Venture Philanthropy Partners (VPP) has entered into an investment partnership with Mary's Center for Maternal and Child Care, a comprehensive community health organization that provides health, social, and educational services to underserved families—women, men, children, and adolescents—in the District of Columbia.

Through this investment partnership, VPP will provide up to $350,000 in funding and strategic assistance, which will enable Mary's Center to engage leading experts in the fields of strategic planning, outcomes design, and finance to help them develop a comprehensive, multi-year business plan. This plan will guide Mary's Center towards its aspiration to become the leading community-based provider of maternal care, child care and education, health services, and family services in the Greater Washington Region. The business planning process, which is the first major activity of our investment partnership, will commence later this month and is expected to wrap up by December 2004.

Mary's Center was founded in 1988 with joint funding from the DC Mayor's Office on Latino Affairs and the DC Department of Health to address the demand for Spanish-speaking maternal and pediatric services in the predominantly Latino areas of Ward 1. Today, Mary's Center serves a multicultural population residing in every Ward of the District of Columbia as well as Northern Virginia and suburban Maryland, with a focus on families who work in jobs where health insurance is not always available. The Center's impressive growth from a basement clinic with an initial budget of $250,000 to an organization with an annual budget of $8 million serving more than 10,000 individuals and families is due in large part to the efforts of its founder, president, and CEO, Maria Gomez, RN, MPH, who is recognized as one of the region's strongest leaders and a respected local and national advocate for immigrant families and children.

Through services like the Mama and Baby Bus and the Women's Health Program, Mary's Center is demonstrating how improved access to prenatal and pediatric care, coupled with sensitivity to culture and family, lead to healthy mothers and healthy children. In addition, the Center offers social service case management, home visitation, health care for male and female teens and adults, early childhood and family education, HIV testing and prevention, a family literacy program, an elementary school health clinic, and manages the District of Columbia's Healthy Families contract.

Mary's Center aspires to strengthen overall community health by delivering integrated human services to support individual and family well-being and by expanding their presence to serve more children and families on a broader scale in the region. In addition to expanding services and facilities at its current location in Adams Morgan, they hope to expand to Ward 4 in DC and to several locations in Northern Virginia and suburban Maryland adjacent to DC. With its outstanding leadership in Maria Gomez and demonstrated performance in attaining outcomes and meeting critical community needs, we are confident that Mary's Center will achieve its aspirations, and we look forward to working with the Center's talented leadership, board, and staff during this period of growth.

As Maria Gomez commented about the investment partnership, "Mary's Center has been on an incredible journey for the past sixteen years. Now with VPP's investment we will be able to continue our journey in ways we never imagined, by expanding to serve even more children and families in the Metropolitan Washington area. We are so excited to look deep into our programs and find the best and longest impact that Mary's Center can have in our community."

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Maya Angelou Public Charter School and DC Public Schools Form Partnership

Editor’s note: David Domenici, co-founder of the Maya Angelou Public Charter School (MAPCS), presented testimony to the US Senate Committee on Appropriations, District of Columbia Subcommittee Hearing on Public Charter Schools in the District of Columbia on May 4, 2004. In his remarks David describes how the partnership with DC Public Schools, described in the announcement below, is not just a “facilities deal” but rather a part of MAPCS and See Forever’s commitment to bring people together for our children and their futures.

As part of the growing effort to transform education in Washington, DC, the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) and Venture Philanthropy Partners' (VPP) investment partner Maya Angelou Public Charter School (MAPCS) have formed a groundbreaking partnership—the DCPS/MAPCS Alternative High School Partnership—the first of its kind in the region. The new school, which will open in fall of 2004, will serve up to 165 students targeted from Wards 7 and 8, and will co-locate with other DCPS programs in the Evans Middle School building. The partnership will provide a small and very personalized high school setting primarily to students from four DCPS high schools who need extensive counseling support, extended school hours and programs, intensive academic support and tutoring, college preparatory support, and daily school-to-career opportunities.

The combination of space, program status, and support from DCPS with the successfully tested Maya Angelou model of reaching students who may not be attending, or succeeding, in large, public high schools, will result in new opportunities for young people in the District. As the first partnership in the District of Columbia between the public school system and a public charter school, the new high school partnership will serve as a model for creative alliances to benefit students and ideally will lead to other collaborations. Additional partnerships are being explored between DCPS and public charter schools designed for students with other specific needs that could best be served by resources beyond that of the DCPS, such as special and bilingual education.

Each partner brings significant assets to the collaboration. The program will make use of the tailored and successful curriculum, staffing pattern and training, and extra services model of the Maya Angelou Public Charter School, and will be operated as a public charter school. The basic funding for the program will be through the uniform per-pupil formula allotment received by MAPCS. See Forever Foundation, the parent organization to MAPCS, will provide supplemental funding and technical assistance. See Forever also brings the ability to attract support from significant private resources to the partnership, and the very nature of the new high school has already drawn funding from organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Foundation, and VPP. The Gates Foundation has committed support of nearly $1 million in funding to the new venture, making this partnership truly one among multiple entities, both private and public.

DCPS will provide space for the new campus, enabling MAPCS to invest those savings in the program and its students. Under the agreement, DCPS will perform capital maintenance on the site. MAPCS will support this by contributing a per-pupil amount of $500 to a facilities fund. Meanwhile, MAPCS will be responsible for day-to-day maintenance. Students at the school will be treated as DCPS students for purposes such as access to programs, grant funding, and wrap-around services. They will be able to participate in athletic, extra-curricular, and academic programs at other DCPS campuses as appropriate to their needs and interests. The agreement also includes an innovative mechanism to ensure that the building is well-maintained, while reserving as much direct funding to student services as possible.

"SFF and MAPCS are especially pleased to join in this important partnership with the District of Columbia Public Schools," said MAPCS Executive Director David Domenici. "We have always believed that children are best served when schools and their leaders collaborate to leverage their resources and talents. We are excited to work with the staffs at Anacostia, Ballou, Eastern, and Woodson Senior High Schools to provide their students with an alternative public high school option."

In June of 2002, as part of the VPP investment partnership, the See Forever Foundation began its own extensive planning process to determine how to scale and enhance its programs and further its mission to create learning environments in urban communities where teens, particularly those who have not succeeded in traditional schools, can reach their potential. Their goals of opening new campuses, increasing educational opportunities for young people in the District, and helping to foster collaboration among institutions working to help youth were well matched by the plans, expectations, and goals of DCPS. When approached by DCPS, MAPCS co-founders James Forman, Jr. and David Domenici quickly saw the potential of a partnership. As a result, with the support of numerous Board of Education members, planning for what resulted in this collaboration began in October of 2002 by former DCPS Superintendent Paul L. Vance.

"I am thrilled to announce that DCPS is going to partner with the Maya Angelou Public Charter School to expand the educational opportunities available to the children of the District of Columbia," said Dr. Elfreda Massie, immediate past interim superintendent of schools. "This agreement represents an opportunity for the District and DCPS to become national leaders in delivering on the original intent of charter schools: to create 'break the mold' and innovative school models and then replicate these models within the public school system." While similar alternative programs are available in large numbers to students in all surrounding suburban jurisdictions, only one such program was previously available to students in DCPS.

The collaboration leverages the current resources of both organizations. The joint program will be nearly cost-neutral to the DCPS operating budget, and was developed knowing that no new money would be made available to DCPS to create the alternative high school programs that many of its students need. For the See Forever Foundation, the partnership almost triples the number of students it currently serves without having to incur the huge capital costs involved in locating, securing, and renovating new facilities. The term of the collaboration is ten years, with up to two, five-year extension options.

"In a city where students and institutions are often forced to fight over scraps of resources, the partnership between Maya Angelou Public Charter School and DCPS exponentially increases the resources for children, ultimately making the future much more hopeful for our students and our community," said Raul Fernandez, board member of the See Forever Foundation.

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That same evening, Cooking Up A Future VII supporters and patrons joined the Maya Angelou Public Charter School/See Forever Foundation family for a celebration of the achievements of the MAPCS students. Over 300 guests sampled food prepared and served by young chefs and viewed student artwork, performances, and writings that provided a glimpse of life at school. Guests also participated in interactive art and technology activities while touring the building with students. Dr. Maya Angelou, guest host of the event, shared her work alongside some of MAPCS’s own aspiring poets. Despite the soggy weather, the event raised approximately $150,000.

On May 8, AALEAD hosted its first charity reception to raise awareness about its programs and capital campaign. Lisa Ling, host of the National Geographic Ultimate Explorer series, and Dat Nguyen, star linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys, headlined the event, which attracted about 150 people. During the reception, Lisa, Dat, and the AALEAD Capital Campaign Committee spoke about the importance of providing family and academic supports to low-income Asian American children. AALEAD also raffled off some great prizes, including four tickets to the Redskins vs. Cowboys home game (courtesy of Nguyen). All attendees enjoyed a wonderful night of food, drinks, and fun.

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The Board of Trustees of Stanford University has elected VPP investor Steve Denning as a new trustee. Steve is the managing partner of General Atlantic Partners LLC, a worldwide private equity firm, which he co-founded in 1980. He earned an MS from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a BS from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has been a member of the advisory council to the Stanford Graduate School of Business since 1996 and will serve as its chair beginning in 2005.

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GrantCraft, a project of the Ford Foundation, has released a new publication, Working with Start-Ups, where grantmakers from a wide range of funding organizations describe their experiences as supporters of new nonprofits. Some of the lessons learned seem applicable to organizations at any stage, e.g., "New organizations need three key elements to thrive: good leadership, a strong model, and a real market for their work."

The Finance Gap: Charter Schools & Their Facilities examines the facilities experiences of charter schools in 14 states and the District of Columbia, areas that house 75 percent of the nation's charter schools. Districts across the country are facing unmet needs for the renovation and construction of public school facilities, dwindling capital funding streams, and voter resistance to property tax increases. In this context, the decade-long experience of charter schools with private-sector involvement in facilities financing, and the use of instructional revenue for the repayment of debt, offers lessons to both charter schools and the wider public school community. While privatizing facilities financing may lead to greater efficiencies in producing public school facilities, the charter school experience suggests the dangers of using instructional streams for repayment. As charter school operators spend enormous time and resources on capital fundraising and on obtaining facilities financing, their students make do with severely curtailed instructional budgets. Thus, as a model, charter school financing needs to be rethought both by those concerned with the fate of charter school reform and by those contemplating its wider application to traditional public schools. The shared experiences of charter schools with innovative financing mechanisms, private sector involvement in facilities financing, and the use of instructional revenue for the repayment of debt are documented. The report also offers recommendations for public and private sector participants.

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