Location: Washington

Share Our Strength is a national organization working to make sure no child in America grows up hungry. Share Our Strength weaves together a net of community groups, activists and food programs to catch children facing hunger and ensure they have nutritious food where they live, learn and play. Working with the culinary industry, Share Our Strength creates engaging, pioneering programs like Share Our Strength’s Taste of the Nation, the nation’s premier culinary benefit; Great American Bake Sale, a national grassroots effort; A Tasteful Pursuit, a touring dinner series; Great American Dine Out, a week-long program involving thousands of restaurants nationwide; and Operation Frontline, a cooking-based nutrition education program.  To learn more about Share Our Strength, please visit www.strength.org.

Location: Washington, DC

Share Our Strength is a national organization working to make sure no child in America grows up hungry. Share Our Strength weaves together a net of community groups, activists and food programs to catch children facing hunger and ensure they have nutritious food where they live, learn and play. Working with the culinary industry, Share Our Strength creates engaging, pioneering programs like Share Our Strength’s Taste of the Nation, the nation’s premier culinary benefit; Great American Bake Sale, a national grassroots effort; A Tasteful Pursuit, a touring dinner series; Great American Dine Out, a week-long program involving thousands of restaurants nationwide; and Operation Frontline, a cooking-based nutrition education program.  To learn more about Share Our Strength, please visit http://www.strength.org.

Location: Washington, DC

Share Our Strength is a national organization working to make sure no child in America grows up hungry. Share Our Strength weaves together a net of community groups, activists and food programs to catch children facing hunger and ensure they have nutritious food where they live, learn and play. Working with the culinary industry, Share Our Strength creates engaging, pioneering programs like Share Our Strength’s Taste of the Nation, the nation’s premier culinary benefit; Great American Bake Sale, a national grassroots effort; A Tasteful Pursuit, a touring dinner series; Great American Dine Out, a week-long program involving thousands of restaurants nationwide; and Operation Frontline, a cooking-based nutrition education program.  To learn more about Share Our Strength, please visit http://www.strength.org.

Location: Washington, DC

Inspire Fellows are outstanding business professionals with 2+ years business experience that want to use their skills for social impact.  This highly competitive one-year program offers top business professionals targeted positions with leading nonprofits, professional development, and a network to support career growth. 

Previous Inspire Fellows finalists came from American Express, Bain, Deloitte, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Parthenon Capital, and other leading companies.  Fellows have worked with top nonprofits including ACCION International, City First Enterprises, Family Health International, Living Cities, and Year Up.  Most positions are based in Washington D.C.

Learn More
Hear from current Fellows during Information Calls: http://www.proinspire.org/fellows/information-calls/
Get the latest updates on our blog: http://proinspire.blogspot.com/

Location: New York, NY

SeaChange is a nonprofit firm that arranges transformational fundings of outstanding nonprofit organizations involved in education reform and youth development for low-income young people in the United States.

The firm was founded in 2006 by Charles Harris and Robert Steel, former Goldman Sachs partners and experienced philanthropists who recognized the need for a more efficient way to raise capital for high-quality nonprofits. They formed SeaChange to bring together wealthy individuals, family foundations, and other donors to pool their donations for greater impact. These fundings make a demonstrable difference for the individual organization and the overall system it addresses. SeaChange has also begun to foster collaborations between nonprofit organizations that will be able to sustain durable programs by merging, coming together in an alliance, or otherwise cooperating.

In 2009, SeaChange committed to its first fundings, of the exceptional charter-management organization Uncommon Schools and of the nationally respected leader in the field of teacher training and mentoring New Teacher Center.

Uncommon is building a critical mass of “no excuses” public charter schools in New York and New Jersey, to close the achievement gap for low-income students and prepare them to graduate from college. SeaChange is arranging an Expansion Fund to support Uncommon’s planned growth over the next five years from 11 schools to 33, with the goal of serving 11,500 students.

The New Teacher Center addresses the challenge of preparing new teachers in underserved school systems. The program pairs new teachers with experienced teachers who serve as their mentors for two years. In 40 states, the nonprofit operates programs that annually support over 10,000 teachers. SeaChange is arranging an Impact Fund to support NTC as a newly independent nonprofit.

SeaChange has been fortunate to attract the backing of highly respected funders: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Omidyar Network, the Goldman Sachs Group, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and others. It has also drawn favorable attention from BusinessWeek, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and a range of observers in the nonprofit sector. The firm is based in midtown Manhattan, with a team of ten and a five-person board of experienced nonprofit leaders. To learn more about SeaChange, please visit http://www.seachangecap.org.

Location: Bay Area, CA

The New Teacher Center (NTC) is a national organization dedicated to improving student learning by accelerating the effectiveness of new teachers. NTC strengthens school communities through proven mentoring and professional development programs, online learning environments, policy advocacy, and essential research. Since 1998, NTC has served over 49,000 teachers and 5,000 mentors, touching millions of students across the country.  The organization has an $18 million operating budget and has a staff of 200 working across the country. Spurred by the nation’s increasing achievement gap and the need for effective support for a new generation of teachers, NTC has recently launched an ambitious growth phase.

Location: Bay Area, CA

The New Teacher Center (NTC) is a national organization dedicated to improving student learning by accelerating the effectiveness of new teachers. NTC strengthens school communities through proven mentoring and professional development programs, online learning environments, policy advocacy, and essential research. Since 1998, NTC has served over 49,000 teachers and 5,000 mentors, touching millions of students across the country.  The organization has an $18 million operating budget and has a staff of 200 working across the country. Spurred by the nation’s increasing achievement gap and the need for effective support for a new generation of teachers, NTC has recently launched an ambitious growth phase.

Location: New York, NY

Leveraging Investments in Creativity is a 10-year initiative to improve artists’ ability to make work, build social capital and contribute to democratic values. LINC builds on recent research by the Urban Institute that identifies more than 5,000 programs and services for artists but points to the need for new efforts that:

• Expand financial supports for artists’ work;
• Improve artists’ access to essential material supports such as live-work space and insurance; and
• Bolster knowledge, collaborations, and public policies that affect the work of artists and their contributions to communities.

Founded in 2003, LINC seeks to assist the people, organizations, and communities already at work in supporting artists, and to address needs not being served. Efforts include funding community-wide strategies to improve conditions for artists; building online information concerning artist spaces and health insurance for artists; and working with field leaders to advance knowledge and best practices.

Location: Quincy, MA

Cradles to Crayons (C2C) was founded in 2002, with the mission of providing children with the basic essentials they need to feel safe, warm, ready to learn and valued. These essentials include clothing, shoes, school supplies, and much more. By partnering with social-service organizations in the Boston area, C2C connects communities that have surplus resources—new or gently used items in good condition—with communities that desperately need access to those resources.

While meeting the immediate needs of low-income children, C2C also sets a foundation for lasting change by providing meaningful, tangible volunteer opportunities to thousands of individuals and hundreds of organizations each year. Headquartered near Boston, MA, C2C also opened a Philadelphia location in 2006. In 2009, C2C-Boston served 45,000 children through its Everyday Essentials and Ready to Learn programs. With a current operating budget of $1.5 million and a staff of 21, C2C-Boston plans to double the number of children served to 90,000 within the next three to five years. 

Location: Brooklyn, NY

Achievement First is a charter school management organization started in July 2003 by the leaders of Amistad Academy, a high performing charter school in New Haven, CT.  A non-profit, 501 (c)(3) organization, Achievement First is creating a network of achievement-gap closing charter schools in Connecticut and New York to bring to scale the dramatic, life changing student achievement results produced at Amistad Academy.  Achievement First currently operates 17 schools in both NY and CT.  Over the next four years, Achievement First will grow to support 30 schools serving over 11,500 students.  For more information about the Achievement First mission, model, our schools and team, please visit: http://www.achievementfirst.org.

Location: Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport, CT

Achievement First is a charter school management organization started in July 2003 by the leaders of Amistad Academy, a high performing charter school in New Haven, CT.  A non-profit, 501 (c)(3) organization, Achievement First is creating a network of achievement-gap closing charter schools in Connecticut and New York to bring to scale the dramatic, life changing student achievement results produced at Amistad Academy.  Achievement First currently operates 17 schools in both NY and CT.  Over the next four years, Achievement First will grow to support 30 schools serving over 11,500 students.  For more information about the Achievement First mission, model, our schools and team, please visit: http://www.achievementfirst.org.

Location: Boston, MA

Project HEALTH is an innovative, rapidly-growing national nonprofit that works to break the link between poverty and poor health. To achieve our vision of a health care system that addresses social determinants of health as a standard part of patient care, Project HEALTH mobilizes a corps of inspired undergraduate volunteers to connect low-income patients with the resources they need to be healthy.

Project HEALTH’s model is simple but effective: In the clinics where our Family Help Desk programs operate, physicians can “prescribe” food, housing, job training, or other resources for their patients as routinely as they do medication. Located in the waiting room and staffed by college volunteers, our Family Help Desks “fill” these prescriptions by connecting patients with key resources.

Founded at Boston Medical Center in 1996, Project HEALTH now mobilizes over 550 rigorously-trained volunteers to serve over 5,000 families in Boston, Providence, New York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and Chicago each year. Project HEALTH’s 19 Family Help Desks are located in prenatal and pediatric clinics, newborn nurseries, emergency rooms, and community health centers.  Over the next four years, Project HEALTH will make substantial investments in refining and developing its program model both to achieve yet greater impact on patients and volunteers and to leverage this direct service model in furtherance of a vision for health care systems change.
Project HEALTH thus has a two-fold impact: First, the Family Help Desks expand clinics’ capacity to secure those resources necessary for their patients to be healthy. Second, Project HEALTH is producing a pipeline of new leaders for the health care sector who will create the fundamental changes required to improve health outcomes for all Americans, especially those who are low-income.

To learn more about Project HEALTH and our impact, please visit http://www.projecthealth.org.

Location: Arlington, VA

Rare is a fast-growing, international conservation organization that has run state-of-the-art communications and outreach projects in more than 50 countries around the world. Named to Fast Company Magazine’s list of “Top Social Capitalists” for four consecutive years, Rare is committed to bringing a spirit of entrepreneurship and creativity to solving one of this century’s great challenges – building public support for conservation.

Rare works through local partnerships to tangibly reduce threats to the environment, often in collaboration with global partners like The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, and the United Nations Environment Programme. Pulitzer Prize winning conservation leader E.O. Wilson described Rare’s value as follows:

“In an original manner, Rare attends to conservation where it has ultimately the most lasting effect, through education tuned to the culture and needs of local people.”

Rare’s approach to conservation is the Pride Campaign, which identifies promising solutions to critical conservation challenges and then inspires local communities to adopt them.  A Pride campaign looks like a two-year pep rally for the environment, complete with charismatic mascots, public festivals, and other social marketing tactics: posters, billboards, bumper stickers, public service announcements, and radio programming, etc. These locally-managed campaigns encourage local communities to see the environment as a source of civic pride, an asset to be safeguarded and sustainably managed. Conservation then becomes a positive, compelling, and more urgent cause. Over time, Pride campaigns build demand for proven solutions that benefit both the environment and the local people. Fishermen are motivated to better manage their fisheries, farmers reduce deforestation in favor of alternative and sustainable livelihoods, housewives adopt more fuel efficient wood stoves, and mayors establish waste management systems to protect water supplies and rivers.

In the past five years, Rare has trained more than a hundred local conservation organizations to design and implement Pride campaigns. To continue expanding and improving the program, Rare established a global Master’s program for training Pride campaign managers that is now offered at partner universities in China, Indonesia, Mexico, and Washington DC,  and began expanding regional staffs to increase the number and quality of campaigns in each region. Recently, Rare also launched http://www.rareplanet.org, a growing network of local conservation leaders.

As Rare expands, its strategy is shifting. Beginning this year, every Pride campaign in each regional cohort will be aligned around a similar problem and solution. Rare calls them “thematic cohorts.”  For example, Rare just launched 12 campaigns in the Andes to safeguard endangered endemic species by motivating farmers and local governments to protect the watersheds that harbor these one-of-a-kind birds and amphibians. Campaign managers will design and implement these projects while enrolled in Rare’s global Master’s program at ITESO in Guadalajara, Mexico.  Across the globe, in Indonesia and Malaysia, Rare will launch 11 campaigns that inspire coastal fishers and their communities to create and better manage No Take Zones that will protect precious reefs and lead to more sustainable fisheries.  Leaders managing those campaigns will form a cohort in the Rare Master’s program at the Bogor Institute in Indonesia.

Location: Boston, MA

Commongood Careers was launched by a group of nonprofit leaders in May 2005 to address the pressing need for talent throughout the social sector.  Located in downtown Boston, the dynamic Commongood Careers team leverages an innovative approach to supporting the recruitment and hiring needs of today’s leading social entrepreneurs.  Having worked with over 100 nonprofit clients to fill over 400 positions so far, Commongood Careers is one of the largest nonprofit search firms in the country.  In order to build our national talent network and ongoing recruitment efforts, as well as support nonprofit job seekers, we are also proud to have strategic national partnerships with a wide variety of fellowship, alumni and educational organizations.  Commongood Careers has an entrepreneurial culture and a collaborative work environment in which enthusiasm and initiative are valued. 

Location: Cambridge, MA

New Profit is a nonprofit venture philanthropy fund that exists to help innovative social entrepreneurs and their organizations bring about widespread and transformative impact on critical social problems.  We work to fulfill this mission with two approaches: 1) providing multi-year financial and strategic support to help a portfolio of innovative social entrepreneurs and their organizations realize their full potential for social impact; and 2) helping to build an environment in which all innovative social entrepreneurs and their organizations may realize their full potential for social impact. 

With the support of individual investors and our signature partner, Monitor Group, New Profit works with social entrepreneur-led organizations tackling persistent social problems in education, workforce development, public health, and other areas.  New Profit also drives other initiatives to help scale social innovations, including the annual Gathering of Leaders, America Forward, and Urban Assets Initiative.  We believe that just as entrepreneurship and invention have driven our nation’s progress, so too can we harness America’s spirit of innovation, vision, and optimism to help solve our most pressing social problems.

Location: St. Paul, MN

Playworks is a national nonprofit that provides safe, healthy play and physical activity to low-income schools, helping create a positive environment for learning and teaching. Playworks maximizes the value of recess, making play a part of every day ultimately transforming the learning environment for hundreds of schools across the country. We put trained adults on the playground to introduce classic games that are disappearing from schoolyards, like kickball and four-square, as well as new games designed to build leadership and foster teamwork. When Playworks partners with a school, kids are more physically active and they return to class focused and ready learn so the whole school day goes better. Playworks’ track record of success across the country has attracted multi-million dollar investments from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, AmeriCorps and private philanthropists.

Location: Little Rock, AR

Playworks is a national nonprofit that provides safe, healthy play and physical activity to low-income schools, helping create a positive environment for learning and teaching. Playworks maximizes the value of recess, making play a part of every day ultimately transforming the learning environment for hundreds of schools across the country. We put trained adults on the playground to introduce classic games that are disappearing from schoolyards, like kickball and four-square, as well as new games designed to build leadership and foster teamwork. When Playworks partners with a school, kids are more physically active and they return to class focused and ready learn so the whole school day goes better. Playworks’ track record of success across the country has attracted multi-million dollar investments from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, AmeriCorps and private philanthropists.

Location: Washington, DC

BUILD is a social venture headquartered in Northern California with offices in the Bay Area, Washington, D.C., and further national expansion plans. BUILD is a four-year, entrepreneurship-focused college preparation program whose mission is to provide real-world entrepreneurial experience that empowers youth from under-resourced communities to excel in education, lead in their communities, and succeed professionally. By helping students develop and run their own small businesses, BUILD supplements traditional school with real-world business experiences and critical skill-building for the future. For more information about the organization, please visit our website at http://www.build.org.

Location: Philadelphia, PA

Playworks is a national nonprofit that provides safe, healthy play and physical activity to low-income schools, helping create a positive environment for learning and teaching. Playworks maximizes the value of recess, making play a part of every day ultimately transforming the learning environment for hundreds of schools across the country. We put trained adults on the playground to introduce classic games that are disappearing from schoolyards, like kickball and four-square, as well as new games designed to build leadership and foster teamwork. When Playworks partners with a school, kids are more physically active and they return to class focused and ready learn so the whole school day goes better. Playworks’ track record of success across the country has attracted multi-million dollar investments from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, AmeriCorps and private philanthropists.

Location: Detroit, MI

Playworks is a national nonprofit that provides safe, healthy play and physical activity to low-income schools, helping create a positive environment for learning and teaching. Playworks maximizes the value of recess, making play a part of every day ultimately transforming the learning environment for hundreds of schools across the country. We put trained adults on the playground to introduce classic games that are disappearing from schoolyards, like kickball and four-square, as well as new games designed to build leadership and foster teamwork. When Playworks partners with a school, kids are more physically active and they return to class focused and ready learn so the whole school day goes better. Playworks’ track record of success across the country has attracted multi-million dollar investments from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, AmeriCorps and private philanthropists.

Location: Houston, TX

Playworks is a national nonprofit that provides safe, healthy play and physical activity to low-income schools, helping create a positive environment for learning and teaching. Playworks maximizes the value of recess, making play a part of every day ultimately transforming the learning environment for hundreds of schools across the country. We put trained adults on the playground to introduce classic games that are disappearing from schoolyards, like kickball and four-square, as well as new games designed to build leadership and foster teamwork. When Playworks partners with a school, kids are more physically active and they return to class focused and ready learn so the whole school day goes better. Playworks’ track record of success across the country has attracted multi-million dollar investments from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, AmeriCorps and private philanthropists.

Location: Denver, CO

Playworks is a national nonprofit that provides safe, healthy play and physical activity to low-income schools, helping create a positive environment for learning and teaching. Playworks maximizes the value of recess, making play a part of every day ultimately transforming the learning environment for hundreds of schools across the country. We put trained adults on the playground to introduce classic games that are disappearing from schoolyards, like kickball and four-square, as well as new games designed to build leadership and foster teamwork. When Playworks partners with a school, kids are more physically active and they return to class focused and ready learn so the whole school day goes better. Playworks’ track record of success across the country has attracted multi-million dollar investments from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, AmeriCorps and private philanthropists.

Location: Boston, MA

Founded in 1985, ACCESS works to ensure that every young person has the financial information and resources necessary to find an affordable path to – and through – a postsecondary education.  To accomplish this mission, ACCESS provides free financial aid advice, advocacy and scholarship support to all the students of Boston and Springfield, Massachusetts to help them overcome the financial barriers to a college education.  Operating in 40 high schools and 12 leading community organizations in Boston and 10 high schools in Springfield, ACCESS provides students and parents with personalized, one on one financial aid assistance as they plan for and apply to college.  ACCESS’s expert financial aid advisors have helped students secure millions of dollars in financial aid - more than $105 million in financial aid in the last three years alone.  Since its inception, ACCESS has guided more than 45,000 students through the financial aid process and awarded more than $5 million in critical, need-based gap scholarships to more than 5,000 students while maintaining a 75% college graduation rate – more than twice the college graduation rate of the entire Boston Public Schools.

Location: Boston, MA

Teach Plus is an innovative new non-profit organization dedicated to retaining effective teachers in urban schools. To this end, Teach Plus seeks to amplify a new voice of outstanding, early career teachers who want to transform the teaching profession to reward, develop and retain excellent teachers.  Our goal is to both help these teachers become informed advocates for change and to incubate their innovative ideas for retaining teachers like them.  We also work with state, district and school leaders to implement policy reforms aimed at retaining effective teachers in urban classrooms.  Our core programs include the Teaching Policy Fellows Program (a two-year intensive Fellowship for early career teachers) and the T+ Network (a community of results-oriented teachers who want to actively engage in improving teacher effectiveness and retention).  More information about Teach Plus can be found on our website: http://www.teach-plus.org

Location: San Francisco

BUILD is a social venture headquartered in Northern California with offices in the Bay Area, Washington, D.C., and plans for a national expansion. BUILD is a four-year, entrepreneurship-focused college preparation program whose mission is to provide real-world entrepreneurial experience that empowers youth from under-resourced communities to excel in education, lead in their communities, and succeed professionally. By helping students develop and run their own small businesses, BUILD supplements traditional school with real-world business experiences and critical skill-building for the future. For more information about the organization, please visit our website at http://www.build.org.

Location: Boston, MA

The Edward W. Brooke Charter School is a K-8 charter school, whose mission is to prepare students to attend and succeed in college.  We are committed to closing the achievement gap in our country among low-income and minority students and believe that we can close that gap by cultivating powerful and effective teaching and learning environments.  We are committed to building schools where every element of the program is designed to ensure that great teaching can flourish.

Founded in 2002 and located in the Roslindale neighborhood of Boston, the Brooke School serves approximately 450 students in grades K-8.  Our students are predominantly minority (96% black and Latino) and low-income (72% qualify for free or reduced-price lunch).  For the past 4 years, Brooke students have consistently ranked among the top achieving students in the city and the state on the state-administered MCAS tests in reading and math and our graduates have gone on to attend highly-selective, college-preparatory private and public high schools, often with full academic scholarships.  On the 2009 MCAS, Brooke School 7th graders were the top performing school in the city on the 7th grade MCAS in both math and ELA, and in 7th grade math were the top performing school in the state of Massachusetts.

Location: Brooklyn, NY

Achievement First is a charter school management organization started in July 2003 by the leaders of Amistad Academy, a high performing charter school in New Haven, CT.  A non-profit, 501 (c)(3) organization, Achievement First is creating a network of achievement-gap closing charter schools in Connecticut and New York to bring to scale the dramatic, life changing student achievement results produced at Amistad Academy.  Achievement First currently operates 17 schools in both NY and CT.  Over the next four years, Achievement First will grow to support 30 schools serving over 11,500 students.  For more information about the Achievement First mission, model, our schools and team, please visit: http://www.achievementfirst.org.

Location: Bridgeport, CT

Achievement First is a charter school management organization started in July 2003 by the leaders of Amistad Academy, a high performing charter school in New Haven, CT.  A non-profit, 501 (c)(3) organization, Achievement First is creating a network of achievement-gap closing charter schools in Connecticut and New York to bring to scale the dramatic, life changing student achievement results produced at Amistad Academy.  Achievement First currently operates 17 schools in both NY and CT.  Over the next four years, Achievement First will grow to support 30 schools serving over 11,500 students.  For more information about the Achievement First mission, model, our schools and team, please visit: http://www.achievementfirst.org.

Location: Hartford, CT

Achievement First is a charter school management organization started in July 2003 by the leaders of Amistad Academy, a high performing charter school in New Haven, CT.  A non-profit, 501 (c)(3) organization, Achievement First is creating a network of achievement-gap closing charter schools in Connecticut and New York to bring to scale the dramatic, life changing student achievement results produced at Amistad Academy.  Achievement First currently operates 17 schools in both NY and CT.  Over the next four years, Achievement First will grow to support 30 schools serving over 11,500 students.  For more information about the Achievement First mission, model, our schools and team, please visit: http://www.achievementfirst.org.

Location: Atlanta, GA

KIPP is a national network of 82 schools that are free, open-enrollment, college-preparatory public schools with a track record of preparing students in underserved communities for success in college and in life. We are currently in 19 states and the District of Columbia serving over 20,000 students. Eighty percent of our students are low-income, and more than 90 % are African American or Latino.

KIPP Metro Atlanta Collaborative (KIPP MAC) manages three KIPP Academies in the Metro-Atlanta area: KIPP West Atlanta Young Scholars (WAYS) Academy and KIPP South Fulton Academy, both founded in 2003, and KIPP STRIVE Academy, founded in 2009.  Building on the success of our local KIPP Academies as well as the KIPP national network of schools, we are currently embarking on an aggressive growth plan with our next school set to open in Fall, 2010.

In our short six-year history, KIPP Metro Atlanta has proven what is possible for low income students.  The Georgia Public Policy Foundation, which compiles test score and demographic data for all schools in Georgia, recently named both KIPP WAYS Academy and KIPP South Fulton Academy two of the 44 “No Excuses Schools” in Georgia, referring to the schools’ performance relative to its poverty rate.  According to GPPF, KIPP Metro Atlanta’s schools are the two highest performing middle schools in the state in high poverty communities – and are ranked in the top 20 (out of 501) of all middle schools.

Location: Cambridge, MA

New Profit is a nonprofit venture philanthropy fund that exists to help innovative social entrepreneurs and their organizations bring about widespread and transformative impact on critical social problems.  We work to fulfill this mission with two approaches: 1) providing multi-year financial and strategic support to help a portfolio of innovative social entrepreneurs and their organizations realize their full potential for social impact; and 2) helping to build an environment in which all innovative social entrepreneurs and their organizations may realize their full potential for social impact. 

With the support of individual investors and our signature partner, Monitor Group, New Profit works with social entrepreneur-led organizations tackling persistent social problems in education, workforce development, public health, and other areas.  New Profit also drives other initiatives to help scale social innovations, including the annual Gathering of Leaders, America Forward, and Urban Assets.  We believe that just as entrepreneurship and invention have driven our nation’s progress, so too can we harness America’s spirit of innovation, vision, and optimism to help solve our most pressing social problems.

Location: Bronx, NY

Our Mission and Vision
LIFT’s mission is to combat poverty and expand opportunity for all people in the United States. We envision a day when all people in our country will have the opportunity to achieve economic security and pursue their life goals.

Our Organization
LIFT (formerly National Student Partnerships) is a growing movement to combat poverty and expand opportunity for all people in the United States. LIFT currently runs centers staffed by trained volunteers in Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC, to serve low-income individuals and families. LIFT recruits and trains a diverse corps of student advocates from area universities and colleges to work side-by-side with low-income community members.  LIFT clients and volunteers work one-on-one to find jobs, secure safe and stable housing, make ends meet through public benefits and tax credits, and obtain quality referrals for services like childcare and healthcare. As a result, the LIFT experience pushes volunteers to grapple with our country’s most challenging issues related to poverty, race, inequality, and policy. Since LIFT’s founding, over 5,000 volunteers have served more than 30,000 individuals and families. By 2015, our goal is that 10,000 LIFT volunteers will have advanced 100,000 clients on their path toward economic security and personal success.

Location: Chattanooga, TN

Designed by a coalition of community and academic leaders, the Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy (CGLA) is dedicated to the belief that all young women deserve access to the skills, knowledge, and opportunities to succeed in college and to develop as leaders in their communities and the world.  Launched in July 2009 by the Young Woman’s Leadership Academy Foundation, CGLA is the first single-sex public school in Tennessee.  CGLA provides a rigorous college preparatory education for girls emphasizing science, technology, and mathematics in an environment that nurtures self confidence, inspires leadership, encourages critical thinking, and promotes academic excellence.  In accordance with Tennessee Charter Law, all students admitted into Charter Schools must come from high poverty communities or failing schools.  CGLA opened as a Charter School in the summer of 2009 with fifty 6th grade students and twenty-five 9th grade students and plans to grow each year until reaching its goal of 350 students in grades 6-12.  A dedicated, passionate team of 15 highly committed faculty and staff are building an engaging, personalized learning community distinguished by high expectations, accelerated and integrated intervention, remediation, academic support, and outcome-oriented assessment.  At capacity, 40 full time faculty and staff will engage parents and community members with the student body in enriching professional and extended learning time activities, critical to the successful delivery of the mission of the school.  To learn more about CGLA please visit http://www.cglaonline.com.

Location: New York, NY

Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS) empowers young women ages 12-21 who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking to leave the commercial sex industry and develop to their full potential.  GEMS is committed to ending this exploitation and trafficking of children by changing individual lives, transforming public perception, and revolutionizing the systems and policies that impact sexually exploited youth.  GEMS works directly with girls through programs including Street Outreach, Court Advocacy and Alternatives to Incarceration, Comprehensive Case Management, Individual Counseling, Educational, Recreational and Therapeutic Groups, Youth Employment and Leadership Training, Transitional & Crisis Housing, and Referral Services.  Utilizing a holistic, trauma-informed treatment model, GEMS addresses girls’ and young women’s complex needs throughout their transition and development.  Founded in 1999 by Rachel Lloyd, a survivor of commercial sexual exploitation, GEMS has grown to become one of the largest providers of services to commercially sexually-exploited and domestically trafficked youth in the US and is nationally recognized and acclaimed.  Drawing on this extensive expertise, GEMS educates, advocates, and engages others through public presentations, professional training and consulting, youth-led workshops, and the production of videos and documentaries, and serves as a leading voice in the movement to build public awareness and the charge to end commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking of children.  To learn more about GEMS please visit http://www.gems-girls.org