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By: AIF Staff

Former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan started the American Idea Foundation because he wanted to lift up individuals and organizations doing the hard and necessary work of expanding economic opportunities to people in-need. He fervently believes remarkable things are happening in communities across the country, but all too often, these amazing success stories are drowned out by the negativity and divisiveness that dominates our civil discourse.

To support and shine a light on those organizations who are making a difference in people’s lives, Ryan and the American Idea Foundation have issued annual grants to groups focused on evidence-based approaches to fighting poverty and promoting upward mobility. Since 2022, the American Idea Foundation has issued nearly $1 million in grant funds to 20 different deserving non-profits across the country and has supported their work of addressing major social and economic challenges in a data-driven way.

One of the 8 organizations that the American Idea Foundation is honored to support and partner with in 2024 is the Downtown Boxing Gym in Detroit, Michigan.

Since 2007, the Downtown Boxing Gym, led by its founder Khali Sweeney, has been committed to improving educational outcomes for Detroit students, with a particular emphasis on improving reading skills. 

To accomplish this, the Downtown Boxing Gym mixes athletics with academics in a family-like setting and develops long-term relationships with students, primarily between the ages of 8-12 but with continuing support offered to individuals under age 25.

Currently serving nearly 200 boys and girls from 30 different zip codes and from 57 different schools across the Detroit area, the gym provides free after-school programming which consists of academic support, mentorship, athletic activities, ACT/SAT prep, nutritious meals, and more. Accepted students are evaluated by academic coordinators to determine baseline academic and athletic skill-levels and then the Downtown Boxing Gym develops customized plans to help each student. They offer these programs year-round, Monday through Friday, and do so at no cost, making it accessible to every child in the Detroit area who needs support.

In an interview with CBS News Detroit, Sweeney said: “I started the boxing gym because it was a lack there. It was something that was missing. It was something that was actually needed… The kids in our community needed a place to go in the area where we were first located, and it wasn’t a lot of stuff over there to do, so I saw the need.”

A 2018 profile of the organization by ESPN, entitled Hitting the Books, the Boxing Gym saving Detroit’s Youth, summarized the Downtown Boxing Gym’s approach:

“Boxing is the enticement to get kids into the gym, but the real goal is in the white-painted rooms behind the rings. It’s there where the motto [Sweeney] stresses — “Books Before Boxing” — is pulled off. That’s the true mission of the Downtown Boxing Gym: a mantra consistently preached by the students…. Boxing brings the kids in. Education, life lessons and a group of adults preaching positivity and seeing potential in kids surrounded by negativity is why they stay.”

Succinctly summarizing the gym’s growth and deepening impact, Chase for Business said:

“What began over a decade ago, with Sweeney and a handful of volunteers has grown into one of the nation’s leading after-school programs. Its proven track record of success — a 100% high school graduation rate for 16 straight years — affirms that access to education is the key to economic mobility.

The gym boasts a growing roster of accomplished alumni, who have advanced to higher education and successful careers, and a waitlist of more than 1,000. DBG now has more than 40 employees and an operating budget of over $4 million per year.”

The Downtown Boxing Gym is changing lives. It’s more than just a boxing ring. Rather, it provides a safe place for students to learn, grow, feel safe, and build skills that will serve them into adulthood. As their literacy rates improve alongside their athletics, the Downtown Boxing Gym is creating opportunities and pathways for Detroit’s youth to realize their versions of the American dream.

With demand for their programming increasing, the Downtown Boxing Gym has committed to measuring and evaluating their effectiveness in an academically rigorous way as they grow. In 2023, the gym and Purdue University received a $2 million National Science Foundation grant to study the impact of their program, particularly as it relates to helping students develop an interest in STEM-based fields. The NSF grant funds, along with support provided by the American Idea Foundation, will be used to expand the Gym’s programming, help with the construction of a 22,000 square foot building for STEM-related activities, and to perform a five-year study on the program.

Without a doubt, as the city of Detroit continues its economic comeback following the Great Recession, organizations like the Downtown Boxing Gym will play a critical role in the city’s youth improving their educational skills. It will continue to be a beacon for local students, providing them with a place to thrive and exercise while also giving them the skills to realize additional economic opportunities later in life.

The American Idea Foundation believes in the community-driven work of the Downtown Boxing Gym and is proud to help buttress their amazing stories of success with evidence and data.

To learn more about the American Idea Foundation’s 2024 grant recipients, click here. 

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 21^st 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. 

By: AIF Staff

First elected to Congress in 1998, former Speaker of the House and American Idea Foundation President Paul Ryan represented portions of Milwaukee County for two decades. Throughout his time in government – and after, Ryan has advocated for policies and programs that would expand economic opportunities for all Wisconsinites.

In recent years, Ryan’s American Idea Foundation has supported local efforts like The Joseph Project, which aims to pair willing workers with upwardly-mobile vocations, and the Wisconsin Inmate Education Association, which works to reduce recidivism. It has done so because the Foundation believes in their evidence-based approaches to break the cycle of poverty and improve our communities. It is also why in 2024, the American Idea Foundation is thrilled to partner with another promising model that was founded in the Badger State: Future Forward.

Future Forward, one of the American Idea Foundation’s 2024 annual grant recipients, is an early-childhood literacy and reading intervention program founded in Milwaukee in 2005 through a partnership between Milwaukee Public Schools, Marquette University, and partners around the City of Milwaukee.

Future Forward understands reading is essential to a child’s learning, their long-term educational attainment, and their overall wellness. Future Forward also recognizes the most crucial time to teach literacy skills is early in a child’s academic journey, which is why they focus on specialized literacy education programming for kids between kindergarten and 3^rd grade.

A report from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee (UWM) details the specifics of Future Forward’s approach but fundamentally, Future Forward employes a school, community, family partnership approach to promote student literacy development. At each Future Forward school, the program has a site manager, a family engagement coordinator, and individual tutors.

The site manager is typically a certified teacher who manages personalized one-on-one tutoring provided by professionals and volunteers. The site manager collaborates with the school to develop a tutoring schedule for individual students and identifies ideal tutors for these children.

Future Forward then pairs a student with an individualized instructor and develops a customized literacy and education plan so they can read at grade level. Future Forward tutors provide one-on-one instruction through a 90-minute weekly session during a student’s regular school day. Areas of focus during tutoring sessions can include a focus on letter sounds, phonological awareness, shared readings, tutor read aloud, leveled/instructional readings, and writing activities.

This instruction is then paired with professional Family Coordinators who engage families and caregivers so they can support their children during non-school hours. The Family Coordinators assist with outreach and communication to help promote literacy development outside of school.

Future Forward becomes a part of their students’ lives by being embedded in the school learning community. In most instances, Future Forward has a dedicated learning space for tutors to work one-on-one with their students. It provides an exciting environment for a student to learn and to develop a strong relationship with their individual tutor. Future Forward tutor’s engagement with students focuses on the child’s skills, mastery, ability, and progress without highlighting deficits. They pair this with support structures outside of school hours with the goal of gradually raising children’s reading levels.

There is a reason for Future Forward’s particular emphasis on 3rd grade: Only 32% of fourth graders in America  are proficient and reading at grade-level, with rates being even lower for students of color and students from economically-disadvantaged areas. 3^rd grade also represents a key inflection point in a student’s educational development.

 An American Educational Research Association study found that a student who can’t read on grade level by 3rd grade is four times less likely to graduate than a child who does read proficiently by that time. If this student’s household is impoverished, they are 13 times less likely to graduate on time than his or her proficient, wealthier peer.

The need for Future Forward was clear before COVID-19 and with school districts still working to bridge the “learning loss” gap, it has arguably become more important than ever. The data shows that a sizable number of American students, particularly those of color and those in public schools, would benefit from a cost-effective, evidence-based early-childhood literacy program and Future Forward has shown tremendous promise in delivering for these cohorts.

The model employed by Future Forward has been rigorously studied and since 2013,  there has been a growing body of evidence showing positive outcomes for students following their engagement with Future Forward. Future Forward’s approach has been recognized by the Department of Education’s “What Works Clearinghouse” and researchers have found meaningful improvements in reading outcomes over the short-term and long-term.

Among the more notable findings, a 2022 randomized-controlled trial by the Socially Responsible Evaluation in Education found that:

• Future Forward had a positive impact on underserved students facing more challenges learning to read.

• Future Forward had roughly three times the impact on Black students and five times the impact on Black male students than the overall impact.

A long-term RCT from 2023 found improved test scores by Future Forward program participants in years 3-7 after the beginning of the study. It also found a reduction in special-education placements at the 7-year follow-up period.

A student’s ability to read at grade-level has profound effects on their present and their future. It has ripple effects in their schools, their homes, and their communities and given the importance of educating the next generation of America’s leaders, our youth will undoubtedly benefit from cost-effective, evidence-based programs like Future Forward.

Future Forward has made an impact in Southern Wisconsin and as the program scales and accumulates additional evidence, the American Idea Foundation will stand in solidarity with their efforts to bridge the literacy gap and help students read at grade level.

To learn more about the American Idea Foundation’s 2024 grant recipients, click here.