2001 Year-End Summary
To all Springboard Foundation Members, Contributors and Friends:
It is our pleasure to report on another successful year of The Springboard Foundation as we close out our fourth consecutive year of record grants to some of the most promising people and programs dedicated to improving the lives of young Chicagoans throughout the city.
The Springboard Foundation supports grass-roots organizations that help improve the lives of Chicago’s youth, particularly those residing in some of the most challenging neighborhoods in the city. Our members contribute their time and effort to identifying, visiting and monitoring selected charities and make a significant monetary contribution to the fund. Additionally, we raise capital from interested contributors to augment our funding resources.
Our objective is to provide seed money that will help young programs grow and gain access to larger sources of capital. In our first four years, we have concentrated exclusively on supporting educational and after-school programs that aid elementary school aged children in Chicago. We look to support organizations over a multi-year time horizon to enhance their stability. We meet several times a year to review programs that have been identified as candidates for funding. We visit each program to meet its personnel and interact with its participants. We make grants to a limited number of organizations so that each donation can have a significant impact on each individual recipient. And finally, our members monitor each program that receives funding to measure its progress and gauge further funding requirements.
This year, we reviewed 13 new programs; visited nine of them and made grants to six well run yet financially starved programs. These grants are in addition to continued funding to ten programs from our efforts in years past. We contributed a total of $219,450 to these 16 grant recipients, with an average gift size of $13,700 per program. Many of these grants represented the largest outside gift received by the program. Grants are directed towards a number of key areas including salary support, infrastructure and classroom improvement, technology, supplies, field trips, transportation and general operating support. Including this year’s grants, we have now made contributions of approximately $550,000 to 17 programs since our inception in 1998. These programs touch the lives of thousands of inner-city children in Chicago.
Our membership has also grown in 2001, reaching 37 active members, up from ten when Springboard began in 1998. These 37 members will contribute approximately $200,000 to the fund this year. At the time of this letter, we continue to seek and accept donations from outside our membership and hope to surpass last year’s contributions from 18 generous supporters that provided an additional $76,000 to our fund.
On the organizational side, we are finalizing a plan to become a supporting organization of The Chicago Community Trust (from a donor advised fund.) As such, Springboard we will be better positioned to operate, grow and become a leading organization for young professionals in Chicago’s philanthropic community. This will improve our ability to enhance outside funding sources and expand our view of up-and-coming programs dedicated to improving the quality of life for Chicago’s residents. We thank The Chicago Community Trust for all of its assistance.
Other important milestones reached in 2001 are: The creation of our web sight at www.Springboardfoundation.org. This web sight enhances our communications capabilities with donors, agencies and all interested participants in Springboard. We also hosted a successful roundtable last fall that included all of our grant recipients, so that they could network with each other and share ideas on how to best manage their vital programs. In addition, leaders from the Chicago Community Trust and The Chicago MOST Initiative discussed important charitable resources available in Chicago and how programs can gain access to them. This October we are hosting another roundtable and are very pleased that The Executive Service Corps and The IT Resource Center will be leading the discussion and highlighting their extensive resources in management consulting and technology support to not-for-profit organizations. We feel these partnerships are vital and represent that Springboard brings much more to our programs than just financial support. Finally, we were honored last spring to have John Bryan, Chairman of Sara Lee Corporation and a civic leader in Chicago, talk to our group about important community issues facing Chicago and how we can all get more involved in helping our city.
We believe Springboard is a unique organization accomplishing an important mission in Chicago. Thanks to everyone for their participation and time spent with The Springboard Foundation in 2001. A special thanks to our outside contributors; we appreciate your support and your shared interest in helping fellow Chicagoans. Look for us again in 2002, we expect another banner year.
Sincerely,
Keith Olson and Doug Mabie
Program Spotlight
Erie Elementary Charter School (EECS) provides children in grades K-5 with a high-quality education that values their unique life experience, language and culture. Our innovative curriculum, infused with the Spanish language, the arts, and an emphasis on lifelong learning, creates a culture of high expectations for our students. EECS offers enriching learning opportunities both during and after school, including dual language instruction, technology access, Judo training, field trips, music, and now, visual arts with a professional artist.
Website: www.eriecharterschool.org
Factsheets Outcomes Pager High school students participating in Chicago´s After School Matters program—which offers paid internships in the arts¸ technology¸ sports¸ and communications to teenagers in some of the city´s most underserved schools— have higher class attendance¸ lower course failures and higher graduation rates than similar students who do not participate in the program. (University of Chicago, Chapin Hall Center for Children, 2007)