FOUNDATIONS INC
Mission Statement
Foundations, Inc. is a national nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization committed to improving the quality of education for our nation's children by strengthening the skills of educators. At Foundations, we pursue the mission that all children, specifically in low-income communities, will have high-quality educational experiences to succeed in school and life.
About This Cause
Foundations has provided services to organizations and school districts on the national, state, and local levels as a critical part of our mission. Working side-by-side with these stakeholders, we build capacity and guide systemic transformations to improve the quality of education for our nation's most vulnerable children. Over the years, Foundations has grown, building expertise in teaching and learning. We also lead new thinking about education innovation, program design, and evaluation. We provide our partners with tools to transform professional learning, increase educator capacity, and improve student achievement. Through our face-to-face, virtual, and hybrid learning experiences, we help ensure professional learning is standards-driven, job-embedded, and focused on improved instruction and better results for all students. Our expertise includes program design and development (designed successful learning acceleration programs to support schools and districts with learning recovery), professional learning (supporting tens of thousands of educators across the county each year), and leadership coaching and mentoring (assisting school leaders with navigating work challenges while increasing their effectiveness as school leaders, problem solvers, communicators, and decision-makers). Foundations focuses on literacy; one of our key initiatives is the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading. The Campaign is a collaborative effort by foundations, nonprofit partners, business leaders, government agencies, states, and communities across the nation to ensure that more children in low-income families succeed in school and graduate prepared for college, a career, and active citizenship. The Campaign focuses on a significant predictor of school success and high school graduation—grade-level reading by the end of third grade. We work closely with administrators from charter, district-run, independent and non-traditional schools to improve their practice and improve school and student success. In addition, we maintain close relationships and partnerships with nonprofit organizations such as the United Way, the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, the YMCA, the After-School All-Stars, and many other national organizations. Foundations effectively manages projects with our many long-term partners, such as the US Department of Education and 21st Century Community Learning Centers across the country. For more than 20 years, we have provided them with program evaluation, professional learning, and program design services. In addition, we work side by side as partners with many schools and district leaders to develop multisite improvement training and coaching programs for teaching staff and administrators. Other partnerships include the C.S. Mott Foundation, the Annenberg Foundation, and the Atlantic Philanthropies. We jointly designed programs, curricula, evaluation tools, and class materials to provide high-quality training, coaching, and professional learning to the field. In a partnership with the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Making Connections Initiative, we participated in a decade-long effort to improve outcomes for children living in high-stress neighborhoods. This initiative addressed the many factors contributing to family vulnerability, including low literacy levels, educational levels attainment, and job skills; Foundations' focus was literacy. Our specialists worked alongside local leadership teams, using a variety of research-tested interventions to increase the number of students reading on grade level by third grade. Foundations' signature professional learning experience is the annual Beyond School Hours national education conference. Foundations has produced Beyond School Hours annually for the last 25 years. The conference brings together over 2,000 educators and afterschool professionals for an intensive four-day professional learning event. The conference offers educators the tools and knowledge they need to create and maintain comprehensive, multi-faceted programs that address children and youth's academic, social, emotional, and healthy physical development. Professionals from all fifty states, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Canada come together to share best practices, exchange resources and learn strategies they can put into action immediately upon return to their students. Our current work includes an emphasis on learning acceleration and social-emotional learning to improve literacy outcomes for our most vulnerable students. Our team develops relevant in-person and virtual professional learning modules on an ongoing basis for both the in-school and afterschool fields. These initiatives demonstrate the impact of our work in the implementation of enhanced teaching and learning techniques; improvement in the skills and awareness of teachers, administrators, and other practitioners; and most importantly, improvements in performance, achievement, and life opportunities for children and youth, especially those most impacted by poverty. Foundations has been committed to this work since 1992 and has enjoyed a rich history of working with hundreds of national and local businesses, community organizations, and philanthropic foundations, all of whom share a passion and commitment to serving the nation's under-represented and often underserved children.