [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => the-seed-foundation [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2025-09-02 19:03:12 [post_modified_gmt] => 2025-09-02 19:03:12 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://vppartners.org/?post_type=investment&p=138 [menu_order] => 15 [post_type] => investment [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [9] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 315 [post_author] => 7 [post_date] => 2016-11-03 18:57:28 [post_date_gmt] => 2016-11-03 18:57:28 [post_content] => Based on research from the Urban Institute, Urban Alliance is the only program in the entire U.S. serving disconnected youth and at-risk high school students by combining year-round training, paid internships, mentoring and case management support. Urban Alliance’s goals are to:- Increase the number of low-income, high-risk youth served in the Urban Alliance High School Internship Program from the current 200 students in DC to potentially between 400 and 1000 students in Title I schools annually in Greater Washington
- Substantially expand its alumni services programming
- Scale the Regional dissemination of Urban Alliance’s unique college and work-readiness curriculum from 1,000 students in the District, to potentially as many as 20,000 students annually in Greater Washington
- Significantly influence the behavior and priorities of federal, state, and local governments on youth employment and workforce development issues
This expansion will result in improved academic success, substantially higher college enrollment, and a dramatic increase in youth’s prospects for long-term employment.
Eshauna Smith, Carol Thompson Cole and Grace Katabaruki tell the investment story. Eshauna Smith – CEO, Urban Alliance: For us, the job is really the hook that brings the young people to us, and what we’re able to do is wrap around that job a number of very important supports, including everything from financial literacy, to college admission assistance, to life skills, to providing them with two caring adults during their senior year. All of those things combine to create this powerful intervention that really helps youth understand how to make a successful transition from high school into adulthood. Carol Thompson Cole – President and CEO, VPP: Our first encounter with the organization was when they applied for our Social Innovation Fund award. As we went into our first year of the investment, they met milestones very quickly. We recognized that Urban Alliance had a strong team in the planning process and realized that we had an organization that could deliver on outcomes for youth. Eshauna: Thought partnership is critical to quality leadership and the ability to be high-performing. When I came into the investment, it had already begun. As the new leader of Urban Alliance, I was excited about the opportunity to work closely with like-minded folks who want to have the kinds of conversations around delivering quality services, evaluating your impact correctly and fully, meeting young people where they are, the politics of it all, the burden of fundraising, the difficulty of leadership, the difficulty of being a leader of color and the difficulty of being a female leader. That is the part of VPP’s investment that you might not find in a proposal about collaboration or partnership. Carol: When we looked at the growth of Urban Alliance, we also knew we had to build the internal capacity of the headquarters. So we invested in several new positions, and one was the president. That opportunity came through our investment. Eshauna had a year in the position to develop a relationship with the team and to understand the workings of the organization. We didn’t know what we were laying the groundwork for, but that was an important part of the successful transition of leadership. Grace Katabaruki, Director of Investment Practice, VPP: Creating the president’s position also came from the insight that we gathered during the strategic planning process. We had to make that transition while making sure the programs continued to deliver on the outcomes. Being thoughtful with Urban Alliance’s leadership about what kind of capacity they would need to do those things simultaneously and excellently was a part of our contribution. Eshauna: VPP played a hugely critical role in that because very rarely do you have a funder who wants to help build your staff capacity at the national level. It was great to be able to spend a year working through those kinds of things that are often hard for nonprofits to get a full-time employee to be able to spend time doing. Carol: When we started the investment, Urban Alliance was already in Baltimore and were expanding into Chicago. We spent a lot of time in our due diligence trying to figure out whether they had capacity to take the next step into Northern Virginia. We had to do this while protecting the investment regionally. We started to see that the team was strong and ready to scale, so we started the dialog about helping them grow. Eshauna: We accomplished a lot during this investment, but I would say the most phenomenal accomplishment has to be our expansion into Northern Virginia. We’ve come a long way. To see that we’re fully-functional in the region, there is a five-member team and we’ve met the goal we set to have at least 70 jobs there is amazing. Virginia opened us up to a new population of young people who are immigrants. We’ve pushed ourselves and enhanced our skills in working with these youth, which is another accomplishment. It’s a challenge that we are still trying to figure out, but we are very proud and happy to work on it. Carol: Many nonprofits want to stay true to what they started out to be. We challenge our investment partners to make adjustments as they grow. Sometimes it happens, and other times it doesn’t. But the Urban Alliance team made adaptations while they moved forward. They were open to positive change, and we were there to help them along the way. Grace: I remember conversations about how to preserve the culture as we do this rapid expansion. Looking at some other organizations that have experienced organizational change, the result isn’t always the same as the one Urban Alliance came to. Another piece of success was preserving that strong youth-development-focused culture. Eshauna: That’s right. And our model is truly gold because of its comprehensiveness, but we are going to always work to tighten it up. We want to make sure that we are delivering the highest-quality programs and staying relevant as the landscape continues to shift. This investment upped the ante on our ambitious goals. It significantly increased the number of young people we serve as well as our capacity and sophistication as an organization. We knew that if we had VPP’s stamp of approval, then we could get in the door with the Department of Education’s i3 grant. And we did. After being selected to receive $10 million from the federal government, we are confident that other doors will be open as well. Carol: One of the other things that always impresses me about Urban Alliance and Eshauna’s leadership, is the culture around continuous improvement. You keep it going. You keep it moving, then you step back and assess what you’ve done. And I think that approach will sustain Urban Alliance over the long haul. Eshauna: I believe the thing that attracted VPP to Urban Alliance initially was the strength of the entire team and the brilliance of the management team. So, VPP’s voice will always play in my mind as we grow asking, “How do you keep the team strong?” Carol: We had completed strategic planning with a strong team and leader. The aspirations were there. The implementation plan was there. We helped by funding additional senior positions. The rest is history, so to speak. Eshauna: One word that comes to mind that summarizes our investment experience with VPP is excellence. Striving for excellence for our young people means that we’re always striving for excellence in our delivery, in our relationships and with one another as a staff and a team. We’ve been conditioned to strive for excellence as reflected in our core values and our mission. That is what this partnership has meant to us. [post_title] => Urban Alliance [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => urban-alliance [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2025-09-02 19:04:30 [post_modified_gmt] => 2025-09-02 19:04:30 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://vppartners.org/?post_type=investment&p=140 [menu_order] => 17 [post_type] => investment [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) ) [post_count] => 10 [current_post] => -1 [before_loop] => 1 [in_the_loop] => [post] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 310 [post_author] => 7 [post_date] => 2016-11-03 18:52:57 [post_date_gmt] => 2016-11-03 18:52:57 [post_content] => In 2002, Latin American Youth Center (LAYC) was a growing nonprofit offering a wide array of youth development programs in Washington, D.C. YI recognized an opportunity for LAYC to expand its impact into Maryland and brought strategic guidance and funding to make it a reality. The multi-year strategic investment and partnership with Latin American Youth Center provided the capital and strategic assistance necessary to guide the regional expansion of its DC-based, multi-service organization. YI had an opportunity to play a significant role in supporting a well-respected community leader to effectively expand programs and services to needy populations in Maryland. This investment would:- Place the institution as a regional leader in developing and delivering highly effective multicultural support services to the under-served youth of this area
- The partnership with other regional stakeholders could serve as a model for the successful expansion of support services, across geographic boundaries, for the neediest populations of the Region.
Today, LAYC serves over 4,000 individuals in DC and Maryland and is a national model among nonprofits for its practices measuring outcomes and program evaluation.
Lori Kaplan, Isaac Castillo, and Carol Thompson Cole of YI tell the story from the beginning. Lori Kaplan – Executive Director, LAYC: Latin American Youth Center is a multi-service youth organization. There’s academic programming, along with many holistic services around health issues, housing, violence and gang prevention, and employment assistance. Carol Thompson Cole – President and CEO, YI: We heard about LAYC early on because it had a reputation for being one of the strongest youth development organizations in Washington, DC Lori: Prior to YI, the Youth Center had plans to go into Maryland underway for two years. It was very fortunate that the YI plan came when it did. It gave us the opportunity to think it through and make it stronger. It is not so easy to replicate the youth center. Carol: YI’s investment approach was built on outcomes and a performance-to-milestones approach; but when we started, we found that none of the organizations we were looking to invest in really had that. But LAYC created a great opportunity for us to help design something and to see what was most important in terms of outcomes and measurements. Isaac Castillo – Former Director of Learning and Evaluation, LAYC: YI’s investment is what paid for the creation of my position at LAYC. What’s unique about YI is that they don’t just “talk the talk” when it comes to outcomes and measurement. They put the resources behind it to make sure that the organization they’re partnering with can actually build the capacity to be able to do this stuff. Carol: The goal was to not only measure LAYC’s performance, but provide Lori with the information she needed to determine whether the organization should scale, and which programs they should scale. Isaac: I remember Lori turned to me during my second or third day and said, “I need to get a handle on the race and ethnic composition of all the youth that are accessing our 40 programs and then I need to learn where these youths live.” I was like, “Okay. This doesn’t sound too difficult,” but, in reality, I had to go to each and every one of those 40 different programs and they all had different ways of collecting the information. It literally took me two weeks to just meet with every program. But from that first chunk of data, I was able to tell Lori that 8% of LAYC youth are coming from zip codes or locations in Montgomery or Prince George’s Counties in Maryland. We should expand there because that would likely be where you would see successful expansion. Lori: I saw major changes on the demographic horizon and knew that LAYC needed to change as well. Many of our youth and families were moving to suburban Maryland, while young people and families who originally settled in suburban Maryland were coming to the LAYC seeking support. These families were living there but coming to DC for services, and we knew that things were changing and we had to look at that. Carol: YI team members spent a lot of time at LAYC with Lori in the planning process and in implementation of the plan. Our connections with government officials and social sector leaders in Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties, and others in the field, allowed LAYC to meet the key players and speed along their process of expansion. We also focused a great deal on governance structure and the diversification of funding sources for the organization through introductions to like-minded philanthropists. Lori: I think there were a lot of very honest and upfront conversation to really figure out what the relationship was and how the partnership would work. YI was an investment partner. It really is a two-way conversation and not a traditional power-dominant, one-way conversation. Carol: LAYC was part of our first portfolio of investments, but when we launched our new program, youthCONNECT, we brought them along as part of that network. The relationship has really become a longstanding one. Together, we’re putting a dent in the problems that these young people face and we want to get better, to serve them better. Isaac: Throughout my career, I’ve come in contact with hundreds of nonprofit organizations. Even today, there are many nonprofits that don’t make measurement and evaluation a priority. They don’t elevate it to a level where it’s someone’s job. YI is one of the few funders out there that is willing to put in the kind of resources necessary to make sure that this work happens in a sophisticated and sustainable way. 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Our investments help great nonprofits reach more children and youth in Greater Washington.
Together, we’re making a difference.
Latin American Youth Center
Mary’s Center for Maternal and Child Care
PeerForward (formerly College Summit)
Ready for Work
Relay Graduate School of Education
See Forever Foundation
Teach For America
The Child & Family Network Centers
The SEED Foundation
