Generation Citizen

Generation Citizen is a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that every student in the United States receives an effective education, including the knowledge and skills necessary to participate in our democracy as active citizens. Generation Citizen seeks to support students in becoming confident community problem-solvers with civic power, personally invested in democracy and positive change. This organizational effectiveness grant will help them achieve their growth goal, inform their structural shifts and build the necessary capacity within the organization. This would enable Generation Citizen to conduct organizational planning to implement its growth plans effectively. The support would be channeled into regionalization and partnership expansion and the development of a capacity building institute.

Generation Citizen is a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that every student in the United States receives an effective education, including the knowledge and skills necessary to participate in our democracy as active citizens. Generation Citizen seeks to support students in becoming confident community problem-solvers with civic power, personally invested in democracy and positive change. Generation Citizen has been inspiring youth to participate in civics through a standards-aligned action civics class that gives students the opportunity to experience real-world democracy. In addition to direct programming, Generation Citizen engages in policy work, intergenerational civic mobilization, and technical assistance and capacity building for institutions across the country. (Substrategy: Student and Community Voice)

As part of the second round of the partnership with the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation on PropelNext, we are recommending grants to five organizations supporting underserved youth in the Bay Area: Enterprise for Youth, Generation Citizen, Oakland Leaf, Safe Passages, and ScriptEd. Another seven organizations in the Bay Area will also be participating; Heising-Simons Foundation, a new co-investor in this partnership, will support two; the Packard Foundation will support three; and the Sobrato Foundation will support two. These organizations were selected after a thorough due diligence process, which included external reviewers. As part of their participation in the three-year PropelNext program, these organizations will receive funding, training, coaching sessions, and peer learning sessions — all intended to support organizations in developing a theory of change for their program, and build stronger data-driven, performance-based cultures and systems. An evaluation of the first cohort of PropelNext participants showed positive results, suggesting that this approach is a promising one. Of the five organizations we recommend, two are based in Oakland, one in San Francisco, and two are national organizations with San Francisco offices. They serve a range of youth — including those living in disadvantaged communities or attending under-resourced schools. They help in a variety of ways, including through individualized support and coaching, school-based supports, connections to employment, and skill-building. We hope that participation in PropelNext will help strengthen these organizations to more regularly use data to improve performance and inform learning across their organizations — ultimately improving outcomes for underserved youth in the Bay Area.