Arlington, Va. (October 20, 2022) – Stand Together Foundation, a philanthropic organization committed to breaking the cycle of poverty and transforming communities in America, today announced an up to $30 million initiative to support 100 nonprofits fighting poverty accelerate their impact and transform how society thinks about addressing poverty and social barriers.
Stand Together Foundation, through its flagship Catalyst Program, has identified and partnered with hundreds of the most effective nonprofits in the country that represent an empowerment approach to tackling poverty. Instead of treating people as problems to be managed with sweeping, top-down plans, these organizations truly empower people to realize their full potential.
Now, Stand Together Foundation is helping the most promising of these empowerment organizations take their efforts to the next level and demonstrate to the country that empowerment works better than top-down control. The initiative – Catalyst Impact Partners – will support a select group of leading organizations that have the potential to transform philanthropy. These organizations focus on a wide range of key issues – from education to child and family well-being to health care to public safety to female and minority entrepreneurship, and more.
Impact Partners will receive access to a new customer-first measurement approach Stand Together Foundation has created to understand and differentiate their impact. They will also receive Principle Based Management™ coaching and consulting and a grant for as much as $300,000 over three years to grow their impact.
To date, 25 Catalysts have been selected to join the Program. By 2025, Stand Together Foundation's goal is to welcome 100 Catalysts to participate.
"Our Catalyst partners take a unique approach to helping people overcome barriers that is anchored in a strong belief in people," said Evan Feinberg, executive director at Stand Together Foundation. "This initiative is about deepening our partnership so that Catalysts can scale their reach, better understand their impact, and ultimately transform the way society thinks about addressing social barriers. If these organizations continue to grow in their effectiveness, and everyone in the country hears about what they are doing, we can transform the entire social sector in America."
Impact Partners will be expected to:
- Model a "customer-first" impact vision. Impact Partners will participate in Stand Together Foundation's pioneering measurement approach to understand impact through customer feedback.
- Advance a management culture that empowers employees. Impact Partners will focus on leveraging Principle Based Management to empower their employees to empower the people they serve.
- Build the movement toward empowerment. Identify with and advocate for an empowerment paradigm among philanthropists, nonprofits, and the broader social sector.
These are the 2022 Impact Partners:
Advocates for Community Transformation
Act – Advocates for Community Transformation leads the way in innovative approaches to creating safer neighborhoods through empowering neighbors to take a stand for their community. Act created a new model of ministry that uses the justice system to entrust inner-city residents to fight crime on their street, while sharing with them the hope of the gospel. Act’s legal advocacy model connects community members with each other, including its volunteer attorneys, churches, and city stakeholders, to create stronger and safer communities where hope is restored.
Brigid’s Path
Brigid’s Path provides around-the-clock medical care for newborns born drug-exposed and provides love, connection, and nonjudgmental support for parents overcoming substance use disorder. Brigid’s Path welcomes mothers and fathers into its homelike facility so they can bond with their child and become part of the infant’s safekeeping. They create trusting relationships with families and enable them to learn about near- and long-term support, ultimately helping families stay together.
CarePortal
CarePortal connects churches, caseworkers, and community institutions to provide real-time support to families in need. CarePortal’s innovative software empowers case workers to submit requests on behalf of their clients and activate local volunteers to support and build relationships with the families. CarePortal leverages this community involvement as a preventative solution for the nearly 270,000 children in the U.S. entering the foster care system. CarePortal offers a holistic, community-driven approach to provide direct support to vulnerable children and families.
Downtown Boxing Gym
Downtown Boxing Gym is a free academic and athletic program that empowers Detroit students with tools to uncover their personal strengths and tap into their potential. DBG is a fierce advocate for its students, providing tutoring, mentorship, enrichment programs, college and career readiness, meals, transportation, support during college, and so much more, to set students on a path for success. The result? A 100-percent high school graduation rate since 2007.
Elevate USA
Elevate USA harnesses the power of healthy, long-term relationships to help youth develop a sense of stability and self-confidence. While some adults may come in and out of a child’s life, Elevate’s teacher mentors build trusting relationships with students, helping build character, life skills, and leadership. By providing ongoing support in and out of school, mentors help students develop their strengths, assets, and relationships and build a strong foundation for future success. In fact, nearly nine-in-ten Elevate Program graduates go to college, get technical training, or join the military.
Families Empowered
Families Empowered provides families with the tools to select the right school for their kids and the resources to navigate the school application process. They strive to give families access to the information and knowledge that will help them make educated decisions about which school is right for their individual needs.
Fathers’ UpLift
Father’s UpLift works to assist fathers in overcoming barriers that prevent them from remaining engaged in their children’s lives. They provide mentoring, cultural outings, and counseling to children who are growing up without their fathers. They uplift fathers and strengthen families nationwide through service, love, and encouragement.
First Step Staffing
First Step Staffing is a nonprofit staffing agency for those experiencing homelessness that provides skills coaching to reduce job turnover and increase retention. Individuals develop confidence, self-reliance, and pride, while local businesses receive dedicated and talented employees. Eighty-six percent of people who have been with First Step for six months or more transition out of homelessness.
Found Village
Found Village leverages a community of adult volunteers and mentors to help youth in foster care regain the ability to trust others. While traditional mentorship models emphasize one-on-one relationships that can end prematurely and undermine the youth’s ability to trust, Found Village begins with a single mentoring relationship and then extends that trust to a wider network, providing family-like support that acts like a “village” around each youth. Found Village engagement extends into early adulthood, ensuring all youth are connected to a community and have been mobilized out of poverty.
Give an Hour
Give an Hour connects an engaged and generous mental health community with the acute and long-term mental health needs of current and former members of the military and other at-risk populations. Their pro-bono mental health providers fill a gap for individuals who might otherwise lack mental-health care and can be responsive to evolving critical needs as they arise in a community.
JUST Community
JUST builds resilient communities by making loans to low-income female entrepreneurs based on trust. Its innovative lending process applies best practices in microfinance, leveraging peer groups and coaching to improve repayment and debt management outcomes, rather than traditional measures like credit scores or bank account information. JUST envisions a world where women and minority business owners benefit from inclusive community and access to capital, rather than relying on predatory lending products.
Lawndale Christian Legal Center
Lawndale Christian Legal Center offers the only community–based holistic legal practice in the city of Chicago dedicated to the felony criminal defense of juveniles and emerging adults. Their Restorative Justice Community Court (RJCC) resolves felony cases for 18–26–year–olds through conferences within the legal community and peace circles with those affected by the crime. Through these connections and holistic approach, Lawndale reduces the damaging effects of youth criminalization, mass incarceration, violence, and poverty.
Leap to Success
Leap to Success empowers women overcoming domestic violence, homelessness, and other challenges by focusing on developing new habits, confidence, and leadership skills with high-quality training typically taught by business professionals. This program is also offered virtually.
National Angels
National Angels builds a community of support around foster parents and children to alleviate burnout and reduce instability for kids. In response to the existing foster care system, which cycles children through an average of 6.5 placements in 6.1 years, National Angels demonstrates that children with fewer placements and more stability have better long–term outcomes. They have a vision to scale their innovative parent–mentor–child model across the nation and help children in foster care reach their full potential.
Our House
Our House empowers homeless and near–homeless families and individuals to succeed in the workforce, in school, and in life through hard work, wise decision–making, and active participation in the community. For more than 30 years Our House has provided a pathway out of homelessness for families and individuals by working to help whole families build the skills, resources, and confidence to break the cycle of poverty and achieve their highest goals in life.
Path United
Path United provides a trusted, steady support system for low–income families — primarily first– and second–generation Latino immigrants — living in mobile home developments. Path United staff and volunteers have a consistent presence in the parks’ on–property community centers, teaching, mentoring, and building strong ties with those who often feel excluded from society. In turn, the residents have a go–to resource for any needed assistance. Students do better in school, high school graduation rates increase, and a path out of poverty is paved.
PEARLS for Teen Girls
PEARLS for Teen Girls forms groups of 20–25 girls that meet weekly and engage in a curriculum that develops PEARLS values: Personal Responsibility, Empathy, Awareness, Respect, Leadership, and Support. Girls bond and are co–facilitated by an intergenerational team of adult program coordinators and junior staff talking through issues of self–esteem, personal development, goal–setting, and leadership.
Prison Yoga Project
Prison Yoga Project brings trauma-informed yoga practices to thousands of incarcerated people around the country, promoting stress and anger management and mindfulness to reduce the likelihood of reincarceration. Prison Yoga Project’s unique offering addresses unresolved traumas that can contribute to criminal behavior and emphasizes improved mental health and personal rehabilitation for every participant.
Saprea
Saprea, formerly known as The Younique Foundation, provides healing services to women who have experienced childhood sexual abuse through retreats, support groups, and online resources. Saprea also educates and empowers both parents and caregivers to protect children from sexual abuse through community and online resources.
Serve & Connect
Serve & Connect facilitates sustainable police–community partnerships to improve community safety, resilience, and well–being. Serve & Connect convenes intentional engagements to identify problems and develop collaborative action plans. By involving community and law enforcement in the process, Serve & Connect is offering an alternative to divisive discourse and one–size–fits–all solutions that negatively impact citizens and police officers.
Sky’s the Limit
Sky’s the Limit is taking on the non–financial barriers — like professional relationships and skills development — that prevent underrepresented entrepreneurs from achieving their full potential. Its team runs a powerful matchmaking software that connects entrepreneurs with expert volunteers to help them overcome their obstacles. As a result, Sky’s the Limit has cultivated a digital community that’s leveling the playing field for entrepreneurial success.
Telos Group
Telos Group works to educate individuals on the deeply rooted issues plaguing our communities. Telos calls those to action who may feel far removed from these issues to wield their influence to enact needed change. Telos organizes immersive trips to areas experiencing conflict, developing teams of peacemakers who can repair relationships and strengthen communities. Telos is working to replace violence, division, and distrust with empathy; training their peacemakers to see others’ struggles as their own; and cultivating the skills that will spark action.
WeThrive
WeThrive unlocks opportunities for underestimated young people of color to explore their entrepreneurial potential. Through an interactive app, WeThrive provides innovative curriculum delivered in group study programs as well as self– paced lesson modules. In contrast to existing entrepreneurship programs that emphasize exclusivity, every WeThrive participant gets access to seed funding and support to bring their ideas to life, including connections to business professionals serving as entrepreneurship mentors. WeThrive’s approach also ensures that every student is set up for success in any endeavor, whether running their own venture, pursuing higher education, or joining the workforce.
Women’s Bean Project
Women’s Bean Project enables chronically unemployed women to discover their capabilities to build self–sufficiency through full–time transitional work in its social enterprise. Participants are exposed to career options that range from customer service to production to data entry that ultimately empower them to stand tall and find their purpose.
Click here to view the full list of 2022 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 $120 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 out of poverty. Learn more at StandTogetherFoundation.org.
