Dreaming of the Future

This weekend, many passionate people will arrive in DC to attend Teach for America's 20th Anniversary Summit. Once, like Reach, TFA was a young nonprofit trying to create impact. We have all seen the organization explode in recent years, becoming one of the premier employers of recent college graduates. For me, it's impossible to hear about such an event without stopping to consider a fascinating question: Where do we want Reach to be in 20 years?

That question begets a thousand others, which is why organizations rarely create a 20-year strategic plan. It is, however, still interesting to consider a couple of the big ones.

How many students will Reach be serving? Right now, we hope Reach becomes a leading nonprofit in Washington DC. We have no intention of becoming a large-scale national nonprofit. In twenty years, it would be wonderful to say that Reach was present in all of the city's public high schools serving over 2,500 students.

What will our programs look like? We will continue to attack DC's significant adolescent literacy crisis while ensuring that elementary school students are given the support necessary to achieve proficiency in reading by the end of 3rd grade. We also may be able to explore other opportunities to engage struggling adolescent learners through employment - summer camps, child development centers, a theater company, etc.

Where will we get funding? Once Reach establishes the efficacy of our program model, we will leverage success to develop cost sharing agreements with program sites. Additionally, we will continue to secure funding through individual donors, foundations, and corporations. Finally, we will generate revenue by providing training to other jurisdictions interested in implementing our unique literacy intervention.

What impact will we make? This is the place where I struggle with TFA's popularity, since the teacher shortage continues to be at crisis levels 20 years after the organization's founding. In 20 years, Reach will have significantly impacted the number of students leaving 9th grade with grade-level reading capabilities. Additionally, while we target those students who enter 9th grade in the bottom quartile, we will produce high school graduation rates and college matriculation rates equal to those of the public school population as a whole.

20 years seems like a long time, but I have no doubt it will move quickly. We will continue to work with urgency to address the needs of our students - only through a tireless dedication to high-quality programming will we be able to look back with pride on our first two decades.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Mark