Giving Back to Our Communities

Each fall brings with it a chance to give thanks and give back. On this #GivingTuesday, we hope you will join the GreenLight Fund in celebrating the work our portfolio organizations are doing each and every day to transform the lives of thousands of children, youth and families in Boston, Philadelphia and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Following a day for giving thanks and two days of getting deals, #GivingTuesday is a global day dedicated to giving back to your community. We hope you'll join GreenLight in this global day of generosity by considering a donation to one or more of our portfolio organizations. Each organization in our portfolio offers an innovative and effective solution to critical issues facing the most vulnerable people in our communities. Learn more about our organizations below, and check out our 2013 Portfolio Report.

Blueprint Schools Network  (Launched in 2013, Boston)

Blueprint Schools Network uses a research-based framework of comprehensive reform strategies to accelerate achievement in the nation’s highest need schools. Blueprint partners with school districts to plan, implement, and monitor school improvement efforts with the goal of dramatically improving the educational and life opportunities for all students.

College Advising Corps (Launched in 2014, Boston)

College Advising Corps is an innovative program that works to increase the number of low-income, first-generation college and underrepresented students who enter and complete higher education. By hiring and training recent graduates of partner colleges and universities as full-time college advisers and placing them in underserved high schools, the Advising Corps provides the support that high-need students need to navigate the web of college admissions, secure financial aid and enroll in colleges where they can succeed.

Family Independence Initiative (Launched in 2010, Boston)

Family Independence Initiative empowers low-income families to move out of poverty through access to connections, choice and capital. They invest resources based on the strengths and initiative families demonstrate towards improving their lives and other’s lives in their communities, and collect information to learn and share what works.

Friends of the Children (Launched in 2005, Boston)

Friends of the Children – Boston creates generational change by engaging children from high-risk communities in 12 years of transformative mentoring relationships.

Genesys Works (Launched in 2013, Bay Area)

Genesys Works changes the life trajectories of underprivileged high school students by enabling them to work in meaningful, yearlong paid internships at major corporations during their senior year in high school. After an 8-week intensive training program on hard and soft skills, students work at one of Genesys Works’ client companies where they discover that they can indeed succeed as professionals in the corporate world.

Peer Health Exchange (Launched in 2007, Boston)

Peer Health Exchange gives teenagers the knowledge and skills they need to make healthy decisions by training college students to teach a comprehensive health curriculum in public high schools that lack health education.

New Teacher Center (Launched in 2012, Boston)

New Teacher Center is dedicated to improving student learning by accelerating the effectiveness of new teachers and school leaders. NTC works with schools districts, state policymakers, and educators across the country to develop and implement induction programs aligned with district learning goals. NTC induction programs include one-on-one mentoring and professional development, all taking place within school environments that support new teachers.

Raising A Reader (Launched in 2008, Boston)

Raising A Reader-MA is an evidence-based early literacy program that helps families of young children (newborn through age five) develop, practice and maintain habits of reading together at home.

Single Stop USA (Launched in 2012, Boston; Launched in 2013, Philadelphia)

Single Stop helps low-income individuals persist through college and achieve financial self-sufficiency and economic mobility by providing access to benefits and services such as tax credits, health insurance, SNAP/food stamps, financial counseling and legal counseling.

uAspire (Launched in 2013, Bay Area)

uAspire’s mission is to ensure that all young people have the financial information and resources necessary to find an affordable path to – and through – a postsecondary education. To accomplish this mission, uAspire partners with schools and community organizations to provide free financial aid advice and advocacy to young people and families to help them overcome the financial barriers to higher education.

Year Up (Launched in 2013, Philadelphia)

Year Up provides urban young adults with skills, experience, and support that will empower them to reach their potential through professional careers and higher education. They achieve this mission through a high support, high expectation model that combines marketable job skills, stipends, internships and college credit accumulation. Their holistic approach focuses on students’ professional and personal development to place young adults on a viable path to economic self-sufficiency.

Youth Villages Transitional Living Program (Launched in 2009, Boston)

Youth Villages Transitional Living Program provides support to young people who are aging out of foster care or other children’s services, to help them begin life as independent adults, find safe housing, continue education or training, achieve stable employment and build healthy support systems for the future.

Be sure to spread the word about #GivingTuesday and celebrate a new tradition of generosity!