Arlington, Va. (October 26, 2023) – Stand Together Foundation, a philanthropic organization committed to breaking the cycle of poverty and transforming communities in America, today announced the addition of 25 nonprofits to its highly selective Catalyst Impact Grant Program to accelerate their impact and transform how society thinks about ending poverty in America.
Program participants will receive Principle Based Management™ coaching and consulting and a grant for as much as $300,000 over three years to grow their impact. This grant program is part of a $30 million initiative to support 100 nonprofits fighting poverty by 2025. Each organization will also receive access to and participate in a new customer-first measurement approach Stand Together Foundation has created to understand and differentiate their impact.
To date, 50 Catalyst Impact Partners have been identified and selected through Stand Together Foundation's flagship Catalyst Program to take their efforts to the next level. This select group has demonstrated a commitment to bottom-up empowerment rather than top-down control to advance new and better approaches to breaking cycles of poverty across the country.
"We are excited to welcome our newest cohort of Catalyst Impact Partners who have consistently exemplified our principles in action," said Evan Feinberg, executive director at Stand Together Foundation. "From personal and academic support for families to health care to strengthening cross-cultural communities and beyond, these leading nonprofits are transforming philanthropy and how we tackle poverty in America. We look forward to deepening our partnership and amplifying their unique approach to truly empower people to realize their full potential."
Impact Partners will be expected to:
- Build the movement toward empowerment. Reject one-size-fits-all and pioneer a future driven by empowerment among philanthropists and nonprofits.
- Advance a vision and management culture that empowers rather than controls. Impact Partners will focus on leveraging Principle Based Management (PBM) to empower their employees to empower the people they serve. PBM provides a holistic approach to making decisions, solving problems, and creating value for individuals and society.
- Model a "customer-first" impact vision. Impact Partners will participate in Stand Together Foundation's pioneering measurement approach to understand impact through customer feedback.
These are the new 2023 Impact Partners:
Adaptive Training Foundation
Adaptive Training Foundation provides athletic training and holistic recovery services to help citizens of various abilities and veterans overcome physical, mental, and external barriers to their self-sufficiency. Unlike most programs for people with disabilities which lean heavily on medication and focus on physical deficits, ATF emphasizes whole-person recovery to build up physical abilities while providing space for emotional healing—and elevating the potential of all individuals.
Amplify GR
Using a multi-generational lens, Amplify GR works in defined neighborhoods with residents, community partners, and businesses to preserve and widen pathways that create greater opportunities for neighbors to participate in and benefit from community growth. Amplify GR focuses on advancing economic opportunity and community well-being while ensuring accessibility to mixed-income housing and quality education in the southeast side of Grand Rapids, MI.
Behind Every Door
Behind Every Door’s community centers transform lives in underserved neighborhoods by utilizing community centers to be present and available, run after-school programming, build relationships, and provide resources with the goal of changing the narratives and experiences of poverty.
Birch Community Services
Birch Community Services is a membership-based program that provides individualized financial education, weekly groceries, and nurturing accountability. They help families break the cycles of debt by addressing food insecurity, and then equip them with financial education for long-term stability, all while building a community of support and encouragement.
Brilliant Detroit
Brilliant Detroit increases “kid success” families by establishing and operating homes in high-need neighborhoods to offer diverse and flexible programming designed to meet the unique needs of each community. With 60% of Detroit’s children under the age of five living in poverty, Brilliant Detroit is well-positioned to work with families with children ages 0-8 to have what they need in order to be school-ready, healthy, and stable.
Brink Literacy Project
Brink uses the power of storytelling to help incarcerated individuals reclaim their personal narratives, remove barriers to their personal development, and change public perceptions in the process. The prevailing narrative around incarcerated and marginalized communities focuses on deficiencies and failings, but Brink offers its participants a chance to reclaim their narrative through the creation of short graphic memoirs to improve their social-emotional well-being.
Cincinnati Works
Cincinnati Works helps individuals facing barriers to employment become economically self-sufficient with a highly successful program that has been replicated by partner organizations in cities and states around the country. Cincinnati Works provides holistic life tools including free, lifetime career coaching, employment support services, and financial literacy education. Two-thirds of Cincinnati Works program graduates are employed in dignified, stable work.
The COMMIT Foundation
COMMIT seeks to provide high touch transition support that becomes the standard nationwide so veterans in all communities can access services helping them identify their passions, build strong networks, and leverage their skills in civilian careers. In addition to providing support to veterans, COMMIT provides programming for military spouses and children, recognizing the importance of family to a veteran’s successful transition from military life.
Entrepreneurs Forever
Entrepreneurs Forever (eforever) organizes small business owners into facilitated, peer-to-peer groups operating in communities with unmet needs. Through these groups, entrepreneurs build peer relationships, share solutions, and set the stage for long-term success. eforever is filling an important need for entrepreneurs who are isolated, disconnected, and priced out of mainstream peer-to-peer organizations. eforever’s work has a multiplying effect on communities it serves, by equipping its participants to generate wealth and contribute to the economic stability of their neighborhoods.
Face it TOGETHER
Face It TOGETHER is bringing a new approach to the addiction crisis. They harness the power of relationships, technology, and data science to keep people well from addiction and lead productive lives through their innovative peer-led coaching model. Remote services are also provided.
The Frederick Douglass Project for Justice
The Frederick Douglass Project for Justice runs a multistate prison visitation program that provides opportunities for members of the public to meet and speak to those directly impacted by the criminal legal system in the U.S. The program’s conversations are structured to build empathy and grow understanding for all involved in order to drive meaningful personal and systemic changes.
Friends of the Children
Friends of the Children knows that a single, meaningful adult relationship can make a tremendous difference in the life of a vulnerable child. It pairs a paid mentor or “Friend” with each child in its program and that Friend becomes an ingrained and permanent fixture in the child’s life for 12.5 years, providing support and teaching valuable life skills. These pairings start in early childhood, providing a positive, healthy relationship to alter the trajectory of a young life, giving kids a sense of stability and the chance to rise to their full potential.
Hustle PHX
Hustle PHX helps people in disadvantaged urban communities discover their innate gifts, find purpose, and achieve self-sufficiency through entrepreneurship. Participants receive skills training and business education, gain access to capital, and make connections with knowledgeable mentors who can support them as they launch and grow their businesses. With a focus on social, spiritual, and economic development, faith-based Hustle PHX helps budding business owners create ventures that will fulfill their dreams while also giving back to the community.
Juma Ventures
Juma Ventures gives low-income youth the opportunities and connections to help them get ahead in life through the benefits of paid work, training, and social capital. It provides a range of support, from career tours to job placement, paving a professional path that may ordinarily not have come a participant’s way. Youth are exposed to potential job options, while developing the accountability, self-sufficiency, and confidence to rise above past circumstances and achieve their dreams.
LifeWorks
LifeWorks seeks to eradicate youth homelessness by offering an individualized plan for every young person who walks through their doors. Realizing that those experiencing homelessness have varying needs, its assistance ranges from housing to workforce training to mental health counseling. While the support differs, every person is welcomed into a nurturing community that helps them heal from trauma, provides work and educational opportunities, and guides them onto the path to healthy, independent living.
Lone Star Justice Alliance
Lone Star Justice Alliance is a nonprofit legal organization that improves the lives of youth and emerging adults in the justice system. LSJA uses developmentally appropriate responses to behavior and treats youth and emerging adults with equity and dignity. They promote resilience, conserve costs, and increase public safety within the criminal justice system and beyond.
Per Scholas
Per Scholas helps those from underserved communities secure stable, well–paying tech industry jobs by working with employers to understand their specific IT needs and offering tuition–free training for adults. The result: Companies diversify their workforce while an often–overlooked community pursues rewarding career pathways.
Reach University
Reach is a nonprofit university that addresses America’s teacher shortage by creating affordable pathways for high–potential individuals to obtain degrees, credentials, and jobs as teachers in their own communities. By focusing on low–income and rural regions, offering online tutorials and classes, and rendering academic credit for on–the–job experience, Reach University is eliminating barriers to entry in the teaching profession and building pipelines of local talent.
Safe Families for Children
Safe Families for Children surrounds families in crisis with a compassionate community, providing childcare, emotional support, and other needed resources when families need it most. Members of its national volunteer network open their homes to temporarily take in children when a parent can’t meet a child’s needs. At the same time, volunteers help parents – many of whom are often socially isolated – through challenging times. Safe Families offers an alternative to foster care and allows families to stay intact. Safe Families has served almost 50,000 children in more than 40 states, 96 percent of whom returned to their family.
Teaching the Autism Community Trades
Teaching the Autism Community Trades exists to break the historical patterns of unemployment among individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), one of the highest unemployed groups in the country. Through highly individualized training and employer partnerships, TACT provides opportunities for adults with autism to leverage their unique gifts and work in skilled trades where they can thrive. In the process, TACT is writing a new narrative: that all people are capable of extraordinary things.
Thread
Thread harnesses the power of relationships to create a social fabric of diverse individuals deeply engaged with young people facing the most significant opportunity gaps. Thread enrolls high school freshmen from the bottom quartile of their class and matches each young person with up to four volunteers, committing to each young person for 10 years. The Thread community is committed to ending social isolation and building a more equitable culture in which everyone thrives. Thread has grown from serving 300 students in 2017 to engaging more than 880 students and over 3,000 volunteers and collaborators in Baltimore City.
Together Chicago
Together Chicago seeks to be a catalyst for lasting transformation in the city of Chicago by convening faith, nonprofit, businesses, community, and civic leaders to address the root issues of one of the city’s most persistent problems: gun violence. By encouraging local churches to engage in educational volunteerism, workforce development, and community-based justice centers, Together Chicago hopes to reduce violence and foster the renewal of the Windy City.
Treetops Collective
Treetops Collective is building a vibrant cross-cultural community to better welcome refugee women and help them navigate life in a new country. By investing in each woman’s unique strengths and abilities, Treetops Collective is partnering with them to define and achieve their own goals.
UNDIVIDED
UNDIVIDED provides space for tough conversations about racial justice in the American Evangelical Church. It activates church leadership and congregations to engage with topics including racial history. Fighting against the trend of polarization along political and racial lines, UNDIVIDED is showing that empathetic conversation has the power to strengthen community and engage with racial justice, within the church and beyond.
Urban Youth Alliance
Urban Youth Alliance provides an alternative-to-incarceration program that embraces a community approach, recruiting staffers from the neighborhoods it serves, including former inmates who exemplify what it’s like to overcome obstacles and transform. Many mentors share a common background with youths, creating a bond, and earning the right to provide tough love when needed. Participants learn how to make life-enhancing choices, pursue goals, and achieve their full potential.
Click here to view the full list of 2023 Catalyst Impact Partners. Click here to learn more about the program.
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About Stand Together Foundation
Stand Together Foundation is committed to breaking the cycle of poverty in America by driving change from within communities. We are building a community of social entrepreneurs who believe in people, work from the bottom up, and unite with anyone to do right. Since 2016, we have committed over $180 million and counting to fuel the innovation of nonprofits throughout the country to build stronger, safer communities where all people can learn, contribute, and realize their full potential. Our goal is to help nonprofit leaders maximize their impact to transform more lives – breaking cycles of poverty. Learn more at StandTogetherFoundation.org.
