Basta
Project Title
For project support to close the employment gap for first-generation college students
Date
Mar. 05, 2026
Duration
24 months
Description
Despite the common belief that a college degree ensures economic mobility, first-generation college students often face higher rates of underemployment due to inadequate career services and fragmented job placement support, with 73 percent remaining underemployed a decade later. Basta aims to address these issues by providing specialized programs, significantly improving the career outcomes of first-generation students, as evidenced by their higher job and internship placement rates compared to national benchmarks. Their services focus on essential skills such as resume building, interviewing skills, professional communication, and career mapping. They also help students navigate early career landscapes across various industries, including technology, business, and healthcare. With Carnegie’s support, Basta plans to scale their intensive career programming to reach over 13,000 students, while establishing new regional hubs and expanding their online programs to support even more students in achieving meaningful employment.
Website
Project Title
For general support
Date
Mar. 07, 2024
Duration
24 months
Description
Basta exists to close the employment gap for first-generation college students of color. Founded in 2016 with forty initial participants, they grew to serve 2,800 in 2022, reaching a collective network of 5,000 first-gen graduates. With Corporation support, Basta provides a direct-to-student 10-week career prep fellowship, a career readiness diagnostic assessment tool, and a partnership model to help other nonprofits support students to reach the same outcomes as Basta fellows. Basta fellows earn starting salaries of $61k, aggregating to over $23M in income for their employed fellows.
Website
Project Title
Date
Jun. 09, 2022
Duration
18 months
Description
Too many first-generation college students struggle to find their first jobs. Basta, founded in 2016, exists with the singular goal of helping first-generation college students of color overcome these barriers. Previous grant funding allowed Basta to address these challenges and thereby enhance their signature initiative, the Basta Fellowship, by launching two interconnected strategies – the Career Readiness Diagnostic assessment tool and Powered by Basta Partnerships (PBB). With continued support from the Corporation, Basta is now ready to proceed with the next phase of this work by building measures of social capital into the next iteration of the assessment tool, Career Readiness Diagnostic Version 2.0; explore potentially high-yielding university partnerships and become a go-to “insourcing” solution for career services departments; and lastly productize their Career Readiness Framework, which will allow Basta to generate discrete, marketable products they can offer proactively to the K12, college success, university, CBO, and career readiness sectors.
Website
Project Title
For support to incorporate a Career Readiness Diagnostic, which assesses a young person’s preparedness to find a first job, into the K12-to-college-to-career ecosystem
Date
Jun. 03, 2021
Duration
12 months
Description
Basta was founded in 2016 with the singular goal of helping first-generation college students of color get great first jobs. This work is critical, as decades of longitudinal research indicate that young people from marginalized backgrounds experience significant employment and wealth gaps, even when compared to privileged peers with comparable academic backgrounds. ‘Powered by Basta’is Basta’s scaling and impact vehicle, allowing Basta to share their expertise and results-orientation with other providers in the K12-to-college-to-career ecosystem. As part of the Focus NYC initiative, Corporation support will enable Basta to continue to work with high schools, institutions of higher education, and youth serving community based organizations to embed Basta’s results-oriented approach to career readiness into their program models, increasing the likelihood that first generation college students thrive and achieve early career success in New York City.
Website
Project Title
For general support
Date
Sep. 10, 2020
Duration
18 months
Description
Too many first-generation college students struggle to find their first jobs. In part the challenge is structural, as first-generation students lack access to the social capital that comes with having family members and extended communities with college degrees.Absent these networks, and the advantages that come with them, it’s hard to build the knowledge, confidence and connections that permit their privileged peers to successfully navigate the transition from college to career. Basta’s direct service programs are designed to provide the social capital and knowledge that other students get from their social networks, to make sure that the competitive playing field for bluechip first jobs is more level and equitable.Support from the Corporation will help Basta achieve scale by tackling two major challenges: building the capacity of other youth-facing organizations, and codifying the Basta direct-service model so that the organization is positioned to serve many more young people.
Website
Project Title
For support of two programs to scale services in support of first-generation career advisement
Date
Sep. 12, 2019
Duration
12 months
Description
Too many first-generation college students struggle to find their first jobs. In part the challenge is structural, as first-generation students lack access to the social capital that comes with having family members and extended communities with college degrees. Absent these networks, and the advantages that come with them, it is hard to build the knowledge, confidence, and connections that permit their privileged peers to successfully navigate the transition from college to career. Basta’s direct service programs are designed to provide the social capital and knowledge that other students get from their social networks, to make sure that the competitive playing field for blue chip first jobs is more level and equitable. Support from the Corporation will equip the existing ecosystem to more effectively infuse career readiness into their college support and advisement models and extend Basta’s direct service offering to reach more students.