GreenLight Fund

With their Social Innovation Fund grant, The GreenLight Fund (GLF) will work toward closing the achievement and opportunity gap for 20,000 low-income children and youth in Boston, Philadelphia, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Primary outcomes include improved school persistence and academic achievement, increased high school graduation and GED attainment, and increased college access, credit accumulation and degree completion. To achieve these and other outcomes, GLF will import innovative, high-performing nonprofits serving low-income children and youth into Boston, Philadelphia, and the San Francisco Bay Area and help those nonprofits achieve sustainability.

In addition to the primary outcomes GLF targets, GLF develops priorities based on local needs and existing research. Priorities in each community may be related to kindergarten readiness, school engagement, success, and persistence, college access, credit accumulation and completion, and alternative pathways for high-risk youth. Because GLF works with the local community to proactively attract and support relevant national models, they create an environment in which effective organizations enter GLF cities with strong buy-in from local stakeholders and funders. This leads to support and technical assistance that helps nonprofits quickly and effectively implement their models and grow their impact at the local level.

Track Record before Social Innovation Fund Grant:

• Since 2004, GLF has worked in Boston to support the replication and growth of competitively selected high-performing, evidence-based nonprofits creating impact for low-income children, youth and families.
• In 2011, GLF launched sites in Philadelphia and the San Francisco Bay Area and brought on executive directors, advisors, and a growing base of donors to select and support portfolio organizations in those areas.
• GLF has created a locally-centered, demand-driven process designed to identify specific gaps in service in the cities they serve, conduct intensive diligence on organizations throughout the country addressing those needs, and select organizations with compelling evidence of success and strong organizational capacity to expand their models to GLF cities.
• GLF has extensive experience using evidence to select grantees, including reviewing evaluation studies of candidate organizations and rating them on quality, level of evidence and results demonstrated. They also have experience using evidence to assess the impact of individual grantees.