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>View discussions about this entry Country: United States
Organization: BUILD
Year the initative began (yyyy) - 1999
Project URL: http://www.build.org
Positioning in the Mosaic of solutions
Describe your program or new idea in one sentence. - BUILD turns youth from under-resourced communities on to college by providing real-world entrepreneurial experience and academic support.
What makes your initiative uniquely positioned to create change in your community? - BUILD uses the experience of entrepreneurship as a vehicle to re-engage youth who are disconnected from traditional school and propel them toward better academic performance in high school and, ultimately, college aspiration and attainment. We meet our students where they are—in their schools, in their communities, with their families and friends—to create a counter-culture where student achievement, high school graduation and college admission are “cool”. We are one of the only programs with a long-term commitment to our students. We are with them every step of every year of high school.
Our biggest challenge is maintaining our high-touch model as we scale. Our program requires significant staff, volunteer and mentor resources to achieve our commitment to help 100% of our students gain access to higher education - and we have been able to deliver on this commitment every year since our founding. Describe how you organize and carry out your work? - Through 4 year-long progressive programs, BUILD reinforces traditional reading, writing, and math skills while helping students develop teamwork and leadership skills. Students’ access to mentors, our homework club and other resources facilitates and accelerates academic achievement, which leads to increased college admissions, creating economic opportunities and greater self-sufficiency for our students.
Freshmen attend BUILD 7-10 hours/week in the classroom, learning basic marketing, finance, and strategy skills. Students form business teams, work with mentors and develop business plans to present and defend in an annual competition. Sophomores meet after school in BUILD’s Youth Business Incubator for 3-6 hours/week with their mentors and BUILD staff. Teams begin operating their businesses, learning negotiations, business ethics, and more. Students commit to achieve, by their senior years, grades that are suitable for college admission. 2.0 GPA required to stay in BUILD. Juniors continue running businesses while learning more about college selection and preparation: essay writing, interviewing, financial aid, and test preparation. BUILD also organizes and leads students on college tours. 2.7 GPA required to stay in BUILD. Seniors’ focus shifts to selecting and applying to colleges. With BUILD’s College Counselor, they identify schools, write admissions essays, prepare college applications, and package their BUILD experience into a portfolio. What is your plan to scale and expand your innovation into your community and beyond? - BUILD plans to scale and expand through the creation of autonomous incubator sites across the country. We currently operate Youth Business Incubators serving East Palo Alto, CA, Oakland, CA and Washington, DC. To meet demand, we will open a second incubator in Oakland, CA in the 2009-2010 school year.
We are currently investigating other under-resourced communities and plan to open 8 more incubator sites by the end of the 2016-2017 school year. The criteria BUILD uses to select a new site location are: What other resources, institutional, or policy needs would be necessary to help sustain and scale up your idea? - We would also need teachers who are interested in teaching BUILD, and available to be trained in our 9th grade in-school curriculum. School districts who are willing to devote teachers, supplies and classroom space are also key to the success of this program.
Describe your impact in one sentence, commenting on both the individual and community levels. - BUILD helps our students build their self-esteem and confidence to achieve a college education—providing future leadership and positive role models for their communities.
What impact has your work achieved to date? - There are currently 146 young men out of 374 students in the program, and we are expecting to serve nearly 500 students next year. Every single BUILD program graduate has graduated from high school and been accepted into college.
What measure do you use to gauge your impact and why? - BUILD’s current evaluation, accountability, and internal and external feedback mechanism is a relatively straightforward Microsoft Excel database in which we maintain a detailed list of objectives, goals, measurement tools and success criteria for our entrepreneurship program. BUILD’s success metrics include: student recruitment and retention; written and oral aptitude; business and public-speaking attitude and efficacy; and mentor recruitment and retention. BUILD has created customized written, oral and multiple-choice pre- and post-tests for our in-school Entrepreneurs 1 (freshmen) students to test specific business skills and terminology, attitudes towards college, and public speaking skills. However, the ultimate measure of BUILD’s systemic success is having our students succeed academically.
How is your initiative currently being financed and how would you finance further expansion and/or replication? - BUILD is currently financed through foundations, corporations and individual gifts. To finance future expansion, we are exploring fee-for-service models, franchise fees and government funding. For example, one of our partner school districts will begin funding BUILD E1 teachers in the 2008-2009 school year. Previously (and for other school districts), BUILD provided an annual stipend for a high school teacher to teach the BUILD E1 program. We have also expanded our development staff to expand our outreach to new foundations and to expand our individual major donor program.
Provide information on your current finances and organization: - a. annual budget
b. annual revenue c. sources of revenue (please provide percentages if known) d. number of staff (full-time, part-time, and volunteers) • Annual budget: (with drop down menu allowing them to select denomination and then we convert anything not in US$ to include it as a 2nd number) $2.4M • Annual revenue: $2.5M • Sources of revenue (please provide percentages if known): Foundations (69%); Corporations (15%); Individuals (16%) • Number of staff (3 boxes: full-time, part-time, volunteers): 19 full-time; 2 part-time; over 160 volunteers Who are your potential partners and allies? - BUILD’s potential partners and allies include:
• public school districts, for delivering the BUILD E1 program • other college prep programs in our community, to provide as many college access resources to our students • college admissions officers, to educate about the effectiveness of our program and the qualifications of our students • professionals, business people and entrepreneurs in the community, to provide mentoring, business-plan judging and other support to our students Who are your potential investors? - BUILD’s potential investors include: government agencies, public school districts, local corporations, successful individual entrepreneurs, foundations and other funders in the communities we serve.
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story. - BUILD was founded by Suzanne McKechnie Klahr in 1999. As a volunteer in low-income East Palo Alto, CA, it Suzanne realized that local entrepreneurs needed direct representation, as well as access to the networks and institutions that allow people to economically transform their businesses, families, and communities.
BUILD was founded to encourage local students to develop their own small businesses and extend traditional entrepreneurial education far beyond the classroom. Involvement of local business and community leaders in mentoring and support of the students and an operating youth business incubator are central and distinctive components of the program. BUILD uses small business development as a vehicle to move students from under-resourced communities into competitive academic and professional settings. We have found that our students become role models in their communities, influencing peers and creating lasting systemic change. Over the past eight years, BUILD has grown dramatically from four young men to close to four hundred students, expanding from its original site in East Palo Alto to operating two youth business incubators serving East Palo Alto, CA (the largest in the nation) and Oakland, CA. We will have our first students in Washington, DC in the 2008-2009 school year. Our results to date are incredible: 100% of BUILD’s graduates have finished high school and enrolled in college, even while matriculating through schools with drop-out rates of 40%-70%. Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers marketing material. - Suzanne McKechnie Klahr founded BUILD in 1999 with a public service fellowship from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom. As BUILD’s CEO, Suzanne speaks nationally on social entrepreneurship, venture philanthropy, new models of providing legal services to the poor, and poverty alleviation strategies. In 2006, she was elected to the prestigious Ashoka fellowship for the most forward-thinking social entrepreneurs. In 2007, she received CBS-5's Jefferson Award. Suzanne serves as a trustee of the Skadden Fellowship Foundation and on the board of the Glow Scholarship Foundation. She is a faculty adjunct at Stanford Law School, teaching "Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship," and she holds a dual degree from Brown University and a JD from Stanford
Contact Information:
Barbara Bellissimo
Director of Development BUILD (NGO) Discussions about this entry |
BUILDing the Dream through Entrepreneurship
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I just wanted to thank all of those who are supporting BUILD in this challenge. We have seen amazing results and want very badly to spread our program to many more young people...
Suzanne McKechnie Klahr, Esq.
CEO and Founder, BUILD
Hello Babara,
This is a brilliant idea you have created. I was just wondering how your students sustains the businesses to which they start. In Kenya, YAFNet has a similar initiative of manufacturing and selling Aloe Vera Soaps and lotions as well as peanut butter. How do you sustain the students initiative?
Ken Auma
Executive Director
Youth Action Forum for Networking -YAFNet
Nairobi, KENYA
http://www.yafnetkenya.org
http://profiles.takingitglobal.org/auma
+254721559424
YAFNET, We Simplify Networking,
Dear Ken,
Thank you so much for your comment. BUILD is a four-year program, and we focus on starting and running businesses in the first two years, with the major emphasis on sustaining the business in the second year. Student teams meet with their mentors weekly, with specific tasks/curriculum focused on securing seed funding, managing inventory, manufacturing and production, and sales and marketing. During the third year of the program, most businesses wind down, as students' focus shifts more toward academics and applying to college.
Although the main focus of our program is college access (we use entrepreneurship as the motivator to get students interested in academics and pursuing higher education), we have had several businesses survive their founders' tenure at BUILD. In one example, the business was sold and is now managed by a BUILD alumna. In another example, one of the founding members took over the business as a sole proprietor, and has maintained it on her own throughout her college career.
I hope this answers your question. Please let me know if there is any other information I can provide for you.
Thanks again for getting in touch,
Barbara
Hello Barbara,
I love what you all are accomplishing through BUILD. Keep up the great work. I'm curious to know if you utilize a methodology for helping the kids to decide the business they will develop. Is their business synergisitc with their interests, skill set, and personal vision of how they wish to impact or contribute to society? I ask these questions because we believe and teach that by creating such a synergy we are able to maximize the success and effectiveness of the student.
I would love to hear your thoughts. You can learn more about our work by checking out the Purpose Bound entry.
Reggie Kellum
Purpose Bound
Reggie and Barbara, we have an online assessment tool for them to begin being matched with a business model, if they are suited for self-employment. We also serve youth online and in general career work regardless if whether they can read in either English or Spanish. I like what Reggie says here about matching them with their true interests--we do that as well but maybe from a different angle. Joan Sanger, sanger@golden.net
Reggie and Barbara, we have an online assessemnt tool for them to begin being matched with a business model, if they are suited for self-employment. We also serve youth online and in general career work regardless if whether they can read in either English or Spanish. I like what Reggie says here about matching them with their true interests--we do that as well but maybe from a different angle. Joan Sanger, sanger@golden.net
Hello Barbara, Its great to see your entry in the competition! You have set yourself a very big goal of having 100% of your student gain access to high education and congratulations on meeting that goal! As someone who was lucky enough to have family who helped me prepare for college, I know how important it is to have a "college counselor." That is a very important role that BUILD is providing. Keep up the great work!
Dana Frasz
Changemakers
How can I view your YouTube video?
Dear Barbara -- I realize academic excellence and achievement is the ultimate goal of your program, but I'm curious to learn more about the type of businesses young people create through your program; are they creating businesses around retail, service delivery, information-technology/ecommerce, etc.? And what happens to the businesses when your student-entrepreneurs graduate and leave for college? Thanks,
Tito Llantada
Changemakers.net
Competition Manager
Thanks for your comment. BUILD students create whatever type of business they want to. We've had teams sell everything from t-shirts and hats, to baby clothing, to iPod cases, to music, to personal style services, to party planning, and everything in between!
While we have had one or two businesses continue on into college, the vast majority are wound down and disbanded during students' senior year.