After 15 Years in the Nonprofit World, Here’s Something that Works
By Chrystal Morris Murphy
I’ve been working in the nonprofit arena for 15 years. In that time, I’ve seen community engagement take on a lot of different forms — town hall forums, conferences, meetings, professional development workshops, advocacy campaigns, lobbying and coalition building.
In my eight year tenure at America’s Promise Alliance, I can honestly say that the most transformative, effective and action-oriented venture we have led is the GradNation Community Summit initiative.
America’s Promise Alliance officially launched the GradNation campaign in 2010, but its history reaches back to the Dropout Prevention Summits we started in 2008. To raise awareness about the dropout crisis, we convened summits in 55 cities with low graduation rates and in every state capital across the country.
At that time, not enough people at the community level understood there was a real problem with the nation’s graduation rate. Nor did many communities have a firm idea about which cities, towns, schools and ethnic groups had the most challenges for graduating on time and why.
Before 2009, the U.S. Department of Education had no unified standard for collecting graduation data. Awareness regarding dropout prevention was a mess.
After the Dropout Prevention Summits, folks became cognizant of this “Silent Epidemic.” They saw that there was a need to go deeper — a need to help communities figure out how to keep youth in school. Today, GradNation is a large and growing movement of dedicated individuals, organizations and communities working together to raise graduation rates and prepare all students for success.
50 GradNation Summits: My Favorites
America’s Promise Alliance recently hit a significant milestone in this initiative. On June 12, the Philadelphia Youth Network hosted the 50th of 100 GradNation Community Summits to be held through 2016.
When I look back at the first 50 summits, it’s not hard to spot my favorites: the ones that have a strong youth representation. Since young people don’t have years of public speaking experience and a “body of work” to protect, they bring a refreshing energy and honesty to the conversation about the supports they need.
“We found out today that people actually want to hear what we say,” one young woman said at the Youth and Adult Voices in Action in Knoxville, TN and Grad Day 4 Tampa Bay became the first student-organized and youth-led GradNation Community Summit, with young people talking about their challenges and coming up with solutions.
In the past few months, I’ve seen so many people and organizations rally to help more young people succeed.
In Phoenix, Starbucks joined the U.S. Department of Education to figure how to reengage young people in the area who were out of school or out of work.
In Denver, businesses brainstormed ways to narrow the statewide skills gap in the manufacturing sector.
In Salt Lake City, Michael Smith, leader of My Brother’s Keeper focused on solutions for bridging the educational divides between rich and poor.
And in Flint, Michigan, a government representative showed up with a mobile office that printed state ID’s — a major barrier to young people getting jobs.
Real People, Real Commitments
These summits aren’t just echo chambers or a chance for nonprofit leaders to pat themselves on the back for doing a good job. They’ve led to real action and real commitments from local leaders.
In Rochester, for example, the mayor announced two initiatives supporting efforts to increase the number of students who apply for federal financial aid to attend college.
Philanthropists in Las Vegas created food pantries and donated $200,000 to schools for technology and cognitive skills.
Leaders in Albuquerque launched an attendance awareness campaign with billboards, bus stop signs and videos.
And summit leaders in Pennsylvania developed a mentor-training program with faculty at Penn State Erie, and they’re now recruiting potential mentors from churches and service groups.
And then there are the people. When I travel to these summits, I meet some of the most deeply committed people doing this work. What makes me smile the most is seeing the tireless dedication conveners have for improving the lives of youth and their willingness to bring new voices about education reform to the table.
Our Progress is Real, But Not Enough
There was no better way to celebrate the halfway point of this 100-summit campaign than Philadelphia, the “City of Brotherly Love” where America’s Promise Alliance got its start 18 years ago. We were just two blocks away from Independence Hall, where General Colin Powell and five living U.S. Presidents made a commitment to put young people in this country at the top of the national agenda.
Looking back at the last 50 summits, I can sincerely say that it has been a privilege to lead this initiative and that these events remind us of our humanity.
They remind us that we are all connected, regardless of race and class. They remind us that if any one community is struggling to help its students meet minimum academic requirements, the entire nation will struggle. They remind us that if we don’t have enough skilled workers to fill jobs, our economic health — from businesses to families — will suffer.
Graduation rates have come a long way since we started this campaign. This year, the U.S. Department of Education announced that we have reached the highest on-time high school graduation rate in history, at 81.4 percent.
That’s the kind of progress we’ve all fought so hard for. But we have to keep fighting. Students of color, students with disabilities and students from low-income families still lag behind far behind their peers. For all that we’ve accomplished, we cannot be satisfied until we help all young people obtain a quality education.
We still have five years left to reach a 90 percent national on-time graduation rate, the goal of our GradNation campaign. And we have about 50 GradNation summits to go in the next 18 months. What we do with them, that’s up to all of us.
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To learn more about the GradNation summits, visit us online. To find out how to host a GradNation summit in your community, email us at info@americaspromise.org. Follow Chrystal on Twitter @cmorrismurphy.
