Overview
Putting Children First
Quianna, 11, wants to be a pediatrician when she grows up. Malek, 10, wants to go to the University of North Carolina to study computer science. But in Washington, DC’s toughest neighborhoods, these dreams can fade and wither away unless the dreamers are nurtured and encouraged. That is the role of Heads Up: A University Neighborhood Initiative. This organization enlists university students to provide after-school and summertime academic enrichment and mentoring to children in several of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
For the children, Heads Up provides a safe haven from the fear, danger, and boredom many of them face when they are away from school. Field trips, projects, and creative teaching make learning fun for kids like second-grader Mugabe, who struggled greatly with reading. Despite this difficulty, Mugabe had a rich imagination and captivated his classmates with the exciting stories he told. A Heads Up staff member decided to record and transcribe Mugabe’s tales, making him the author of his own reading assignments. This gave him tremendous confidence, and his reading ability improved quickly.
For the college students who work with the children, the Heads Up experience is designed to be eye opening, leading to a greater commitment to social change. And the bright sparkle of discovery and pride in the eyes of a child like Mugabe is a priceless reward for their service. One 13-year-old student offered this encouragement to the college students: “Each time we listen to you and choose to show up, we are saying thank you. So stick with it because you are giving your time to change other people’s lives.”
Investment Fact Sheet
Heads Up
http://www.headsup-dc.org
25 E St. NW, Suite 300
Washington, DC 20001
202-544-4468
Founded in 1996
Since the completion of the VPP investment, Heads Up has merged with the Center for Youth and Family Investment, and now operates as a division of their services. You can view their website for more information.
Executive Director: Robin Minter
President, Board of Directors: Carol Geary Schneider
Mission and History
The mission of Heads Up: A University Neighborhood Initiative is to help provide children and youth from low-income neighborhoods with the academic skills and learning opportunities they need to succeed, and to provide college students with the opportunity to understand and help meet those needs in order to promote their development as leaders motivated to effect social change.
Founded in 1996 by Vincent Pan and Darin McKeever, Heads Up runs after-school tutoring, mentoring, and summer learning programs for low-income children and youth in Washington, DC, by enlisting college students as tutors and mentors who are encouraged to learn as much as they teach.
While in college, Pan and McKeever helped run Harvard University's community service program at the Phillips Brooks House. After graduation they won fellowships from the Stride Rite and Echoing Green foundations to establish Heads Up and began their first after-school program site in November 1996 in Barry Farm—arguably one of the toughest neighborhoods in the District.
The program has since expanded to eight locations throughout the District of Columbia (half are located east of the Anacostia River) in partnership with DC public schools and the DC Children and Youth Investment Trust Corporation. Heads Up serves more than 655 students both after school and during the summer. Heads Up tutors and mentors participate in a host of Heads Up service-learning, training, and leadership building activities.
Services
Heads Up's approach to programming has three components:
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Heads Up focuses on strengthening families: The organization makes a commitment to working with the same families year round and year after year, and staff develop programs with particular needs and circumstances in mind. Heads Up rarely serves only one person in the family - three out of four enrolled in Heads Up programs have multiple family members participating. For example, Heads Up might teach a child how to read, tutor an older sibling for the SAT, and improve a parent's writing skills. Moreover, Heads Up enlists family members as partners in providing services. Currently the organization hires parents to work in and outside of the classrooms, engages additional parents as volunteer aides and field trip chaperones, and hires older siblings and other teens year-round as junior tutors.
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Heads Up engages university students in service learning: Heads Up believes that university students are the ideal tutors and mentors in many ways. They are often enthusiastic, compassionate, and idealistic. Undergraduates also have more flexible schedules and fewer professional commitments. And with over half of DC college students comprising people of color, and nearly 75 percent attending college on financial aid, Heads Up ensures that children in the program can look up to young adults from both similar and dissimilar backgrounds. Heads Up provides extensive ongoing training, coaching, and supervision to keep program quality high and accountable to the community. At the same time, Heads Up helps college students explore, through formal reflection seminars, how they might serve society in the long run. As noted by one Heads Up undergraduate, "It made me re-evaluate my values and beliefs. It changed me for the better."
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Heads Up strengthens communities through university, neighborhood, and school partnerships: These partnerships align and leverage resources in support of at-risk children while ensuring that a variety of institutional stakeholders share ownership. School partners provide essential classroom space and training assistance. University partners reinforce volunteer recruitment, fund work-study positions for tutors, and give students academic credits for their work. Neighborhood partners update the organization about community events and help Heads Up hire neighborhood residents for specific Heads Up employment opportunities. Together, these partnerships create a broader Heads Up community capable of opening new doors and building bridges between traditionally segregated populations.
Leadership
Since the completion of the VPP investment, Heads Up has merged with the Center for Youth and Family Investment, and now operates as a division of their services. You can view their website for more information.
Investment Summary
Please note: this Investment Summary represents VPP's perspective at the time of the investment agreement, March, 2002.
Since the completion of the VPP investment, Heads Up has merged with the Center for Youth and Family Investment, and now operates as a division of their services. You can view their website for more information.
In March, 2002, Venture Philanthropy Partners and Heads Up: A University Neighborhood Initiative, Inc. entered a multi-year agreement to help Heads Up strengthen and grow its organization to serve more children and college students, to improve the value of the services it provides, and to ensure Heads Up’s long-term success. VPP will provide up to $2,074,000 in total funding over a four-year period and provide significant non-financial support to augment this funding. The non-financial support will include strategic management assistance; the leverage of VPP’s investors, board, advisors, and other contacts; and direct engagement in initiatives such as the development of information systems. In addition to the $174,000 it already received from VPP for comprehensive planning, Heads Up will receive $600,000 in the first year of the agreement. In the subsequent three years, we anticipate funding allocations of $650,000, $450,000, and $200,000. This funding is contingent upon Heads Up’s achievement of agreed-upon milestones (outcomes, outputs, and organizational accomplishments) and the continued validity of the key assumptions upon which this partnership has been based.
OPPORTUNITY
Heads Up and VPP share a high expectation that Heads Up will achieve its aspirations to “become a leading and influential provider of out-of-school-time programs for children and teenagers in District of Columbia neighborhoods and to become the premier youth-related community service program for local universities and undergraduates.” This investment partnership is to ensure that Heads Up, augmented by VPP’s support, will reach its goals to:
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Serve at least 2,400 children and teens through programs at 25 sites in 2007, a six-fold increase over five years;
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Measurably demonstrate its positive impact on children, teens, and college students;
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Be considered by D.C. universities and undergraduates to be the preferred youth-related community service and service-learning program.
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Play an influential role in shaping out-of-school-time policy in the District of Columbia, the region, and nation; and
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Be high performing with excellent operations and a highly effective, well-trained staff.
RATIONALE
VPP enthusiastically supports making an investment in Heads Up for many reasons—in particular, because Heads Up offers a promising model for high-value, out-of-school-time programs. VPP believes, and research indicates, that strong academic and character-building programs help children succeed in school, increase their chances of continuing their education beyond high school, develop good life skills, reduce involvement in negative activities, and contribute to the overall health of families and the community. Therefore, if Heads Up is able to deepen its program and significantly broaden its reach, it will prepare thousands of District youth in “at-risk” situations to become successful, productive members of society.
Also critical to VPP’s decision is Heads Up’s strong leadership. Co-founders Vin Pan and Darin McKeever have a track record of building the organization, developing effective programs, and garnering financial and other support. As evidenced during the planning process, they have the ability to think strategically, are open to input and challenges to their ideas, and are committed to strengthening and building the capacity of their organization, even as it means letting new senior management into their inner circle.
In addition to confirming the strengths of these two senior staff members, the planning process revealed some areas of opportunity on the board, including several strong and highly committed members who are willing to make hard decisions, aim high, ask hard questions, and roll up their sleeves. The planning process and surrounding activities also confirmed VPP’s suspicion that Heads Up is highly receptive to and excited about VPP’s high-engagement model and its strategic management assistance in particular.
The out-of-school-time sector in Washington, DC needs a market leader, and VPP believes Heads Up can step up to fill that role with the financial and management assistance that VPP offers. Research during the planning process confirmed that the out-of-school-time market is fragmented. Heads Up is one of the largest after-school programs in Washington, DC, and has key competitive advantages. Heads Up also believes it can contend and work with the public school system’s own after-school program. And with the Heads Up leadership team (including planned hires) and its commitment to strengthening its organization, Heads Up can become an example of organizational excellence, setting a standard regionally and nationally.
VPP’s funding and non-financial support is aimed at helping Heads Up strengthen its organizational capacity in the hope that this will allow Heads Up to increase its scale and improve outcomes for the children it serves. Heads Up will strengthen its organizational capacity through its best efforts to:
- Continuously improve its leadership, management, and staff’s skills and effectiveness. Key actions include creating a new director of partnerships and recruiting and integrating a director of operations/COO and a development director;
- Focus on demonstrated outcomes and achievements for children, measure these outcomes and achievements, and hold itself accountable to them. Specifically, ensure that program outcomes are defined and information systems to measure and track those outcomes are developed and integrated into ongoing management processes;
- Develop a diversified fund development program capable of sustaining Heads Up for years beyond the term of this agreement, including gaining eligibility for and earning Office of Early Childhood Development (OECD) subsidies; and
- Improve curriculum and program quality and expand capacity of program staff. Key actions include recruiting staff dedicated to curriculum and training; completing rollout of outstanding, research-based youth and teen curricula; and implementing evaluation and quality control systems.
INITIAL PLANNING PHASE
The initial planning phase began in September 2001, with the formal planning effort lasting from October 2, 2001 to January 15, 2002. McKinsey & Co. led the effort in conjunction with a planning team made up of Heads Up board members, Heads Up staff, and two VPP representatives. A staff working group helped provide information for the effort. In the planning phase, Heads Up:
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Reviewed its current internal and external situation;
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Revisited its mission, set aspirations, and defined strategy;
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Identified priority initiatives and resources required; and
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Developed an implementation plan and communicated findings.
The planning effort included planning-team meetings, board reviews, interviews, site visits, and focus groups, and entailed 1,000 hours of collective working time. The planning team embraced the planning effort, discussed and resolved very difficult issues, and now Heads Up Executive Director Vin Pan and other managers quite obviously “own” the plan. The full board has participated in the planning effort and supports the plan wholeheartedly, even as it spells out changes for its own activity level, focus, and composition.
Synopsis
Heads Up made progress to better serve its students and tutors even as it navigated a leadership transition with the resignation of its founding Executive Director, and overcame a revenue shortfall when it did not receive funds from a public agency for which it did considerable work to become eligible.
Key Accomplishments
Heads Up's increased effectiveness resulted in an extensive increase in the number of students served daily over four years, growing from 320 to 1,318; a 70% expansion of its hours of service; an increase in number of schools covered from five to eight; a substantially improved curriculum; an average increase in reading levels of 1.1 grades; and a high parental approval rating of 94%. Based on a study of available 2004 and 2005 SAT-9 reading scores for Heads Up's third and fifth grade students:
- The average year-over-year gain in SAT-9 Normal Curve Equivalent scores was 4.0, greatly outpacing the expected average gain of zero.
- The percentage of Heads Up students scoring at or above national average increased from 30.2% in 2004 to 38.1% in 2005.
- 59% of students had positive gain scores.
- Overall, Heads Up students reach reading proficiency at twice the rate of other students in the same schools.
Other noteworthy accomplishments that contributed to improved capacity and increased effectiveness include:
- Planning and Focus: Completed business planning in 2002, resulting in a well-defined expansion plan for how they would scale their tutoring program to serve more children in the District. Planning facilitated by McKinsey & Co.
- Human Capital - Board Management: Successfully completed a leadership change. Met goals to strengthen senior management, integrating a COO/CFO. A good board was significantly improved and expanded, completing the transition from a founder-centric to a governing board.
- New Revenue: Significantly fortified future revenue by securing a continuing, public source of per student funding for nearly 300 students--a third of its students served. Increased awareness of Heads Up among high net worth donors in region after winning 2005 CharityWorks funding. More than quadrupled its annual support from AmeriCorps by winning a national competitive grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service.
- Performance Reporting: Defined and implemented outcomes assessment and performance management system, and now in process of refining based on experience gained.
- Innovative Partnership: Forged a unique partnership with three well-respected companies--Scholastic, Inc., Michaels Stores, and Binney & Smith--to produce "Read and Create Craft Packs" that opened up an opportunity for a new source of revenue, but more importantly, built awareness of its efforts.
Key Information
- Date, years, and stage of VPP Investment:
- July 2001; 6 years (complete)
- Capital committed and disbursed by VPP:
- $2,074,000 committed and funded
- Revenue increase and % budget growth:
- $2.3 to $3 million — 30% in six years
- Leveraged funding:
- $3.9 million
- Expansion to new places and coverage:
- 3 new schools covered
Case Study
Heads Up
The Heads Up Case Study is not completed at this time. Please check back later.
