Early Dreams and Accomplishments

What started as a pizza delivery business is now delivering a quality education to hundreds of at risk youth in Washington, DC. And these same kids, many who have failed in traditional educational settings, are graduating at a dramatically increased rate and are building a positive future through college and/or employment.

See Forever Foundation Co-founders James Forman Jr. and David Domenici have brought their dreams a long way in a short time. With a combined background at the Public Defender's Service, teaching and volunteering with students in urban areas, and working in city government, Domenici and Forman felt that "the promise of Brown [vs. Board of Education] and the promise of the Civil Rights movement were not happening here in DC-not for our kids, at least. Our kids were kids who had been arrested, who had dropped out of school, who were on probation." They opened a pizza delivery service to give youth a way to get off the streets in the evenings, learn job skills, and get a little tutoring. "Almost immediately we knew we needed to work with students full-time, during the day, and to really work on academics." So, in 1997, these two social entrepreneurs quit their jobs and founded a school.

Originally, the Maya Angelou School was designed as a holistic program for teens involved in the juvenile justice system. Court-involved teens told Domenici and Forman that they wanted to earn money, learn marketable skills, and develop responsibility. They wanted to attend small classes with teachers who cared about them, and they wanted help making hard decisions. "The kids we serve have tremendous promise and resilience," said Forman. "We try to provide a safe place for them to explore and grow and really challenge themselves. Like the poet for whom the school was named, we want our students to learn how to realize their potential so they can say, 'still I rise'."

The first year, the school served 20 teens with a wide range of services including counseling, job training, life skills, and academics. In 1998, the organization incorporated Maya Angelou as a public charter school and expanded its mission to serve a broader range of students who would benefit from the school's structure and programming. In 2000, they purchased, renovated, and moved to their first permanent campus. Students came to the school from all over the city, and by 2002, the first campus had 85 students. By that point, some of the city's highest-risk youth were joined by other students looking for a small, personalized school that would meet their needs and help them develop their potential.

Student population		Results
Involved in juvenile justice system	35%	Percentage of graduates going to college	over 70%
Dropouts/students not in school the year before joining MAPCS	50%	School attendance increase	from 50% to over 90%
Special education students	30-35%	GPA improvement	average to a B average
Average Reading/Match scores at entry to MAPCS in 9th or 10th grade	6th/7th grade	Average increase in SAT scores	over 15%
Free and reduced lunch eligible	85%	Parents who say their child learns more at MAPC	nearly 100%
Students who have failed at least one year of junior or high school	just under 50%	Colleges attended by graduates include:	Spelman College, Florida A&M, University of Maryland, St. Mary's College, Trinity University, DeVry University, University of Delaware

Poised for Growth

Domenici and Forman knew that to truly fulfill their mission, they needed to grow beyond one school and build the leadership team to ensure sustainability. They laid out an ambitions plan to expand to three to five more campuses in three years and to possibly run other programs, including technology centers to serve senior citizens in the schools' communities, early childhood learning centers, an advocacy center, and a school leaders training center. Domenici was serving as the original school's principal, and knew his role would need to change to allow him to focus on expansion. They had some rough estimates of how much money expansion would require and general ideas about what percentage of the funds could be public or private.

With Venture Philanthropy Partners' (VPP) investment of $243,000, See Forever undertook a comprehensive business planning process in the fall of 2002, facilitated by McKinsey & Company. Planning allowed the leaders and staff to step back and find out what was truly required to reach their biggest goals. It gave them data, both on their internal strengths and weakness, and on the external environment in which they operate. Planning also catalyzed the process of thinking and operating more rigorously, matching frameworks and processes with the passion and commitment of the leaders. "[Planning] helped us get from a range of 30 things that might have mattered to really hone in on, okay, say, these five are the things we've got to start with," said Forman.

Once See Forever had a detailed plan for increasing their impact for youth, both through additional campuses and through improved program and service quality, VPP made a long-term commitment of $2,200,000 over four years to help them get there. The funds would be used to strengthen the infrastructure of the organization-developing the leadership team, rebuilding the board, establishing clear outcome measures, achieving strong staff performance, and creating a highly effective fund development capacity.

From a Single School to a School System

It's a crisp fall morning in Washington, DC, and David Domenici looks around proudly at the volunteers who have come out for the annual community clean-up day at their second campus-a new school opened through a partnership with DCPS last fall. The Evans campus is east of the Anacostia River, a part of the city that does not have enough such resources available to the young people who need them. 115 students will be starting school at Evans next week, effectively doubling the number of teens See Forever served two years ago.

The work of institution building and growth in the last three years has been hard, and, at times, the pace has been fast and furious. Domenici now manages a senior staff of ten, including two new principals and two assistant principals-a big adjustment from three years ago when it was just he and Forman on their own. He has two boards to work with-one for the charter school and one for the organization rebuilt to a strong 12 members. Raising the bar on talent for the organization has brought some bumps in the road, and Domenici had to make difficult decisions, including letting some staff go and streamlining the organization's focus. Through a rigorous Theory of Change process, they have started to move toward performance-based programming at the school level and performance-based evaluations for all staff. School leaders with strong teaching and learning backgrounds as well as experienced board members are engaged in both the setting of and implementation around new benchmarks.

Organizational Strength - Then and Now

2002	2005
Board
See Forever Foundation board: 7 members, only 3 active Maya Angelou Public Charter School board: 9 members with limited engagement beyond founders and parents	15 engaged board members for See Forever Foundation 15 active members for MAPCS
Senior Management Team
3 David Domenici, Co-founder, Principal James Forman Jr., Co-founder, Chair of the Board Gail Williams, Principal	12 Forman, Chair of the Board Domenici, Executive Director Finance Manager Managing Director School Performance & Strategic Partnerships Chief Information Officer Director of Development Development Associate Two School Principals Two Assistant Principals Director of Mental Health
Teachers, Counselors and other Specialists
14 Teachers 3 Counselors/ Specialists	35 Teachers 7 Counselors/Specialists
Volunteer Tutors
200	400

See Forever has come a long way since its pizza delivery roots. Being a VPP investment partner has been critical to Domenici in his efforts to grow and improve the program. He notes that it has been extremely helpful to have access to the advice and counsel of people who have built and grown large enterprises. When he and Forman started the school, they ran all aspects, from raising money to overseeing the academic programming and catering business that provided job training as well as the student meals. But, in the spring of 2003, See Forever decided to outsource the management of the catering business, realizing that they needed to focus on their core business, educating young people. Although this decision has created programming demands, it has enabled school leaders and Domenici to focus on a narrower set of issues, including improving teaching and learning, fundraising, and setting the stage for the opening of the Evans campus.

"VPP forced us to go back and look at things and ask ourselves harder questions. They encouraged us to invest in staff people like a managing director and a development person," Domenici says.

He notes that school performance at Maya has dipped at times over the last few years. One likely reason has been the strain of growth and change. He says that with other funders he might have been afraid to acknowledge this. With VPP he is able to talk about this and have a thoughtful conversation about what they are doing and how to improve. "Folks at VPP know that running urban public schools is tough business, and that improvement will not always be straight and clear. We run into bumps, we try to address them well, and we move forward together. You can only engage in that sort of conversation with a committed funder and partner."

And commitment is what is needed to make positive change.

"You could argue that it makes more sense to invest in younger children where change is easier," says Domenici, "but we shouldn't decide to write off a certain group of kids. Despite the obstacles and risks these kids face, we can't give up on them. They can finish high school and they can go on to college and they can contribute to our social fabric."