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| Zynga employees volunteer with Tipping Point grantee Year Up Bay Area, October 2012 |
| Grant size: | $7.3 million |
| Who won: | |
| What it will do: | This grant intends to help 19,000 patients in San Mateo County manage chronic conditions, saving $6.2 million over three years in national health care costs. Ravenswood will train more multicultural, multilingual health navigators to help patients manage chronic conditions and avoid expensive visits to the hospital or doctor's office. |
| Read more: |
| Grant size: | $3.0 million + $450,000 local matching funds |
| Who won: | Aspire Public Schools, selected as one of 23 winners from a pool of 600 applicants |
| What it will do: | Develop the Transforming Teacher Talent program with the goal of doubling the percentage of highly effective teachers in Aspire’s public charter schools. |
| Read more: | |
| Grant size: | $700,000 - $750,000 |
| Who won: | |
| What it will do: | Improve very low-income veteran families’ housing stability through outreach, case management, and assistance in obtaining VA and other benefits. |
| Read more: |
| Grant size: | $500,000 |
| Who won: | |
| What it will do: | Part of a $5M effort to assist over 1,200 California veterans this grant will provide more critical funding for ongoing training and employment services to help individuals move quickly from military life into high-wage civilian careers. |
| Read more: | http://bit.ly/L9lxvI and for more about recent local efforts to support Swords to Plowshares work, click here: http://bit.ly/Mmqov6 |
| Grant size: | $150,000 - $200,000 |
| Who won: | New Door Ventures and Fresh Lifelines for Youth (FLY) were two of 15 organizations in ten states that were selected among 82 nonprofits invited to apply |
| What it will do: | Intended to advance the impact of promising youth-serving organizations across the country, this grant will strengthen program design, build rigorous performance management systems, and support business planning and operations. |
| Read more: |
| Grant size: | At least $100,000 per year for up to five years, matched locally dollar-for-dollar |
| Who won: | |
| What it will do: | Grow promising, innovative and community-based solutions in the areas of economic opportunity, healthy futures, and youth development by supporting expansion of services into new regions and contributing to rigorous program evaluation. |
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California’s budget of $96.2 billion is the eighth largest in the world. As we try to wrap our heads around what proposed measures to reduce the $9.7 billion deficit mean, we turn to this overview from the California Budget Project:
Measuring Up: The Social and Economic Context of the Governor’s Proposed 2012-13 Budget - A Presentation by California Budget Project, February 2012
And here's an account of the impact budgetary decisions are having on the ground in Arizona, one of 16 states that have cut welfare caseloads in the recession:
Welfare Limits Left Poor Adrift as Recession Hit - by Jason DeParle
In California, children comprise over 75% of welfare recipients. And yet, as we consider the results of proposed cuts in health and human services, there is much to feel hopeful about: the incredible groups in our portfolio are effective and efficient at serving those hardest hit by the down economy, and millionaires in our state have enough wealth to lift California children out of poverty 11 times over.
Here are some recent articles that caught our eye:
In San Francisco alone, there are 80,000 people between the ages 16 and 24 years old[i]. Most of these youth will move smoothly and successfully into adulthood by graduating from high school, landing jobs and finding safe homes, and by building lasting relationships with those around them. However, for the five to ten percent of young people at risk of long-term unemployment, homelessness or justice system involvement, this period of life is a particularly vulnerable one.
We can prevent poverty by intervening to offer critical support at this stage in a young person’s development. At Tipping Point Community, we have a two-pronged approach to finding, funding and partnering with programs that support young people to enter the workforce and pursue post-secondary education. First, we work with organizations like First Place for Youth, Larkin Street Youth Services and New Door Ventures, which have been in the community for over a decade and are trusted resources for working with current and former foster children, homeless young people and other youth in need.
We also look for groups that exist successfully in other places around the country and support their replication or expansion to the Bay Area. We began funding Year Up in this way; the organization grew from its first location in Boston to a thriving program here the Bay Area in 2008. And just this past November, an alternative education program called Gateway to College, which is originally from Portland, Oregon, became a Tipping Point grantee. Thanks to our partnership with Social Innovation Fund recipient, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, we will continue to look for opportunities to bring phenomenal models of support for young people to the Bay Area.
Once an organization becomes a part of our portfolio, we do as much as we can to add value and streamline services. Because Tipping Point works within a relatively small geography and has clusters of grantees in various cities around the Bay Area, we can bring grantees together to share information and make referrals. We’ve seen that youth-serving organizations in particular, some of which offer housing as their core program focus while others provide high-quality employment or education programs, benefit from this opportunity. We believe that all of these ingredients together are necessary to lift a young person out of poverty.
Finally, we work to respond to common needs that arise from across our portfolio. Through our Mental Health Initiative, for example, we have provided a series of grantee staff trainings on motivational interviewing, an evidenced-based technique for working with youth and adults who engage in self-sabotaging behaviors. In some cases, we are able to follow up on group trainings by supporting our expert trainers to go more in depth with specific grantee organizations, aiding in the use of these practices on the ground.
Prior to joining Tipping Point Community five years ago, Rebecca Cherin worked in program, development and management at San Francisco’s Larkin Street Youth Services. She helped design and implement an employment and education program for run-away, homeless and emancipated foster youth who faced mental health challenges, the pull of street economies, and a general distrust of adults.
[i] Disconnected Youth in San Francisco, Mayor’s Transitional Youth Taskforce, 2007 http://www.heysf.org/download/TYTF%20final%20report.pdf
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