In honor of National Volunteer Week later this month, we are featuring our Get Involved page, which has links to organizations that connect prospective volunteers with volunteer and mentoring opportunities, as well as links to our Investment Partners and other resources for getting involved locally and nationally.

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The news that Congress is considering a proposal to reduce federal funding for after-school programs by 40 percent is deeply disturbing on a number of levels to all of us who care about and advocate for children.

The proposed dramatic cuts in funding are yet another sign of a larger shift in both the public and private sectors to pull back on support for children. The declining economy, fewer resources at the state, local, and federal levels, a drop in foundation endowments, and the loss of confidence in some philanthropic organizations owing to recent scandals are clearly contributing factors to this shift. Proponents of the cuts are basing their arguments on scanty data: the results of one study of the 21st Century Learning Community after-school programs, a federally administered discretionary grant program created in 1998 that was converted to a state-administered program as part of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. The study suggests that after one year these programs haven’t had the outcomes that were initially expected.

According to a report by Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, 10 million children annually are left unsupervised between 3 and 6 p.m. — the prime-time hours for teens to commit crimes, become crime victims, smoke, drink, use drugs, or get pregnant. The proposed funding cuts mean that some 570,000 children will be denied access to after-school programs and added to the rolls of children left unsupervised each year. The cuts represent a lost opportunity to prevent 41,000 crimes and save taxpayers $2.4 billion dollars.

Research has shown that high-quality after-school programs can protect children from crime, drug use, and teen pregnancy and can increase rates of high school graduation and college enrollments. The operative word here is “high-quality.” To be sure, there are many after-school programs not offering the structure and support needed to achieve positive outcomes. The response to this situation should not be to reduce our efforts. Rather, we should be looking at how to make effective programs better and finding ways to make those excellent programs available to more children.

The funding crisis is real and is not going away any time soon. We at VPP believe that funders and nonprofits alike need to do a better job leveraging and using the funding that is available. Instead of cutting funding across the board to after-school programs, we need to direct the available funding toward strengthening organizations that have developed high-quality, structured programs and that could, with support, expand and grow to serve many more children. VPP investment partners Asian American LEAD and Heads Up, for instance, have demonstrated this level of high performance in their after-school services. These organizations have developed programs that turn the risky hours of 3 to 6 p.m. into a time of constructive supervised activities.

For example, Asian American LEAD has provided tutoring and mentoring programs for the past five years to several hundred children from low-income families in grades one through twelve. Approximately 100 high school seniors have graduated from these programs and the vast majority of them have gone on to college, most of them earning scholarships. A 1999 self-evaluation by Heads Up showed that 69 percent of its first through sixth graders improved at least one reading grade level over one year, while 31 percent improved by two levels. Additionally, 97 percent of parents rated their children’s improvement in their attitude toward learning as “very good” or “excellent.”

We must also identify emerging organizations with strong leaders to ensure they have the funding and support to help them grow and realize their vision of serving children and families. These organizations certainly need not just programmatic and operating dollars but a better allocation of funding to ensure that they, and others like them, have the resources they need to grow, to continue to strengthen their management team, board, and financial development systems, and to continue to improve their product offerings.

The debate about serving the needs of America’s children, including issues like after-school programs, must be reframed as a national priority that is every bit as important as the national focus on improving public schools, fighting cancer, and reforming healthcare. Cutting funding of after-school programs is like saying we should reduce cancer research because we haven’t found the right cure. No one would consider taking that position, and yet this is exactly the attitude that pervades today in regard to funding children’s programs and services. We at VPP are committed to working with our investment partners and other organizations, public and private, to see how we can together be a voice for children’s issues. High-quality after-school programs work. Let’s figure out how to support and encourage the growth of those programs and not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

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VPP has entered a multi-year investment agreement with See Forever Foundation to support an education model that has the potential to revolutionize the way our country addresses the unique needs of teenagers in low-income urban neighborhoods who have failed in other school settings. We believe that See Forever’s comprehensive approach to creating effective learning environments and providing social support is helping students make dramatic improvements in their lives and putting them on the road to reach their potential.

See Forever, which operates the Maya Angelou Public Charter School in the Shaw area of Washington, DC, focuses on youth who might otherwise fall through the
cracks—those who have dropped out of school or have been involved in the juvenile justice system. Those students receive the academic, social, and employment skills that they need to build rewarding lives and promote positive change in their communities.

VPP will invest $2.2 million in See Forever over the next four years and provide significant non-financial support to help See Forever implement its recently completed comprehensive strategic plan. The plan, for which VPP also provided funds, calls for See Forever to expand from one school serving 85 students to four schools serving 610 students in the region. In addition, See Forever will work to improve program quality and outcomes, with the intention of becoming a national model to increase the impact and reach of its approach. Under the agreement, future installments of the investment will be tied to the accomplishment of specific milestones.

We at VPP are very pleased with the work being done by See Forever’s co-founders, David Domenici and James Forman, and we are very proud to be a part of the organization’s promising future. Our partnership builds upon the substantial grant of approximately $900,000 that was recently awarded to SFF by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

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Lisa holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Duke University, where her training included work in community mental health centers. Prior to joining CMHS, Lisa was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, where she honed her skills in management, strategy development, and designing and monitoring management metrics.

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On the first day of the U.S. war in Iraq, Jim Kimsey was on the telephone with a friend, assuring her that it was safe to continue her book tour in the United States.

Jim hopes the war in Iraq will help the U.S. get a foothold in the Middle East so that it can broker peace. But Jim, the founding chairman of America Online and a VPP investor, knows firsthand that war is hell. These days he’s in the business of cleaning up war’s aftermath. Early in 2001, Gen. Colin Powell asked Jim to chair the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). The goal of the organization is to locate some 40,000 missing people—most in mass graves—from the 1990s conflicts in the Balkan states, and to identify their remains through DNA so as “to help speed up the healing process for the families,” Jim explains.

Like other ICMP board members—including the prime minister of the Netherlands, the British defense minister, and Jordan’s Queen Noor—Jim visits the headquarters in Bosnia several times a year to work with Serb, Croat, and Muslim representatives to gain cooperation in identifying mass gravesites and getting bodies exhumed. Over the last three years the organization has hired international DNA experts who have developed the technology to match bone samples with blood samples from relatives of the dead. To date, ICMP has made 2,000 matches. “It’s grisly stuff,” Jim says, but he was glad to be able to offer the technology to New York’s then-Mayor Giuliani after the September 11th attacks.

Jim also chairs Refugees International, which advocates humane treatment of refugees around the world. Jim, whose Pennsylvania Avenue office is next door to the White House, intends to visit Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to “try to preserve the relevance of the United Nations.” Without an empowered and cooperative UN, refugees in many countries will suffer.

For all the darkness of war-related problems, Jim’s large and colorful life provides a good deal of balance. He jets around the world in a private airplane and is squired around town in his Bentley limousines. But this Washington area native and leading donor was not always rich. He grew up in a modest home in Arlington. His father was a government clerk who sent his children to Catholic schools. Jim, an admitted “wise guy,” was thrown out of Gonzaga College High School during his senior year. A sympathetic brother at St. John High School ensured that Jim was able to graduate on time. Both schools have benefited from Jim’s generosity in recent years.

To the surprise of many, the unruly Kimsey decided to attend West Point, which he says changed his life. That led to an eight-year career as an Army airborne ranger. He took part in the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965. He also served two tours in Vietnam, helping to build an orphanage in Duc Pho along the way. As the war wound down, Jim’s appetite for military service waned. He returned to Washington and purchased several successful bars and restaurants, including the Madhatter and Bullfeathers. His business acumen prompted a friend to ask him to take over a fledgling video game company. Eventually, Jim transferred the company’s assets to another company, including “a little piece of software I licensed for $50,000 that became the kernel of AOL.” He hired a young, creative marketer, Steve Case, who helped the business take off. By 1996, Jim says he was ready to do other things and ready for Case, another VPP investor, to take over. He is proud of the company’s quick international success but dismayed by the destructive clash of cultures when AOL acquired Time Warner. Today he fears the company is moribund. He shrugs. “I’m just a stockholder now.”

When Jim is not abroad, much of his attention is focused on Washington, DC, where he chairs the Washington Opera and sits on the boards of the Kennedy Center and the National Symphony. “I want this city to rival New York in terms of cultural attractions,” he says. But he adds that he doesn’t want communities like Anacostia to get left behind. He established the Kimsey Foundation in 1996 to focus attention on improving education and social conditions in Washington, DC (see story about New Leaders for New Schools). Mike Kimsey, the eldest of Jim’s three sons, works at the foundation, spending most of his days in Southeast DC learning about that community’s people and issues. Mike, a former military officer, also teaches math at Kipp Academy, a charter middle school on Capitol Hill.

Jim Kimsey says he is continually surprised at how much money and energy are expended in tackling the same problems in the city with little coordination. Increasingly, he sees his foundation’s role as one of bringing together people from different sectors and backgrounds to address the city’s most critical issues. The work that he and his foundation face in the city often mirrors the challenges he encounters among international factions in his work overseas. Nevertheless, Jim believes he is obliged to share his good fortune, and he says that philanthropists, like physicians, should honor the Hippocratic Oath: “First do no harm.”

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The nation’s capital has been selected to participate in a national principal development program thanks in large part to a coalition of business and philanthropic leaders working with the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) and public charter schools. New Leaders for New Schools, founded in 2000, is an entrepreneurial nonprofit organization that is building a national urban principal corps. Its mission is to foster high levels of academic achievement for every child by recruiting, preparing, and supporting the next generation of outstanding principals. New Leaders has programs in New York City, Chicago, and California's Bay Area.

It was looking to bring its leadership program to other cities with school systems that are dedicated to school reform, high student achievement, and where there is broad community support for the such efforts. In its first year in this region, New Leaders will train twelve fellows to serve as principals in five public and five charter schools in Washington, DC and in two public high schools in Baltimore.

Jim Kimsey, chairman of the Kimsey Foundation and a VPP investor, took the lead in organizing business and philanthropic leaders to work with DC public school leaders to learn about and support the program. “Investing in New Leaders for New Schools represents a great step forward for the District of Columbia and supports developing the next generation of outstanding principals for the next generation of children,” Jim says. Both Jim and Mario Morino, through the Morino Institute, made the first local grants to New Leaders. In Baltimore the program is getting support from the Annie E. Casey and Abell foundations.

New Leaders must raise approximately $400,000 this year to cover start up, recruitment and training costs. DCPS and Baltimore City Public School System will pay the salaries of fellows being trained in their school system schools. Charter schools and New Leaders will share the cost of the salaries and benefits for fellows assigned to charter schools.

This summer, 12 fellows, selected through a very competitive national process, will go through an intensive, six-week training course led by some of the country’s foremost experts in instructional leadership and organizational management. The fellows will then be assigned to public or public charter schools for a year-long residency, working in partnership with a mentor principal while they continue coursework with New Leaders. Fellows who successfully complete the program will make a three year commitment to serve in Washington, DC and Baltimore City schools. In the first four years of the program, New Leaders plans to recruit, train and support more than 40 principals in public and public charter schools in Washington, and public schools in Baltimore.

As part of the partnership between New Leaders and DCPS, School Superintendent Paul Vance has agreed to new student-achievement-based criteria for “high performing” principals and will allow those high performers greater decision making authority in running their schools. “Great schools have great leaders. If we want to improve the academic achievement of every child, we need talented principals in every school who are held accountable for results and empowered to lead,” says Jonathan Schnur, co-founder and CEO of New Leaders.

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Recognizing that nonprofit organizations must increasingly enter the marketplace to generate revenues beyond their traditional fundraising activities, the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Goldman Sachs Foundation have formed the Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures at the Yale School of Management. The new program provides education on nonprofit enterprise and will serve as a mechanism for capitalizing promising profit-making ventures.

On May 1 and 2, the Yale School of Management/Goldman Sachs Foundation Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures is holding its first annual nonprofit business plan competition and conference in New York City. Twenty finalists in the national competition will pitch their plans to a panel of judges. Four finalists will receive $100,000 each and four semi-finalists will receive $25,000 to help implement their winning plans.

Featured speakers at the conference include J. Gregory Dees, of the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at Duke University, and Bill Bradley, chief advisor to McKinsey & Company's Nonprofit Practice. Master classes in nonprofit enterprise will be offered at the conference, in addition to a funders’ panel to discuss how nonprofits can increase their income-generating activities. VPP Chairman Mario Morino, an advisor to the new partnership, will join the presidents of Pew and the Goldman Sachs Foundation for this discussion. For conference details and registration, see the foundation's website.

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Foundation Grants Steady in 2002 but Gifts from the Wealthy Plunge

Despite the weakened economy and market slump, giving by the country's nearly 62,000 grantmaking foundations is projected to remain steady at an estimated $30.3 billion in 2002, almost unchanged from $30.5 billion in 2001, according to a new report by the Foundation Center. However, foundation giving is projected to decrease in 2003, though perhaps not as dramatically as might be expected given the state of the economy and stock market. "Many funders made exceptional efforts in 2002 to avoid cuts in giving and will do what they can to limit large reductions in 2003," noted Sara Engelhardt, president of the Foundation Center. "Continuing losses in endowment values, especially among the largest U.S. foundations, will take a toll on overall levels of giving. But foundations understand better than most the devastating impact of state and local government budget cuts on the finances of nonprofits."

A different picture emerges from the giving patterns of the nation ’s wealthiest individual donors. The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports that gifts and pledges from 60 of America’s largest contributors fell from $12.7 billion in 2001 to $4.6 billion in 2002.

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