New Profit Makes Significant Operating Investment in City Connects
July 12, 2016 (Boston) – New Profit, a national nonprofit venture philanthropy fund working to break down systemic barriers to opportunity in America, is making a significant unrestricted operating investment in City Connects through our Reimagine Learning Fund. The Fund seeks to transform learning environments to focus on an understanding of learner diversity and a commitment to student-centered learning to ensure that all students – including those who have been systematically under-served by traditional schools – are supported to succeed.
The Reimagine Learning Fund is investing in City Connects in recognition of its strong evidence base in peer-reviewed research and its direct service model which creates personalized support and opportunity networks for every child in a school. This can be particularly important for students from low-income families who often experience additional challenges that can block their ability to succeed in school. City Connects takes a systematic, high-impact, cost-effective approach to addressing the out-of-school factors that limit learning. City Connects partners with schools to build a network of support for students, their families, and the schools that serve them.
“A partnership with New Profit is an exciting opportunity for City Connects to expand its reach and magnify its impact so that all children can access the supports and opportunities they need to develop, learn, and thrive,” says Mary Walsh, Director of City Connects. “New Profit’s investment is a powerful accelerant. The combination of New Profit’s expertise and national network with City Connects’ track record and evidence of impact has enormous potential to improve outcomes for students across the country.”
The realities of poverty and the impact on educational outcomes underscore the importance of addressing out-of-school factors as a necessary foundation for improving academic achievement. More than 52% of children (about 32 million) live in low-income families and school dropouts are almost all lower-income students. (National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics, Table 204.10 Number and percentage of public school students eligible for free or reduced lunch, by state: Selected years 2000-01 through 2013-14).
When City Connects enters a school, it becomes the conductor of a vast orchestra of school- and community-based resources for children, driving the right resources to the right child at the right time.
City Connects envisions a world in which all learners, including students from low-income families, receive the personalized set of cross-sector resources they need to be ready to learn and succeed. To realize this vision, City Connects partners with schools to provide students with a set of personalized in-school and out-of-school resources designed to address their needs along a continuum of prevention and enrichment, early intervention, and intensive intervention services, clearing the way for students improved learning outcomes.
City Connects has proven success in decreasing dropout rates, improving academic performance, and decreasing absenteeism. For students who started City Connects in kindergarten, the difference between students who attended City Connects elementary schools and comparison students translates to approximately 50% lower odds of dropping out between grades 9 and 12.
By eighth grade, students who experienced City Connects in elementary school closed half of the achievement gap in English and two-thirds of the achievement gap in mathematics relative to the average Massachusetts student performance, when measured against a comparison group of students matched with City Connects’ students on demographic and other characteristics.
The new funding from New Profit will be unrestricted and supplemented by strategic support provided by Deal Partner Jody Cornish. In addition to the support of our Deal Partner, City Connects will receive support from our “Design Council”, a set of advisors who provide expertise in areas of learning differences, communications, evaluation and systemic impact strategy, among others.
Jody Cornish commented on the decision to invest in City Connects: “We are thrilled to invest in City Connects. We see them as one of the best kept secrets in the social sector and aspire to ensure that their insights and approach can have broader influence on national practice. City Connects will make a powerful contribution to the Reimagine Learning portfolio of organizations focused on working with schools to put in place those capabilities needed to support the success of all students. They also will be an exemplar for the field given the combination of rigor, care and thoughtfulness they bring to their work.”
During the time of this investment, New Profit will focus its support on three areas: 1) developing a widespread impact strategy to share City Connects’ unique insights with the field, 2) clarifying a growth strategy to support continual growth of City Connects’ model, and 3) communications and marketing to shine a bright light on the transformative insights of City Connects.
Learn more about City Connects by visiting their website
About New Profit: New Profit is a national nonprofit venture philanthropy fund. The organization’s mission is to break down the barriers standing between people and opportunity in America. To do so, New Profit is working to transform the way America educates its children, propels people towards social and financial stability, and creates healthy communities. Since being founded in 1998, New Profit has collaborated with philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, foundations, businesses, policy advocates and other entities to help drive more than $1 billion towards innovative, disruptive approaches to social problem solving. New Profit’s unique, integrated approach brings together the following activities: investing through the New Profit Innovation Fund and Focus Funds; changing public policy through America Forward; and building communities of learning and action around innovative new approaches to change through the Gathering of Leaders and other activities.