Fund for the City of New York, Inc.
Project Title
For core support of College Access: Research & Action
Date
Mar. 05, 2026
Duration
27 months
Description
The United States faces persistent challenges with college access and completion, particularly among low-income students due to a lack of comprehensive guidance and support. College Access: Research & Action (CARA), established in 2011, works to ensure first-generation and low-income students have the knowledge and support necessary to navigate college and career pathways. CARA uses a Peer-to-Peer Model that trains peer leaders within high schools and colleges to help their peers with the college exploration, application, and enrollment processes. This model has proven effective, increasing postsecondary enrollment rates by 13.4 percentage points at partner high schools and improving college persistence rates by 11 percentage points at CUNY colleges. Supported by Carnegie, CARA plans to train over 450 peer leaders, impacting around 39,000 students across New York City, further embedding college guidance into school routines and making the model both sustainable and scalable.
Website
Project Title
For core support of the College Access: Research & Action model outside of New York City
Date
Jun. 06, 2024
Duration
24 months
Description
College Access: Research & Action (CARA) ensures that first-generation college students, low-income students, and students of color have the knowledge and support necessary to enroll in and persist through college. Founded in 2011, CARA delivers evidence-based programs, strengthens educational leadership through professional development, and trains youth to serve as peer counselors. It conducts research to improve its programs and foster school system change across the US. CARA’s research demonstrates the proven impact of its work. Over the four years ending in 2022, CARA’s college access programs saw postsecondary enrollment increase 9 percent–or 11 percent more than students in demographically similar schools. Simultaneously, postsecondary enrollment among high school students who received peer counseling increased 19 percent–or 5 percent more than students in similar schools. College retention rates among students served by CARA’s programming were 11 percent higher than similar students over these four years. Continued support from the Corporation will allow CARA to complete a range of policy research projects and disseminate them to colleagues in New York City and beyond.
Website
Project Title
For core support of the College Access: Research & Action (CARA) model outside of New York City
Date
Sep. 14, 2023
Duration
12 months
Description
College Access: Research & Action (CARA) ensures that first-generation college students, low-income students, and students of color have the knowledge and support necessary to enroll in and persist through college. Continued support from the Corporation will allow CARA to complete a range of policy research projects and disseminate them to colleagues in New York City and beyond. CARA hopes to create a systemic impact in the field through this work and equip stakeholders with the data needed to change policy, practice, and resource flows.
Website
Project Title
For core support of the Student Success Network
Date
Sep. 02, 2021
Duration
21 months
Description
College and career readiness requires more than academic knowledge—research indicates that students’ socio-emotional and metacognitive skills are key to their lifelong success. While the literature indicates a relationship between socio-emotional learning (SEL) and key academic and life outcomes, SEL is too often treated as an add-on rather than as a central component of academic and extra-curricular programming. The Student Success Network (SSN) is a network of eighty education and youth development organizations committed to empowering New York City’s low-income students with the learning experiences and SEL competencies they need to succeed in college and career. SSN plays a unique role in building the capacity of practitioners to deliver SEL and solve organizational and city-wide challenges. With continued support, SSN will build the network’s capacity to create stronger organizations and implement SEL, facilitate working groups to address city-wide obstacles to student success, conduct a participatory action research project to elevate youth priorities, and strengthen youth-adult partnerships within member organizations.
Website
Project Title
For core support of the Student Success Network
Date
Sep. 12, 2019
Duration
24 months
Description
College and career readiness requires more than academic knowledge—research indicates that students’ socio-emotional and metacognitive skills are key to their lifelong success. While the literature establishes the relationship between socio-emotional learning (SEL) and academic outcomes, there remains a lack of capacity to integrate SEL into academic and youth development programming. The Student Success Network (SSN) is a network of sixty-five education and youth development organizations committed to empowering over 200,000 of New York City’s low-income students with the SEL competencies they need to succeed in college and career. SSN plays a unique role in building member capacity through SEL data collection, improvement science training, and collaborative learning communities focused on problems of practice. Previous grants have allowed SSN to develop and administer a rigorous SEL survey, identify best practices, and equip members to assess student growth. With continued support, SSN will deepen efforts to identify promising SEL practices, integrate youth voice into programming, disseminate resources to the network and the field, and support data collection and analysis to promote continuous improvement.
Website
Project Title
For the School Colors podcast
Date
Jun. 13, 2019
Duration
12 months
Description
In communities striving to improve their public schools, story-telling is a powerful way to inspire the public to support a movement toward a high-quality and equitable education. Brooklyn, New York is one of many urban regions across the country with a rich cultural legacy that informs the community’s communications and narrative around public schools. The Brooklyn Movement Center, Brooklyn Deep, and NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools are working together to build an informative narrative around the social and economic factors that shape public schools. The three groups have collaborated to begin producing School Colors, a podcast series about the social and economic determinants that influence the quality of public schools as told through the story of one school district in Brooklyn. With support from the Corporation, the organizations will complete the production of School Colors, ensure a wide distribution of the podcast through mass media and community-based events, and inform the national narrative around culture, community, and public schools.
Website
Project Title
For core support of the Student Success Network
Date
Sep. 07, 2017
Duration
24 months
Description
College and career readiness requires more than academic knowledge—an extensive body of research indicates that students’ socio-emotional and metacognitive skills are key to their lifelong well-being. Yet, there remains a dearth of program models that marry socio-emotional learning (SEL) with academic instruction, particularly at the high school level. Launched in 2013, The Student Success Network (SSN) is a practitioner-led network of 50 youth development and education organizations committed to empowering New York City’s low-income middle- and high-school students with the SEL competencies they need to succeed in college and career. SSN plays a unique role in building its members’ capacity for self-improvement through data collection and analysis, improvement science training, and self-selected learning communities centered on specific problems of practice. With Corporation support, SSN will deepen continuous improvement cycles, innovate SEL measurement and analysis, and grow locally and engage nationally.
Website
Project Title
For Student Success Network's strategic plan development
Date
Jun. 01, 2017
Duration
5 months
Description
Students require not only rigorous academic experiences, but also socio-emotional learning (SEL) to be truly college- and career-ready. The Student Success Network (SSN) is a rapidly growing network of forty-nine organizations across New York City, all working to create student experiences for low-income youth that build students’ social-emotional intelligence. SSN empowers members with the skills to collect and use data to drive decision-making, and it creates multiple opportunities to share resources within and across its member organizations. The combination of SSN’s rapid growth and unique model have prompted it to undertake a strategic planning process with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in order to clarify SSN’s value proposition within the context of the larger landscape and to address specific issues related to its product offering, membership model and growth within and beyond New York City. With Corporation support and in partnership with BCG, SSN will develop a detailed implementation plan for the next five years.
Website
Project Title
For support of the Student Success Network
Date
Sep. 08, 2016
Duration
6 months
Description
In addition to rigorous academic experiences, students require socio-emotional learning (SEL) to successfully navigate college, career, and life. However, several challenges inhibit effective SEL instruction: no systems exist to measure efficacy and identify successful practices, and few structures exist that enable practitioners to regularly and safely share information about students and SEL practices, problems which are compounded by the lack of common definitions and metrics around SEL. The Student Success Network (SSN) is a growing network of forty youth development and education nonprofits in New York City that is addressing these challenges. SSN convenes its members in service of continuous improvement around SEL, partners with the Research Alliance for New York City Schools to create a data infrastructure and database that can inform both policy and practice, and builds members’ ability and capacity to use data to drive improvement. With general support from the Corporation, SSN will continue to grow its network, conduct research to improve SEL practice and measurement, and build member organizations’ capacity to better support students through effective SEL practices.
Website
Project Title
For advancing science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education through youth development
Date
Sep. 11, 2014
Duration
6 months
Website
Project Title
For support of the Center for Community and Ethnic Media's Voices of New York project
Date
Sep. 11, 2014
Duration
12 months
Website
Project Title
Toward a local media program that informs and empowers immigrant parents in their children's education
Date
Sep. 10, 2009
Duration
12 months
Website
Project Title
For coverage of women and the rule of law in Africa, and of women in Islam in the United States and across the world
Date
Jun. 12, 2008
Duration
12 months
Website
Project Title
For coverage of higher education and women in Africa
Date
Sep. 28, 2006
Duration
6 months
Website
Project Title
Toward development of a database that helps nonprofits conduct more sophisticated and timely analysis of their activities, outcomes, and results
Date
Mar. 03, 2005
Duration
12 months