Big Impact in a Short Time

Heads Up founders Darin McKeever and Vin Pan had a dream. They believed that, by recruiting and training a cadre of college students to serve as tutors and mentors, they could have a significant impact on the conditions and aspirations of children living in some of the toughest neighborhoods in the National Capital Region.

In 2001, they were surprised to learn their organization was the fourth largest private provider of after-school services to children in the District of Columbia. After all, they had only opened their doors a few years before.

But four years later when McKeever proudly announced Heads Up was the largest nonprofit provider in DC Public Schools, he wasn't surprised at all; he knew exactly how much transformation the organization had undergone in a short amount of time, not just in size but also in the deep impact it has on children's lives. Heads Up tripled the number of children served, from 300 kids in five sites to almost 900 students in ten sites; but more importantly, their program design and curriculum have been greatly improved and their systems for measuring impact are in place. With a now deeply engaged board and more robust and diversified financial base, the organization is more effective and its potential for sustainability is greater than ever.

Background and History

McKeever and Pan met in the early 1990s working in Harvard University's community service organization, Phillips Brooks House Association. Inspired by their experiences and fueled with the desire to "give back," the two passed up the typical high-paying positions their peers were taking and instead decided to develop a program that both helped children in low-income neighborhoods and inspired college students through service. They were greatly encouraged and inspired by mentors like Greg Johnson, then executive director of Phillips Brooks House. McKeever remembers: "Johnson spoke often and eloquently (and still does) about the power of young people to change lives and be changed in the process-so in many senses his ideas and passion contributed to our original vision." McKeever and Pan spent 1996 carefully assessing the unmet needs in various communities in DC-needs articulated by residents and parents-making sure that they would not be duplicating any existing programs.

Over the next two years they launched Heads Up. The school-based program provided after-school tutoring, mentoring, and summer learning programs to children. College students were recruited, trained, and paid a small stipend to serve as tutors and mentors. Heads Up thus became one of the first organizations to respond to the goals set by the Presidents' Summit for America's Future and America's Promise in 1997.

Growing in Strength and Numbers

By the time VPP and Heads Up formed a partnership in 2001 with Venture Philanthropy Partner’s (VPP) initial investment of $174,000 for a business planning process, the organization had grown to serve 300 children and 150 college students in six sites. While Heads Up was eager to grow further and make improvements to its programs and services, its founders and some of its board members were originally skeptical about their new potential partner. “From the beginning, there was a concern about VPP’s level of involvement creeping into a level of control,” recounts McKeever.  The questioning that began in negotiation period continued through the planning process. Hiring a large management consulting firm known for its work with Fortune 100 clients—McKinsey & Company—was a new approach for the leaders, as were the kind of resources required for such expertise. As co-founder Vin Pan recounts, “Having not gone through that kind of [planning] process before, it was very difficult for us to anticipate how helpful it would be…I had a hard time getting over what seemed to be an awful lot of money to spend on consultants.”  Heads Up was also the first VPP investment, and it took some time to build trust between the two organizations.  VPP was learning and refining its model, “That ‘building the airplane while flying it’ syndrome, “ said VPP partner Fred Bollerer, which also created some bumps in the road.

Ultimately, a deep trust developed between Heads Up and VPP, but it took significant time and effort and was a learning experience for both organizations. “The hours our teams spent together reviewing program trends, discussing the volatile funding and policy environment, and weighing strategy fed a deep and abiding trust built around mutual respect and transparency.  In so many areas, we have a shared sense of purpose,” said McKeever.

Tangible results from strategic planning helped foster that trust.  The process clarified Heads Up’s growth plans and gave leadership more information about the landscape in which they were working.  “We didn’t realize we were the fourth largest provider of after-school services in the National Capital Region until the McKinsey research proved it, and it gave us the data we needed to focus on how to become the largest provider in the area and the roadmap to improving our programs and building our organization,”  remembers McKeever.

Planning also reengaged and reenergized the Heads Up board, a result that surprised the co-founders.  The board was further strengthened by the additions of Bollerer and VPP investor Jack Davies.  Overall, Heads Up has added eight more board members since the VPP partnership started and sees their board as stronger in every way.  The board meets more frequently, as do board officers.  They have developed effective committees for finance, executive committee, nominating, and programs.  Board officers are also deeply committed to the organization.  When Heads Up experienced a cash flow crisis in 2005 due to the length of time it took to get reimbursements from government funding sources, board members personally stepped up with an offer of up to $150,000 to help the organization through the rough patch.  In the end, Heads Up found its own sources to cover the gap, but McKeever was gratified by the board’s demonstrated support and faith in the organization.  And thanks in part to board members’ guidance and contacts, Heads Up has now been able to secure necessary financing and shorten the time it takes to get the same reimbursements, a change that benefits other area nonprofits too.  “We started out with a board that was a sounding board, one that we would bring updates to, one that was sensitive to the changes of a start-up and was, in some ways, a little more hands off.  Now we have a board that understands that in order for us to get to where we want to go, we need more engagement around fundraising, around advocacy, and around program planning,”  McKeever reports.

VPP’s follow-on investment of $1,800,000 in March of 2003 helped the organization shore up its infrastructure.  Over two years, they recruited and hired a senior management team and very successfully transitioned executive leadership from Pan to co-founder McKeever.  They began to overhaul their curriculum and designed a tracking system to help them better manage enrollment and tutor distribution among sites.  They also started measuring outcomes in new ways and are now able to report clear results for the kids they serve.  Along the way, Heads Up has diversified its funding streams, positioning itself as an approved Supplemental Education Service provider under the No Child Left Behind Law and getting new support from the prestigious local fundraising group, CharityWorks.  The latter partnership resulted in over $800,000 in funding for Heads Up in 2005 and 2006—a record total for CharityWorks—along with significant new visibility among a different kind of donor.

Refining the Delivery and Growth Model

One of Heads Up’s goals in 2001 was to study different options for growth and the best format for providing its services.  The business planning process helped them create one model of expansion through increasing the number of Heads Up sites from five to 25.  But as they began to grow, demand in current sites grew as did interest from new schools.  The organization was presented with a choice: to expand deeper and/or broader to meet its growth aspirations.  So McKeever and his team went back to their roots, having conversations with parents and schools about what they needed to make the most of Heads Up’s programs. They also sought the advice of their board and other external advisors to get additional perspectives.  It turned out that if they simply changed their offering to end at 6.30 pm instead of 6.00 pm and modified their schedule to more closely mirror the school’s holiday schedule, they posited that Heads Up could serve the same or greater number of students, further align their efforts with DC Public Schools, and expand hours by 70%, all for about the same cost.  “We had always matched our schedule more closely with the universities’ because of our college student participants.  But we realized we could fill their gap with teachers in the schools, both providing coverage that better matched parents’ needs and more deeply engaged the schools in which we work,” explained McKeever.  Heads Up implemented the change in fall of 2005,  adding at least 11 more weeks to its school-year program and extending program hours until 6:30 pm.  They’ve learned that by focusing their resources on fewer schools, they can better marshal resources and staff support to ensure that families who have been anxious to receive services can, and the program will have a deeper, richer impact on the children at those schools.

McKeever reflects on the changes and his relationship with VPP: "Heads Up's growth over the last several years can be measured in the number of kids and college students we involve or the schools with which we partner, and Venture Philanthropy Partners' support has been critical to our achievements in this respect. Yet it may be growth in a second respect where our relationship will have its most lasting impact. I believe there has been a more expansive idea of growth at work within Heads Up that is, at times, even more important—one that embraces not only the numbers of families served but the quality of the services delivered, the maturity of our operations, and the thoughtfulness we bring to our organization's development and the volatile policy and programming environment in which we live."