By: AIF Staff
Two of the through lines tying all of the organizations that the American Idea Foundation partners with is they have identified a specific need or challenge in their communities, and they have the passion to try and fix it. This identification of a problem and a desire to solve it is generally what launches these amazing non-profits and this is especially true with NPower, one of the American Idea Foundation’s 2024 grant recipients.
NPower is a national non-profit with 15 locations in 9 different states, stretching from California to New York and Maryland to Texas. The organization started by identifying a clear need.
NPower’s founders observed that, all too frequently, veterans and young adults from underserved communities were facing barriers to employment and were lacking support structures to obtain the skills necessary to succeed in emerging 21st century career fields, namely information technology.
Their goal was to give deserving individuals – whether those be individuals who served our country and defended our freedoms or future leaders from under-resourced communities – an opportunity to learn relevant skills and obtain employment in industries that could lead to life-long careers. With a clear mission in mind, NPower developed a solution.
As Notre Dame’s Lab for Economic Opportunity summarized:
“NPower’s Tech Fundamentals program is an intensive 23-week crash course that helps participants gain full-time employment in an information technology career.
Over the first 16 weeks, students attend a tuition-free course that helps them earn industry-recognized certifications. Following, they are immersed in the professional scene and receive a 7-week paid internship with one of NPower’s corporate partners. After completing their internship, students graduate from NPower and receive ongoing job-placement assistance.”
NPower saw that veterans and at-risk youths were eager for upwardly mobile careers but needed structured training programs to develop specific skills. They also observed that employers, particularly technology-focused ones, had a growing demand for new workers.
While covering their first training session in North Carolina, Spectrum News highlighted how NPower links the demand for trained, motivated workers with a supply of young Americans and veterans eager to find meaningful vocations.
“How does this sound? A tech training course that doesn’t cost you a dime and could radically change your career.
Earlier this year, the national nonprofit NPower graduated its first class in North Carolina. The group comprises young people looking to break into tech.
“We’ve got some big companies moving into the Triangle, and I would also say the Triad,” said Dr. Christy A. Walker, a career placement manager with NPower. “We need tech for pretty much everything we do. I see it broadening out to different areas more….”
“It exceeded my expectations,” said Fatima Salcedo, a recent NPower program graduate who currently works as a barista. “They put us in positions that gave us an opportunity to grow….”
To date, over 10,000 people have worked their way through NPower’s programs nationwide, and graduates have landed jobs with companies like Tesla, T. Rowe Price and Microsoft. The video below illustrates NPower’s impact on individuals’ lives and careers.
What has made NPower truly unique though is their willingness to measure the effectiveness of their programing to determine if it is really making an impact. They have partnered with Notre Dame’s Lab for Economic Opportunities to study the impact of their programming on educational outcomes, future earnings, and employment.
The study is currently ongoing and funds from the American Idea Foundation will be used to help complete the research. Enrolling in an academically rigorous study is a risk for any non-profit, but in Speaker Ryan’s mind, it is necessary if these groups are going to scale and if policymakers are going to prioritize demonstrably effective solutions over others.
Discussing NPower at the 2024 Detroit Regional Chamber Policy Conference, Ryan said in part:
“What my foundation does is we go find what we think are really interesting poverty programs, then we seed fund them so that they can [conduct] a randomized control trial [with] Notre Dame economists who track and measure that poverty program over the length of 1-3 years, run a trial on it, and see if it proves to be really successful.
We’re building mechanisms to try and scale and replicate those poverty-fighting successes across the country and NPower is one that we’re working with. It is here in Detroit and there are NPowers all around the country where they are getting disaffected youth… and underprivileged kids into tech jobs and providing them with the curriculum they need to become good tech workers in this tech-centered economy.”
Channeling NPower’s approach of bringing community leaders, corporate sponsors, and program participants together and then adding intellectual heft and academic research to their powerful success stories, Ryan continued:
“There is so much now that we can learn through economics, through data, and through research practices, and we think there’s a real unlocking moment in front of us…. If we apply our resources to practices and procedures that we know work and scale and replicate those, I think we can make a huge difference.
“It involves the public sector and nonprofit sector and private sector so what we’re trying to do with the Lab for Economic Opportunities at Notre Dame and with our foundation is find those bright lights that are out there making a huge difference. We want to find out what their secret sauce, determine is it repeatable and if so, replicate it.”
NPower is a great example of how non-profit organizations can grow from a simple idea of solving a real-world problem – providing veterans and at-risk youth with meaningful career paths and skills – into a movement making a difference nation-wide. And as they have scaled, NPower has doubled down on making sure data and research informs their current programming and future efforts by partnering with Notre Dame and groups like the American Idea Foundation. This approach is exactly how America can truly make a difference in fighting poverty.
As NPower provides America’s youth with the skills of tomorrow and helps honor veterans’ sacrifices by leading them towards meaningful careers, the American Idea Foundation will stand with them as they scale their programs in an evidence-driven way.
To learn more about the American Idea Foundation’s 2024 grant recipients, click here.