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Together, we’re making a difference.
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[post_content] => Jack McCarthy, Carol Thompson Cole and Michelle Gilliard tell the investment story.
Jack McCarthy – President and CEO, AppleTree: When we developed AppleTree, we wanted to create an early learning program that would address the change we wanted to see in students’ lives. Our theory of action was to build AppleTree from the classroom up and provide our teachers with what they needed to educate children well. We knew that this approach was the way we could expand quality early childhood education in D.C. and ensure that children learn the necessary skills that they need before entering kindergarten.
Carol Thompson Cole – President and CEO, VPP: We’re always looking for organizations that have measurable results and that make significant strides toward improving the life of children. AppleTree was on our radar screen for a while because we saw that the organization had a strong mission, visionary leadership and a long track record of achievement. We realized that we could add value by supporting AppleTree’s aspirations to continue to grow with quality.
Michelle Gilliard – Partner, VPP: What specifically stood out to us about AppleTree was the rigorous research and the evidence shown of the effectiveness of its Every Child Ready instructional model. We had an amazing opportunity to support the refinement of AppleTree’s instructional model and help them with their desire to expand and grow the number of high-quality early childhood education seats they could offer students in the community. We began our investment with the business planning phase, and that helped us identify which areas of the organization and the instructional model could improve.
Jack: It was challenging at the beginning of the partnership. The idea of a major multi-year investment was really attractive, but our perception of how to address our needs was different than VPP’s. We wanted to address everything at once and didn’t fully appreciate VPP’s approach at the time, but it really was a very beneficial process. Although the process was tough, we respected each other every step of the way because we could see that each had something the other valued and thought there could be some synergy.
Carol: At VPP, we take a high-engagement approach to our investments, which is not a typical funder approach. One of the things that we learned from our earlier investments was the importance of taking the time to build trust. We became a trusted advisor for AppleTree by contributing our expertise of expanding in the region, capacity building and early childhood education. Also, our board members and investors wanted to be highly involved in discussion around what decisions were being made about refining the Every Child Ready instructional model, which was unique for this investment. They saw the potential in the model and wanted to make sure we made the refinement of the model a priority.
Michelle: It was around the mid-investment period for AppleTree when I came on board as the Partner at VPP. Building trust was an important for me to be able to be an effective partner for Jack and for our investment in AppleTree.
Our goal was to help AppleTree develop a more robust online platform for Every Child Ready. We understood that if we could integrate the Every Child Ready model onto a more stable and sustainable online platform, then we could help AppleTree achieve their goals to support teachers in the best possible way and to continue to scale.
Jack: One of my biggest takeaways from blending VPP to our team as a partner was that you need to trust and make yourself vulnerable and open to the possibility that you don’t know everything. It is necessary to form relationships with people when you may not completely understand the value at the time. Really good things can result, and we are a witness to that. Over time, we developed a good, trusting relationship which became both functional and effective.
I was also quite impressed with how VPP got us to change the way we were thinking about our instructional model. We quickly realized that the way we could create a seamless process for teachers to be able to download individual lessons and professional development videos based on student achievement. VPP and Tarek, the consultant that VPP brought on board, really helped us think through the ways in which a new online content management system for Every Child Ready could make the model more user-friendly and could help students learn based on their mastery of the skills.
Michelle: Another one of our goals for this investment was to help AppleTree double the amount of students it served, which has been done with quality. The AppleTree@ model, where AppleTree preschools are integrated into existing elementary schools, has been seminal in AppleTree’s growth. AppleTree@, which emerged through the business planning phase of our investment, has helped AppleTree almost double the students served. The AppleTree@ partnerships are still growing are reaching more children in D.C., which has been and will continue to be extremely impactful.
Jack: The AppleTree@ model also solved a key sustainability challenge for us. Parents want our preschool locations to be close in proximity to where they live, work and have other children in school. The business planning process gave us the structure and the pathway to do it.
Sustainability is a major theme of this investment, and the work that was done through our partnership will positively impact our organization years down the line. We valued VPP’s partnership because they were able to help us clarify our goals and better understand how to reach them, which will help us to sustain AppleTree in the long-run.
Carol: What we do at VPP is still considered a new way of philanthropy. A lot of times during investments, we have to be sensitive to our partners to make sure they understand what we do and why we do it. Each time we go through the investment process, there is always a breakthrough moment where our partners understand that we are there with them through the challenges and the successes. When our partners understand that we have the same goal in mind to make young people’s lives better, then they understand why we push back, ask questions, advise and challenge. That’s our value.
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[post_title] => Boys & Girls Club of Greater Washington
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[post_content] => Finding mental health services to cope with the pain of loss, the trouble with adjusting to a new place, or dealing with a family crisis is hard enough for native English speakers. For new Americans who don’t speak English well or not at all and have survived mental and physical torture in their home countries, getting the right help was extremely difficult—until the creation of the Center for Multicultural Human Services. Since the completion of the VPP investment, the Center for Multicultural Human Services has merged with Northern Virginia Family Services and now operates as a division of its services.
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CentroNía’s increased effectiveness resulted in more than tripling the number of children served over three years, rising from 322 to 1,133. CentroNía has expanded its services using an integrated approach in the new bilingual public charter school, a new site in Maryland, the tutoring program in ten schools, and an additional site serving 72 three- and four-year-old children.
Myrna Peralta, Beatriz “BB” Otero, and Carol Thompson Cole of VPP tell the story from the beginning.
Myrna Peralta – President and CEO, CentroNía: The vision for CentroNía came out of this community, and if you knew this community when we started, it certainly is nothing like what it is today. There was a huge, huge need for quality childcare for working families; BB responded to it. In doing so, she really connected with the community in a way that no one before her had done.
That vision of a community built on strong families and quality education has never changed, but the community here has. Fast-forward to the present and those communities have dispersed. Because of it, we’ve had to think about how we balance our role as an anchor in this community and our mission to serve these families throughout the Region.
BB Otero – Founder, CentroNía: VPP came to us at a time when there was potential to grow, and I thought we needed to scale.
Carol Thompson Cole– President and CEO, VPP: We learned about CentroNía through a youth development pilot program. People in that community all knew about the great work BB was doing and that got us interested.
BB: What VPP brought was an opportunity to infuse resources into the organization that weren’t geared towards programs. They were about building the organization as a whole, which is really rare.
Carol: Initially we focused on CentroNía’s financial management and reporting, as well as diversifying their fundraising. I brought VPP team members along with me to staff meetings, and I joined their board as the VPP representative. I really felt like I became a part of the organization through that process.
BB: Having VPP help us analyze our finances, analyze data around outcomes for kids, and think about those aspects of the organization that needed reinforcement in order for us to grow was huge.
Carol: I think one of the strongest things that happened was when we brought in a group to do some cost effectiveness and efficiency analysis, which really helped us improve and streamline the administrative process throughout the organization. I think that’s a real example of an infrastructure and capacity building investment.
BB: Whether you’re growing a family or scaling an organization, you’ve got to strengthen the infrastructure. We certainly had some disagreements on how to do that, but ultimately we were able to build the strength and talent of our team—whether it was in the finance office, HR, or leadership across programs—to allow the organization to grow.
Myrna: Expansion would not have been possible had it not been for the belief that we could do it, and that belief came from the work we did with VPP. It showed all the leadership at CentroNía that with the proper strategy, all things are possible. The staff’s willingness to own that was really important and it was a direct outcome of VPP’s investment.
Carol: We had very honest conversations, and I had honest conversations with her team. We were able to have a very good push and pull. Over time, their board started to understand their fiduciary responsibilities, and the board development work we did brought in a number of new members that had a diversification of areas of expertise that the organization needed.
BB: I go back to the issue of trust and relationships, because when Carol came to our board as the VPP representative, she brought a gravitas and was of a caliber of board member that we very much needed. VPP realized that if we were to succeed, I needed somebody who I respected and could challenge me.
Carol: BB was always very focused on building capacity and getting results, as well as staying true to the community and the families and children that they were serving. Her leadership, tenacity, and vision for building capacity really stood out to us, and during the course of our investment, I saw her grow as the organization grew.
BB: When Carol talks about watching me grow, it was really the result of having the opportunity to face challenges and develop my capacity as a leader. I had to grow and I also had to develop a strong board along with me. These are the things that weren’t specifically written as an impact of the investment, but it really is what leadership development means in terms of strategic investment in an organization.
Carol: Something that VPP learned during this investment is that it isn’t enough for us to be smart people with money. We had to demonstrate that we brought value. We had to become a trusted advisor.
BB: If VPP is interested in investing in your organization, be sure that you are not entering the partnership because you’re chasing dollars, but rather because you have clarity about where you’re headed, and how an investment—a long-term investment—would get you there.
Carol: I think one of the things that I started to understand as we got to the end of the first portfolio is that a successful investment is really evident three to five years beyond the investment. The fact that CentroNía’s management team is still solid, and the organization continues to grow, is a hallmark of success.
BB: At the end of the investment, not only did we meet our outcomes, but five years, seven years down the road, we can look back and see that the VPP investment helped build the infrastructure, and provided the nimbleness and the ability to adapt and to change and grow—allowing us to continue to play a leadership role in our field.
Myrna: That is very true. I go back to 2011. That year was brutal. The housing market was in chaos, jobs were being lost, cars being repossessed; our own capacity to fundraise was damaged. So how do you try to stabilize as much as you can while continuing to support the child—a child whose world remains basically the same? The recession challenged us, our commitment to our relatively new structure and our commitment to expansion.
It looked messy for a while, but the strategic plan and organizational capacity that came out of the VPP work served as a strong foundation during that time. We survived the recession despite some real financial challenges because we had systems in place that were flexible enough and yet gave us a real framework to make it through.
You can measure the impact of VPP’s investment by the number of additional children and families that we’re serving, of course. But just as important, VPP’s work gave us the stability to ride out the tough times. I don’t know how you put a price on that.
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[post_content] => CHALLENGE
In the District of Columbia, there has been a shortage of teachers, which is reflective of the national “teacher pipeline” crisis of quality teachers stemming from both fewer new entrants to the field and the alarming decline of current teacher retention. Teacher shortages have resulted in vacancies of highly qualified teaching positions for classrooms of all sizes.
GOALS
VPP’s investment in Ed Forward as a co-investor in Relay will help the graduate school achieve its aspirations to:
Build and scale the D.C. site to increase the number of high-quality teachers in the city in both the District of Columbia Public Schools and D.C. public charter schools.
Launch its first D.C. cohort in the summer of 2017, scaling to enroll at least 230 new and experienced teachers annually, within five years.
Based on these projections, by year five, Relay’s D.C. campus will produce 110 new teachers each year.
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[post_content] => Pat Brantley is the school’s current CEO, and she sat down with Carol Thompson Cole to tell their story.
Pat Brantley – CEO, Friendship Public Charter School: Friendship Public Charter School was founded with the idea that our children in the neighborhoods of Washington, DC needed better options and opportunities, and that we could make a difference not just in their school years but also beyond—that we could help to transform their lives.
Carol Thompson Cole – President and CEO, VPP: The early leadership of Donald Hense was crucial. Donald had been a part of the pilot for VPP and we got to know him early on. There’s a story that one day when VPP’s founder, Mario Morino, was talking to him, Donald stood on a street corner and sketched out his vision for Friendship Public Charter School on a napkin.
Pat: We really looked at the investment as a way for us to strengthen our academic program and to think about how Friendship could take the best parts of its model and magnify them, not only in the schools that we already had, but also to grow. We were about six years old and knew that the only way we were going to grow was if we built our back-office capacity.
Carol: One of the most important pieces of the investment was a very complex strategic planning process. McKinsey & Company was the partner that came in to help and they had a very strong education practice. We knew how important it was going to be to make sure that Friendship had a solid long-term plan and the right people on board. It was clear Friendship had big aspirations.
Pat: VPP put a lot of thought into Friendship as an investment. There were a lot of times I remember Carol asking, “Is this really what you want” and “Are you willing to make the changes necessary in order to move the organization forward?” So we really had to think about those types of big questions.
The investment from VPP allowed us to bring on our first professional chief academic officer and a director of professional development. It allowed us to bring in someone who’s doing strategy. It allowed us to bring in our first professional CFO. I mean, it wasn’t just about the academics, but it was really about retooling the organization to support and improve the outcomes.
Carol: That’s VPP’s focus: helping the organization to build what we call the C-suite positions to get those senior people in place. If you get the right senior people, they will shape the right strategies, and our view is the rest of the growth and development will happen. That has definitely been the case with Friendship.
Pat: We were able to be much more efficient, to grow our enrollment, to grow our outcomes just a few years after the end of the formal VPP investment. When the Charter Board did its ranking of schools, there were 10 elementary and middle schools. Of the top 10 schools, three of them were Friendship schools. I feel like the VPP investment has made a truly sustained difference. Because they invested at the highest levels, that has allowed us to maintain a high-quality organization across all our campuses.
Carol: I remember asking Donald one day what he thought the biggest challenge was. He said, “The kids don’t want to go home.” If the kids don’t want to leave school that means you’re doing something right. Donald said that every child could learn from the traditional American education. It didn’t matter if they had special needs. Donald knew they could excel and perform to high standards. And I said, “If we can prove that, it’s the biggest investment we can make.” I think we proved it.
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[post_content] => Heads Up made progress to better serve its students and tutors, even as it navigated a leadership transition with the resignation of its founding executive director. It also overcame a revenue shortfall when it did not receive funds from a public agency for which it did considerable work to become eligible. Since the completion of the VPP investment, Heads Up merged with the Center for Youth and Family Investment, which is no longer operational.
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[post_content] => Karene Brodie, Carol Thompson Cole and Michelle Gilliard tell the investment story.
Karene Brodie – Executive Director, Hillside Work-Scholarship Connection: Hillside Work-Scholarship Connection’s limited capacity in the region before VPP’s investment really challenged us to run the organization with a very skeletal staff and operation. It’s tough to plan, establish structure and think long-term and big-picture, while also having to attend college tours to ensure quality, best-practice modeling and delivery of our services with fidelity.
Carol Thompson Cole – President and CEO, VPP: Prior to our investment, HW-SC had a culture of metrics, which was important, but they were also building a strong relationship with Prince George’s County. This was the final investment in our second fund, so we wanted to strategically choose a capacity-building investment that would contribute to our future work in Prince George’s County.
We also realized the value that we could offer to HW-SC – the expertise of navigating the region – that was our secret sauce for this investment. We knew we could help make connections beyond those that they already had. We saw an organization that was high-performing, that we could add value to and help them grow more in the community.
Karene: Working with VPP presented so many great opportunities to leverage existing public and private resources and expand funding opportunities. We wanted a long-term relationship with investors. We wanted to know that, beyond Wegmans, others valued and believed in the work that we were doing over time with young people and could really grow with us over multiple years toward the outcomes and the stability we were seeking.
The most tremendous resource that came as a result of this investment is the infrastructure that we managed to build; including, a strong and locally-based human resources capacity in order to attract and develop strong talent, and a more standardized performance measurement structure for data capture, analysis and recording. In addition to those resources, we received support for growing our model to scale. At the direct services level, the ability to have more Youth Advocates in place and infuse training and technical support without compromising service delivery was key to our fidelity, expansion and innovation.
Michelle Gilliard, Partner, Venture Philanthropy Partners: The major goal that we established together was to strengthen the capacity of the organization to expand the number of youth being served. As Karene mentioned, it had a lot to do with building out the infrastructure with key positions, which included positions such as a chief operating officer and an HR professional.
Carol: It became clear that increasing the capacity of the Youth Advocates was also important and Hillside-Work Scholarship Connection was able to make that case to our board. The other important piece was that as we were building the investment from the business plan, even though we scaled back from HW-SC’s initial high, fast-growing aspirations, people were still concerned whether the growth goals were too aggressive. Another factor was that HW-SC was the first investment of this kind to serve Prince George’s County. There was a real fear that it would be difficult to reach the goal to serve more youth at high quality with HW-SC’s existing capacity.
We spent a little more time in dialogue and actually called an additional meeting to really test that. In the end, it worked out well.
Michelle: Yes, it did. And one of the reasons why is because of the positions we helped put in place. We had to be thoughtful about which positions were most important for an organization that had a headquarters in upstate New York. The organization couldn’t really grow in this new location without having the right capacity of local staff to talk to local employers and the school system. It had to be localized and adapted to the culture of HW-SC in Prince George’s County.
The plan was to grow to serve 870 students over the course of this investment. We helped to manage the milestones, but it was also important for VPP to help HW-SC’s headquarters understand how the local HW-SC affiliate had to adapt to the needs of Prince George’s County. Given our experience with replications and our expansive knowledge of the region, we were able to step in and advocate for the local organization’s operational capacity needed to serve triple the number of students.
Carol: We were able to provide context to HW-SC’s headquarters about the difference in the economies in Maryland and New York. You’ve got to adapt to the realities of the place that you’re in.
Karene: That’s right. It is also important to mention the benefit to HW-SC in Prince George’s County of having the support of the New York affiliates. It was imperative for us to align ourselves with our NY-based colleagues and systems; as well as, regional collaborative efforts and other strong organizations that could support young people, both within and beyond what Hillside Work-Scholarship Connection could offer.
A few of our greatest alignments to date are the partnership we have with the Prince George’s County Department of Social Services, our collaboration with the Transforming Neighborhoods Initiative and the Ready for Work initiative’s youthCONNECT at Suitland collaboration with VPP. These are the ways that HW-SC philosophically likes to operate – connecting to partners and collaborative opportunities that help us do our work, maximizing strengths and avoiding unnecessary duplication in service. It is imperative in this region to do that as early as possible, as often as possible and in the best interest of the students we serve.
Michelle: Another important piece is how the national and local offices work well together. It has been exciting to see that HW-SC’s Business Process Coordinator, who was hired through our investment, is providing training to folks in New York. There is some great learning that has happened here where you can have local capacity on site and you can figure out what the relationship needs to be because there is a tremendous amount of important back office support that’s provided in HW-SC’s headquarters. It’s a back and forth dynamic where both can gain insight from and support each other.
Karene: I agree. Instead of a top-down application to replicating, we’ve now learned that there’s a knowledge share that goes both ways. We’ve been able to leverage the Business Process function; as well as, our human resources generalist, for example. It really has been a rich experience for us to expand how we think about growth. Because we were the first replication outside of New York, we had a lot of strengths drawn from HW-SC’s proven and well-established footprint in New York, and we also had a lot to learn. As an organization overall, we love to learn, grow and to apply continuous learning to our model.
We all come into this kind of work with the desire to support, the desire to change and the desire to impact. As a result of VPP’s investment, we really celebrate our exponential growth with quality- we increased our service capacity for students by 300 percent in three years. The fact that we’ve maintained our outcomes throughout this growth period has been phenomenal. Our local data can now formally demonstrate a seven-year trend on our impact here and the outcomes that we have been able to maintain. We’ve been able to maintain retention rates of students in the program in the high 90s. We also have promotion rates at around 96 percent and a four-year, on-time graduation rate of 98 percent.
Michelle: It is exciting to see HW-SC’s growth and achievements over time. It is impressive that HW-SC, with a high-touch model and being school-based, has been able to bring in many additional schools and serve a larger number of students in a short period of time. The organization is even stronger than it was when we started our investment. We helped it to grow and put it on a good trajectory to maintain and deepen the work in the County. Hillside Work-Scholarship Connection is exhibit A of a high-performing organization. Karene is an excellent leader who is passionate and has worked diligently to connect with the right people and places to move the organization forward.
Karene: Thank you Michelle. A final piece about this investment that I want to highlight and that I really appreciate is the value of leadership. I’ve learned and grown a lot throughout this journey. I tell my team sometimes that “My role is as a servant leader, but yours is especially cool because you all get to work so closely with the young people.” I appreciate VPP’s emphasis on the importance of leadership as much as the model and the work itself. It really does inspire you to do more and know the efforts lead to impact and appreciation.
We appreciate that you have invested in both my own and our team’s collective professional development.
Carol: One of the things that people say is that we select well and we did just that with Karene and Hillside Work-Scholarship Connection. If Karene had not been there, we probably wouldn’t either. To see that she shifted and pushed and pulled to achieve big aspirations has been amazing to watch and be a part of. She understands how to move a vision forward without giving up. I believe that’s a big part of the reason VPP’s investment in HW-SC has been so successful.
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[post_content] => Susan Schaeffler sat down with Carol Thompson Cole to tell the story.
Susan Schaeffler – Founder and CEO, KIPP DC: I started teaching in 1992 and spent nine years working in the traditional school system. A lot of amazing people worked there, but, over time, I felt like the strongest teachers left. So after nine years of trying to solve the problem from within, I tried stepping out of the traditional system and creating a new one. We really wanted to create a school that attracted top talent and teachers that had a “whatever-it-takes” attitude, so that our kids had an opportunity to go to and make it through college.
Carol Thompson Cole, President and CEO, VPP: We had experience working with charter schools to build and strengthen management and organizational capacity. As we looked around for investments in education, KIPP was one of the highest-performing school systems in the District of Columbia. We saw the passion that Susan and others had and their unwavering commitment to help more young people. We felt this would be a strategic investment: to take something good and help make it even better.
Susan: Getting that seal of approval that comes with VPP investment was huge. We were instantly recognized as a more legitimate organization. What is so impressive about VPP are the large, game-changing contributions that they can make. Whether it’s financial, technical, or in human resources, the support they provide is really transformational.
Carol: KIPP was an organization with a real growth plan, and when you have that intention, engaging with the community and with parents is huge. So we focused on building an engaged board of directors that could help with that. And then, of course, there was the creation of a strategic business plan. They took it very seriously and the plan laid the foundation for the results that they’ve gotten.
Susan: VPP played a huge role in helping us grow to scale. When we first crossed paths with VPP, we had four schools and had penciled out a vision to grow to 10. We had to figure out the right growth pattern, the right timing, the where, and the how. Now we have 16 schools—we actually exceeded our vision. We often say that our strong foundation was based in the expertise of that business plan.
Carol: There are two important pieces of the investment that stand out to me. One was helping KIPP build their development team—they’ve been able to recruit some very talented people since then. Second was helping to build a pipeline of talented teachers.
Susan: I think hands down that was one of the biggest impacts. Early on, we were able to identify that one of our biggest obstacles to growth was going to be human resources, and that we were looking at a teacher shortage. We were given the space and time and support to create a teacher training program in which we could train 80 to 90 teachers a year to help fill our own teaching vacancies, as well as strengthen the teaching pool in the District of Colombia as a whole.
Carol: We have truly built a trusted relationship between KIPP and VPP. From time to time we get calls from Susan and others, even though the investment has ended, asking us to help them think about things that they’re working on and make connections. We’re happy to continue doing that.
Susan: We feel very fortunate to have had not only VPP’s expertise, but also their guidance and friendship over the years. I think when you look at non-profits and you look at founders in particular, they can get really caught up in the heavy lifting and the daily grind. Sometimes it helps to have somebody slow you down and engage you in thoughtful conversation, and that’s what VPP did.
Carol: To see the impact that KIPP DC is having in and even beyond the Greater Washington community, to see them being leaders in the national education space makes me feel very proud.
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[post_content] => Jack McCarthy, Carol Thompson Cole and Michelle Gilliard tell the investment story.
Jack McCarthy – President and CEO, AppleTree: When we developed AppleTree, we wanted to create an early learning program that would address the change we wanted to see in students’ lives. Our theory of action was to build AppleTree from the classroom up and provide our teachers with what they needed to educate children well. We knew that this approach was the way we could expand quality early childhood education in D.C. and ensure that children learn the necessary skills that they need before entering kindergarten.
Carol Thompson Cole – President and CEO, VPP: We’re always looking for organizations that have measurable results and that make significant strides toward improving the life of children. AppleTree was on our radar screen for a while because we saw that the organization had a strong mission, visionary leadership and a long track record of achievement. We realized that we could add value by supporting AppleTree’s aspirations to continue to grow with quality.
Michelle Gilliard – Partner, VPP: What specifically stood out to us about AppleTree was the rigorous research and the evidence shown of the effectiveness of its Every Child Ready instructional model. We had an amazing opportunity to support the refinement of AppleTree’s instructional model and help them with their desire to expand and grow the number of high-quality early childhood education seats they could offer students in the community. We began our investment with the business planning phase, and that helped us identify which areas of the organization and the instructional model could improve.
Jack: It was challenging at the beginning of the partnership. The idea of a major multi-year investment was really attractive, but our perception of how to address our needs was different than VPP’s. We wanted to address everything at once and didn’t fully appreciate VPP’s approach at the time, but it really was a very beneficial process. Although the process was tough, we respected each other every step of the way because we could see that each had something the other valued and thought there could be some synergy.
Carol: At VPP, we take a high-engagement approach to our investments, which is not a typical funder approach. One of the things that we learned from our earlier investments was the importance of taking the time to build trust. We became a trusted advisor for AppleTree by contributing our expertise of expanding in the region, capacity building and early childhood education. Also, our board members and investors wanted to be highly involved in discussion around what decisions were being made about refining the Every Child Ready instructional model, which was unique for this investment. They saw the potential in the model and wanted to make sure we made the refinement of the model a priority.
Michelle: It was around the mid-investment period for AppleTree when I came on board as the Partner at VPP. Building trust was an important for me to be able to be an effective partner for Jack and for our investment in AppleTree.
Our goal was to help AppleTree develop a more robust online platform for Every Child Ready. We understood that if we could integrate the Every Child Ready model onto a more stable and sustainable online platform, then we could help AppleTree achieve their goals to support teachers in the best possible way and to continue to scale.
Jack: One of my biggest takeaways from blending VPP to our team as a partner was that you need to trust and make yourself vulnerable and open to the possibility that you don’t know everything. It is necessary to form relationships with people when you may not completely understand the value at the time. Really good things can result, and we are a witness to that. Over time, we developed a good, trusting relationship which became both functional and effective.
I was also quite impressed with how VPP got us to change the way we were thinking about our instructional model. We quickly realized that the way we could create a seamless process for teachers to be able to download individual lessons and professional development videos based on student achievement. VPP and Tarek, the consultant that VPP brought on board, really helped us think through the ways in which a new online content management system for Every Child Ready could make the model more user-friendly and could help students learn based on their mastery of the skills.
Michelle: Another one of our goals for this investment was to help AppleTree double the amount of students it served, which has been done with quality. The AppleTree@ model, where AppleTree preschools are integrated into existing elementary schools, has been seminal in AppleTree’s growth. AppleTree@, which emerged through the business planning phase of our investment, has helped AppleTree almost double the students served. The AppleTree@ partnerships are still growing are reaching more children in D.C., which has been and will continue to be extremely impactful.
Jack: The AppleTree@ model also solved a key sustainability challenge for us. Parents want our preschool locations to be close in proximity to where they live, work and have other children in school. The business planning process gave us the structure and the pathway to do it.
Sustainability is a major theme of this investment, and the work that was done through our partnership will positively impact our organization years down the line. We valued VPP’s partnership because they were able to help us clarify our goals and better understand how to reach them, which will help us to sustain AppleTree in the long-run.
Carol: What we do at VPP is still considered a new way of philanthropy. A lot of times during investments, we have to be sensitive to our partners to make sure they understand what we do and why we do it. Each time we go through the investment process, there is always a breakthrough moment where our partners understand that we are there with them through the challenges and the successes. When our partners understand that we have the same goal in mind to make young people’s lives better, then they understand why we push back, ask questions, advise and challenge. That’s our value.
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*RECURSION*
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