Category Archives: Staff

By the Numbers

Wednesday, January 22, 2020

Each December, I prepare a huge batch of summary reports for our trustees.  This is good news for them, as we all tend to have nothing but free time and unassigned bandwidth that time of year.  Or … maybe not?  Nonetheless, we are data geeks, and this generally ends up among my favorite activities for us as an organization.

We look at data on all of the applications we receive, and how we have responded.  We consider what we have been asked to do around the state, and how that compares to our expressed strategy.  We analyze our investments, reviewing multiple years of data on which communities, demographic groups, and component strategies have received the most (and least) funding.  We talk about our decision-making process, and how we can continue to hone our work together to be the best possible stewards of the resources we have been given.

This year, I thought our partners around the state might like to see how some of the numbers shake out.  This isn’t everything we track, but it’s some of the bits we find most interesting.

To paraphrase Rich, we look at these numbers to help inform—but never to dictate or constrain—our future investment.  We learn from them, while staying flexible and open to how we might best partner within Vermont’s philanthropic community in the months and years to come.

BY THE NUMBERS (2015-2019)                                                                                                    

The Tarrant Foundation has been active in Vermont since 2005, investing more than $30 million since then in the charitable organizations, communities, and people of our state (Rich and Deb Tarrant have contributed more than $45 million in that time including their personal giving).  The statistics below represent a snapshot of the foundation’s activity, encompassing data from 2015-2019.

Community Grants Program

The Community Grants Program is one piece of the Tarrant Foundation’s grantmaking portfolio.  Each program within that portfolio has a distinct strategy, budget, and review process. The Community Grants Program is available exclusively to Vermont organizations, and accepts new submissions at any time.  Information on this program’s guidelines, strategic priorities, application requirements, and review timeline is available here.   

Total Dollars Requested[1]: $9,574,006
Average Dollars Requested per Year: $1,914,801
Biggest Year: $2,652,600 (2019)

Total Dollars Granted: $1,538,710
Average Dollars Granted per Year: $307,742
Biggest Year: $399,610 (2015)

Total Number of Requests Received[2]: 332
Total Number of Grants Made: 145

Total Site Visit Miles Driven[3]: 15,814
Biggest Year: 4,080 (2017)

Total Meals on the Road: 60
Favorite Road Meal: One in Every County
Biggest In-Car Road Meal Disaster: Also One in Every County

Counties where Percent of Dollars Awarded is Larger/Smaller than Percent of State Population:[4]

Larger than Population: Chittenden, Essex, Grand Isle, Orange, Washington, Windham
Smaller than Population: Addison, Bennington, Caledonia, Franklin, Lamoille, Orleans, Rutland, Windsor
[Note: Seven counties are within 2%; five other counties are within 5%. The greatest difference is in Washington County, where it is 7.6%.]

Demographics and Strategies

The Tarrant Foundation’s Community Grants Program focuses on the particular experiences of distinct demographic groups: Youth, Working-Age Adults, and Seniors (see the program’s Guidelines for more information).  The following statistics look at requests and grants in each of those broad categories, and at clusters of articulated needs and strategies within them.

Percent of Total Dollars Requested/Granted per Demographic Group:

Requests: Working-Age Adults (45%); Youth (38%); Seniors (17%)
Grants: Working-Age Adults (42%); Youth (37%); Seniors (21%)

Primary Strategic Focus of Requests/Grants per Demographic Group (in Dollars)[5]:

Youth:
Requests: Out-of-School Time (60%); Employment Readiness & Training (16%)
Grants: Out-of-School Time (86%); Addiction Recovery (5%); Employment Readiness & Training (3%)

Working-Age Adults
Requests: Housing (33%); Employment Readiness & Training (23%); Addiction Recovery (15%)
Grants: Housing (45%); Employment Readiness & Training (22%); Addiction Recovery (15%)

Seniors
Requests: Congregate & Delivered Meals (31%); Activities & Enrichment (19%); Home Health (15%)
Grants: Congregate & Delivered Meals (41%); Activities & Enrichment (21%); Housing Solutions (17%)

Number of Grants Awarded for General Operating Expenses: 50%

Full Grantmaking Portfolio

In addition to the Community Grants Program, the Tarrant Foundation manages a series of other initiatives.  Together, these programs comprise our full grantmaking portfolio.  Each program is discreet, and the partnerships involved feature substantially different strategies, levels of investment, anticipated impact, and evaluation protocols.  Currently, the foundation accepts unsolicited applications only in the Community Grants Program.  The statistics below derive from our full portfolio, again between 2015-2019.

Total Dollars Granted: $8,964,943
Biggest Year: $2,206,042 (2016)

Total Grants Made: 291
Biggest Year: 69 (2015)

Number of Grantees: 131
Grantees that Received an Award in All Five Years: 7

Average Percent of Total Assets Granted Annually: 24.3%

Foundation Overhead as Percent of Total Expenses: 7.9%

Number of Grantees that are Vermont Organizations: 87%
Dollars Invested in Vermont Organizations: 97%

Looking Ahead

In 2020, we expect to grow both our total budget (5.4%) and our Community Grants program (35.7%).  We look forward to learning more about important work taking place all around the state, to new partnerships, and to many more miles (and meals!) on the road.

If you have any questions about our grantmaking process, please let us know at (802) 857-0495 or info@tarrantfoundation.org.

Footnotes:
[1] Formal Letters of Interest only. Does not include capital campaigns, requests from out-of-state organizations, general appeals, or other solicitations.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Does not include miles within Chittenden County
[4] Applications are encouraged from all counties. Applications received are not in proportion to relative population.
[5] Only top 2-3 strategy types shown in each category.

Lauren A. Curry has served as Executive Director of the Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation since 2005.

Backstory

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

podcast-ep12-fb-800x420

Contributed by Lauren A. Curry

Foundations can be mysterious things – understandable, but not that helpful when it comes to building effective partnerships.

Resources are always finite, though, and the Tarrant Foundation has long made the strategic decision to maximize our spending on grantmaking. We designed our website and the media posted there to provide clear information and a sense of the context in which we work, but we invest very little in trying to push our story out into the broader community.

It’s a tradeoff, we know. One that perhaps contributes to that sense of mystery. But one we’re glad to make when it means putting more dollars into our grants.

Grantmaking is our core work. We invest significant time and money in those partnerships – building relationships, collaborating, and putting a whole lot of miles on my car every year! Chances are if you’re reading this, you and I have sat down together at least once to talk about the difference you’re trying to make in your community. Maybe that took place in your office … or on the back porch of one of your clients, or in a field full of poison ivy, or on the floor while building marshmallow towers with at-risk youth. Maybe it was at the bedside of a dying patient, or in a steamy kitchen, or in a horse barn, or on a jobsite, or at a picnic table. Maybe it was in an empty lot with nothing to see but what the space could be, someday, if only the right partners could be engaged.

Wherever that meeting happened, I was glad to be there (yes, even that time with the poison ivy). I learned a lot from you and your colleagues, from getting to know your community, and from seeing your vision in action. Hopefully you felt like you learned some things too, about who we might be as partners, about how we work, and about the process we were asking you to move through with us.

Still, we know the veil exists.

Earlier this spring when there was still waaaaaaaay too much snow on the ground, I was invited to share some of the Foundation’s story on RetroMotion Creative’s podcast. RM made several of the videos we use on our website, including this one that I love featuring Rich and Deb talking about their approach to giving.

The podcast picks up with the making of that video, then delves into some of the structures and strategies we’ve built around the Tarrants’ vision. More than that, it’s hopefully an opportunity to get to know us a little better, and to make this whole thing maybe a little less mysterious. Bonus features include YouTube PD, the Mythbusters Mega Merrython, lessons learned from my personal non-profit endeavors, and tough love from @thewhineydonor.

Lauren A. Curry has served as Executive Director of the Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation since 2005.

Award Season

Monday, October 17, 2016

Contributed by Lauren A. Curry

Recently I shared news that Rich and Deb had been honored with the Lifetime Achievement in Philanthropy Award from the UVM Foundation. It was a wonderful honor, and a great opportunity for me to reflect on the many things accomplished through the Tarrants’ generosity to our communities.

Rich would be the first to tell you that we can’t do any of this on our own. Our work is only as good as the many incredible people out there who turn our investments into action at the community level.

Top of that list in our minds is Dr. Penny Bishop, Associate Dean and Professor in UVM’s College of Education and Social Services, and Director of the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education at UVM. For the past decade, Penny has contributed outstanding leadership, vision, wisdom, and hard work to manage our investments in middle-level education throughout the state. Her partnership has turned that investment into something far more meaningful and far more effective than could ever have been achieved without her.

But don’t take our word for it.

amle-penny-award

Last week at the Association of Middle Level Education’s (AMLE) national conference in Austin, Penny received the John H. Lounsbury Award for Distinguished Achievement. This prestigious award is the association’s highest honor, given only in those years when a sufficiently meritorious candidate emerges.

It was a great pleasure to see Penny honored for her many important contributions to the field of middle level education, and for the groundbreaking work she undertakes here in Vermont. Our board and staff are incredibly lucky to benefit from her leadership of the Tarrant Institute, and from her friendship as well.

Congratulations, Penny! You earned it.

amle-student

Penny’s award wasn’t the only highlight of this year’s AMLE conference. Members of the Tarrant Institute team made a record 14 presentations at AMLE, featuring stories, strategies, and research from their many partnerships with Vermont educators. Attendees even got to visit directly with some Vermont students (above) to learn about how personalization through technology is working for them!

For more information on the AMLE sessions or about the Tarrant Institute, check out their blog here.

                                                                                                                                                               

Lauren A. Curry has served as Executive Director of the Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation since 2005.

Lifetime Achievement

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Contributed by Lauren A. Curry

It’s a funny thing to talk about Lifetime Achievement. The words suggest summation. A grand total. A backward look.

This past weekend, Rich and Deb Tarrant were presented with the 2016 Lifetime Achievement in Philanthropy Award from the University of Vermont Foundation. The award was given in recognition of the tremendous investments made by Rich and Deb, and by their Foundation, in efforts to improve middle-level education, advance medical research, and strengthen the University.

lifetime-achievement-2016

I could not have been prouder. And, I think it’s safe to say, Rich and Deb could not have been more uncomfortable.

Neither Rich nor Deb likes to be praised for their generosity. You’ll hear Rich say in the video below that even the word philanthropy doesn’t sit well with him. It’s too soft. Rich considers the resources he and Deb invest in communities and programs around Vermont to be just that – investments. In exchange for those investments, he expects a non-monetary return, in the form of lives impacted, communities strengthened, and futures changed.

Rich and Deb accepted the award, with characteristic modesty, graciousness, and big serving of humor. They shook hands, smiled, and stood for pictures. Then they did what they do best: get back to work.

In just the couple of days since the award presentation, Rich and Deb have met with numerous leaders who are tackling some of our state’s biggest challenges. They have talked statistics, theory, efficiency, and impact. They’ve emphasized the crucial balance between thinkers and doers. They’ve considered scope and next steps and how, as ever, to make the very most of the resources they have.

As much as I love to see Rich and Deb honored for all that they have done, for them the conversation is always about what lays ahead. What’s been done is only ever a tiny part of what can be done. Our job is to get focused, get organized, and tackle what’s next.

Onward.

                                                                                                                                                                

Lauren A. Curry has served as Executive Director of the Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation since 2005.

Thank You to the Doers

Friday, April 8, 2016

Contributed by Lauren A. Curry

Yesterday was a road day. I spent more time in my car than I did actually visiting the program that prompted my journey. It was rainy and I was tired. Not my favorite kind of road day.

When I got where I was going I had to circle the block a couple of times to find parking. I noticed two women about my age talking on the sidewalk in front of a promising lot. Each had a heavy-looking tote bag over her shoulder, and one a big stack of paperwork in her arms. Neither had an umbrella.

While I waited to make the left turn into the lot, an oncoming car started honking its horn. The women turned and we all watched the car pass between us, windows down, middle fingers flying, jeers hurled.

It took me a second to catch my brain up to what I’d seen. It all happened fast, and at first I thought perhaps the car was honking at me. But the young occupants weren’t looking or shouting or middle-fingering in my direction. They were aiming at the two women, loaded down with work, standing and talking in the rain.

I watched the women pass quickly through startle, confusion, grimace and sigh. By the time I’d parked, gathered my own stack of folders and walked – umbrella in hand – to where they were standing, I was ready to share a moment of upset with them. I expected to find them commiserating over such a hurtful, hateful moment.

But when I drew into earshot, that’s not what I found. At least not that I could tell. They seemed engaged as they originally had been, sorting through some professional matter, and apparently moved on from the insult.

So I walked past. Without catching either’s eye. Without acknowledging my witness to the ugly thing just perpetrated at them.

Down the block I entered a bustling elementary school as it progressed through its busy end-of-day. The halls were still full of young bodies, loud young voices, and developing minds. This was where the two women had obviously spent their day. Their evenings would be busy with papers, new lesson plans, and building that next inspiring learning moment.

I don’t know who was in that car or what decided them on their insults. I’m sure there’s a story.  What I do know is it left me feeling bad.  And not saying something left me feeling bad.

So I’ll say something to them now, and to all of those like them:

To those women, thank you. Thank you for standing in front of a child every day and teaching them the world.

Thank you to the afterschool volunteers I was there to visit yesterday who give crucial extra support when and where it’s needed most. Thank you to the business owner I’ll see next week who, in her non-existent spare time, built a program for people isolated by difference and disability. Thank you to the retiree who came by recently who volunteers full-time fighting a far-away wrong.

Thank you to all the doers.

Your doing is important. Your doing is powerful. Your doing is so very much more powerful than middle fingers in the rain.

Lauren A. Curry has served as Executive Director of the Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation since 2005.

 

 

 

#AdvanceVT

Friday, March 4, 2016

Contributed by Lauren A. Curry

Last week right around now I was sitting in the big room at the Capitol Plaza listening to panelists talk about the importance of – and barriers to – postsecondary education in Vermont. Jessica was a late addition to the panel. Her work schedule, like those of many of her peers, made it difficult for her to carve out the time. She’s a recent grad juggling multiple jobs and other responsibilities.

Plus there was a late concert the night before. Oh to be 25 again!

Jessica delivered an important message about what it really takes for a young person with limited financial resources and no family tradition of postsecondary attainment to persist through higher ed. She made many good points about the long and difficult journey, points all too effectively backed up by the numbers:

  • Only 60% of VT’s high school graduates enroll in postsecondary education – lowest in New England.
  • Low-income students here fare by far the worst – just 37% persist beyond high school.
  • Fully ¼ of Vermont’s Class of 2012 high school graduates aspired to go to college but never made it.

And at what cost?

National estimates suggest that in just the next few years 2/3 of all jobs will require some amount of postsecondary education or training. In Vermont, if current trends continue, our failure to meet that demand is expected to result in tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue and increased Medicaid and corrections spending. I hesitate to imagine the impact on the non-profit and human services safety nets – already dramatically over-stressed and under-funded.

People in Vermont and elsewhere across the country have decided bold action is required. The Lumina Foundation, one of our nation’s largest education funders, is underwriting state-level teams undertaking important goal setting and strategy development work to that end.

The folks gathered at the Capitol Plaza last week were there as part of an exciting new phase in that effort. We witnessed the launch of the appropriately-named Advance Vermont initiative, calling for a shared commitment to ensure that by 2025, 70% of working-age Vermonters have a quality postsecondary credential.

Meeting this goal will require effectively doubling the number of Vermonters earning diplomas and certificates each year. It will mean re-engaging the nearly 60,000 Vermonters who now have some postsecondary education but no degree. It will also mean significantly upping our postsecondary preparation game, by strengthening PK-12 pathways, investing in supportive community-based programs, and helping families envision and pay for higher education with their kids.

Crucially, it will also mean we beat New Hampshire’s goal by 5%.

[I’m allowed to pick on New Hampshire. I grew up there and recognize Vermont’s superiority in all things. Except grandmothers. I do think NH claims the best of those. Hi mom!]

This brings me back to one of the things Jessica talked about in her remarks last week. After describing the kinds of barriers she faced on her journey in education, and the kinds of challenges she continues to deal with even now on the far side of her degree, she cautioned the room not to see postsecondary enrollment as any kind of finish line.

“Just because someone makes it to college and gets a degree doesn’t mean factors [related to being low-income] disappear.” She articulately described the ongoing struggle, and argued that low-income students, wherever they are on the educational continuum, need support.

They need support.

So let’s give it to them. In all kinds of forms from all kinds of people and at all the different waypoints along the road.

The Tarrant Foundation is committed to supporting youth resilience and aspiration, and employment training for working-age adults in partnership with some great non-profit organizations all around the state. We’re also committed to keeping kids engaged during the pivotal middle school years through our partnership with the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education at UVM.

What’s your commitment?

Together we can meet this challenge. We must, and we can.

Note: All citations are from Advance Vermont’s recent publication, “A call to action.” Contact me at lcurry@tarrantfoundation.org if you’d like a copy or more information on a specific reference.

Lauren A. Curry has been Executive Director of the Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation since 2005.

 

Long-Term Investments

Friday, September 4, 2015

Contributed by Lauren A. Curry.

This foundation cares about a lot of things. Recognition isn’t one of them. Why? “Because,” my boss would tell you, “this isn’t about us.”

Look around Vermont, in fact, and you’ll find buildings and facilities given in honor of other people – people who perhaps don’t have the means to make a “naming” contribution themselves, but who have given deeply of their passion and their labor. Naming buildings after folks like that is our way of celebrating those gifts, and of staying true to our core belief that no amount of money can have an impact without the people who do the real work at the community level.

But that’s a different story.

Today I’m thinking about another side of donor recognition. And I’m wondering if we – the philanthropic community – have been getting it wrong all along? And if, in doing so, we’re undermining the true nature of what philanthropic relationships are supposed to be about?

Here’s the problem. Last week I walked up to the post office and collected my typical pile of stuff: urgent notices about my (non-existent) business cable account, yet another IRS acknowledgement of our change of address three years ago, checks from our board treasurer, a couple of glossy non-profit magazines, and a stack of newsletters and annual reports.

As you’d expect, we get marketing pieces from all the non-profits to which we’ve written a check this year. And last year. And really ever. Some are slick and expensive, others about as homemade as you can imagine. In virtually every one, there’s that ubiquitous, clunky, tree-killing feature of the non-profit landscape: the donor acknowledgement list.

Please don’t tell my boss, but I actually read those lists. If we’ve given a gift recently, I check to be sure we’re listed and listed correctly. If we’re not, I drop a friendly, hey-this-really-isn’t-a-big-deal-but note to the organization to get the issue resolved.

Mind you, I hate writing those notes. I used to be in charge of donor lists when I worked for a community foundation out west. Whether compiling or just editing them, those lists pretty much never left our office without my initials on them somewhere. And I sweated those lists hard. I read them and read them and re-read them. I checked and double-checked. More than a decade later I can still tell you the correctly spelled names of a whole bunch of people I never even met. (Bet you can too.)

But mistakes inevitably happened, and the error notices came to me. So any time I have to alert a grantee now to an acknowledgement issue, it’s done with legitimate empathy.

The error I found last week was completely understandable. It happened because we’d made a complicated gift that wasn’t easily tracked in a database. The gift came as a mix of direct, indirect and in-kind support, conveyed over multiple years. I can only imagine the challenge of tracking each component for tiered recognition by fiscal year.

That’s the thing, though. Why try?

More and more we’ve come to understand that philanthropy is a long-term game, and that donor relations unfold over lifetimes – even beyond. Our Foundation certainly considers our non-profit partners to be long-term allies, and we view our investments as having a compounding effect.

So what does it tell donors when support is acknowledged strictly within an arbitrary date range? What does it suggest when thank you lists reset to zero each year, and support that may have built up over decades is functionally swept aside?

There are of course accounting realities and operating budgets that open and close on fixed dates. But that’s where I think we get into trouble: building donor recognition – better yet donor engagement – scenarios based on financial management tools.

I’m not suggesting that non-profits publish forever-additive lists. Perish the thought. But it does strike me that in as much as non-profits want to forge sustained relationships with donors – and vice versa – consideration of new systems of acknowledgement is warranted.

I’m imaging what my personal donor profile at my favorite non-profit might look like if it were structured to focus and build on the full history of our relationship. It’s a relationship that goes back to my early 20s, and includes years when even tiny gifts meant sacrifice. The few occasions when I didn’t send my check within their non-calendar fiscal year, my name was of course omitted from the published list.

Makes me wonder what the marketing of such a list is really intended to encourage. Is it motivating me to rush my gift in before the wonky fiscal year cut-off? I’m not sure. Right now I’m feeling something far less inspirational … like it reveals fickleness in a relationship I consider enduring. Certainly there’s a bit of a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately flavor in it.

Of course the answer isn’t for non-profits to acknowledge donors who don’t give. But perhaps it is to forgive the occasional lapse, and publicly thank donors anyway for being part of a philanthropic movement that helped get the organization where it is today. Or maybe, for groups using a tiered acknowledgement system, it’s to orient those systems in a way that values a donor’s lifetime commitment to the cause, not a snapshot.

My boss, while not a fan of me spending time on donor recognition issues, is a fan of getting to the bottom line. So here it is:

Let’s acknowledge donor support as something deeper and with far broader a horizon than a fiscal year could justly describe.

Lauren A. Curry has been the Executive Director of the Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation since 2005.

 

An Innovative Partnership

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Contributed by Lauren A. Curry.  This post originally appeared on the blog of the Council on Foundations, a national philanthropic affiliate organization in Arlington, VA.

Ten years ago this month I waddled – enormously pregnant – into a job interview with the founder of a billion dollar healthcare tech company. “I have this crazy idea about education,” he said.

Technology, he hypothesized, could make learning more interesting for students. He saw it as a platform enabling kids to learn at their own pace, pursuing courses of study according to their own curiosity. This style of self-driven, high-tech learning, he thought, would keep kids engaged, and graduate them with skills necessary in our evolving economy.

He planned to explore the idea through his foundation. “What do you think?” he asked. I thought a lot.

In my experience, philanthropy and public education had not made the most successful of bedfellows. The work is notoriously hard, and structures and nuance on both sides can hinder effective partnerships.

Even promising strategies contribute to “initiative fatigue” in schools, the result of constant new mandates, tools, and big ideas. An Education Weekly commentator recently observed of the term, “I hear it everywhere I go.

Compounding that weariness is an understandable frustration among some educators that their work is disproportionately subjected to the opinions, advice, and occasional interference of outsiders. Teacher and writer Trent Kays declares,

Politicians, business magnates and venture capitalists have become the educational experts now.

Some of Kays’ generalizations are unfair, but his tone strikes me. He’s speaking out for those who are in the education system every day and have made it – and its evolution – their life’s work. He continues:

Perhaps most frustrating is that there are dedicated educators and researchers who are actively trying to change and improve education. But, their voices become minimized because they’re not millionaires, billionaires or have started a company in Silicon Valley.

Ten years and $12 million into our foundation’s journey in education, we’ve attempted to draw strength both from our board’s entrepreneurial experience and from within the education community. We’re not alone in that attempt – many of those Kays criticizes have done the same, engaging scores of experienced educators to ensure respect for school cultures, professionals and daily realities as they seek to influence systems change.

For us, though, how we’ve done it is unquestionably key to our success.

In 2009, we established the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education at the University of Vermont. There, an independent team of researchers and educators is now on track to partner with half the middle schools in Vermont, supporting technology-rich learning and innovative school cultures.

I disagree with Kays’ argument that educator voices are subjugated to those of wealthy philanthropists. It’s been useful for us to consider, though, how the establishment of an independent entity grounded in the education community itself supports our goal of authentic, effective, peer-driven innovation.

And what have we achieved? A longitudinal study is now underway, but discreet pilot results are compelling. Researchers observed a 21.2% decrease in male absenteeism after just one year. Students, teachers and parents have further reported improved engagement, participation, behavior, and core academic outcomes – all harbingers of later academic and earnings success.

To put a finer point on it, my venture capitalist boss declares simply: “it’s a home run.”

                                                                                                                                   

Lauren A. Curry has been the Executive Director of the Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation since 2005.

 

Momentum Moment

Monday, April 6, 2015

Contributed by Lauren A. Curry.

Foundations work a bunch of different levers tackling the sets of challenges that constitute our agendas.  Most obvious is the money lever, as in aggregate we grant some $50 billion each year throughout the United States.  Makes a lever long enough to move some awfully weighty issues, if not quite the world.

Our most successful work, though, comes when we add other resources to the mix: our experience, creativity, sweat equity, leadership, relationships and voice.  Rich calls these “force multipliers” – the things that can stretch the value of our invested dollars and increase our impact.

Last week yielded a bit of a force multiplication opportunity.  We were invited to the Statehouse to describe what we see as a time of great innovation in many Vermont schools, and our role in contributing to the broader positive momentum now building throughout Vermont’s education system.

Find below a reprint of testimony given to the Senate Education Committee during a few precious hours of spring sunshine.

 

Investing in the Future of Education

Prepared for the Senate Education Committee

Lauren A. Curry, Executive Director

Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation

April 3, 2015

 

Thank you for the opportunity to address the Committee this afternoon.  I will keep my comments brief so we can all get out to enjoy Vermont’s fine spring weather.

My name is Lauren Curry and I am the Executive Director of the Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation.  We are seldom participants at the Statehouse, and though I have previously addressed your colleagues in the House, this is my first appearance before the Senate Education Committee.

Over the last decade, the Tarrant Foundation has been one of Vermont’s most active philanthropic agents.  Our corpus is comparatively small, but we spend aggressively – investing roughly three times the resources in Vermont communities each year as a typical foundation our size.

Our largest single investment is in Vermont’s education system.  Since 2005 we have funded an independent team of researchers and educators at the University of Vermont to partner with teachers and school leaders around the State.  Their object is to help schools provide learning opportunities that better fit who Vermont’s students are, how they learn, and the world in which they live.  

The technical description of the team’s approach is embedded, sustained leadership support and professional development to increase student engagement through learning that is student-centered and technology-rich.  Said more plainly, we believe in engaging today’s youth, with today’s tools, for tomorrow’s jobs and society.  

The Tarrant Foundation is compelled in our investment by a clear need to better serve today’s youth.  In other areas of our grantmaking we see the impact of a stubborn achievement gap, and of comparatively low rates of post-secondary education and training.  

We are more troubled still by the disproportionate share of these burdens borne by young Vermonters who are economically, traditionally, or geographically disadvantaged.  We join Secretary Holcombe in her urging about those who fare statistically worst in our system, as she recently declared:

… one of our highest priorities as a state needs to be improving the learning of our boys who are growing up in poverty.

Equal to these needs, we believe, are the opportunity and strength found in Vermont schools.  Our education system is among the highest performing in the country – and by some measures the world.  We enjoy strong leadership, involved communities, and legislative tools like Act 77 that can facilitate crucial innovation.  Committed partners including the Tarrant Foundation, the J. Warren and Lois McClure Foundation, and the Permanent Fund for Vermont’s Children help further strengthen that system and its outcomes.

UVM’s Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education has now partnered with more than a dozen schools in five counties, reaching over 5,000 students and their teachers.  The Tarrant Foundation’s recent new investment in the Institute will enable it to dramatically expand its work, now on course to involve at least half the middle schools in Vermont in the coming years.

The Tarrant Foundation’s continued investment in the Institute and in Vermont schools – already more than $12M – is fueled by several factors:

1.     Early research indicators.  A longitudinal study is now underway, but discreet results from the Tarrant Institute’s pilot sites are compelling.  In one school, the Institute observed a 21.2% decrease in male student absenteeism after just one year.  More meaningful still, reduced absentee rates for boys and girls persisted through high school – long past the active phase of their program.

Students, teachers and parents further reported improved student engagement, participation, behavior, and core academic outcomes – all harbingers of increased academic and earnings success later in life.

2.     The courage and commitment demonstrated by Vermont’s educators.  This is intensive and transformative work, requiring teachers and school leaders to establish clear goals and new infrastructure that develop schools as innovative organizations, reflecting in our schools the same agility and dynamism demanded of organizations beyond their walls.

Every day, school leaders are guiding their teams and communities through new conversations, teachers are leaving behind established habits and curriculum, and students are encouraged to take up new responsibility as leaders in their own education.

A teacher at one of our partner schools described what he observes, saying:

I think it’s getting easier to keep [students] excited about things because we’re not teaching them to use the tool anymore. They already know how to use the tool better than any of the adults or teachers could show them. So we can refocus on the content, and the information we want to get across to the students … This year I’ve really seen them go farther than I could imagine.  (Joe Speers, Peoples Academy Middle Level)

This is just one of countless comments we’ve heard from educators, students, and parents capturing the impact, vulnerability and great potential of this evolutionary journey.

3.     A clear moment of opportunity.  Conversations that ten years ago started with “if” – if technology should play more of a role in education, if employers would be asking for new skills in our workforce, and if schools could make fundamental changes to how they deliver learning – are now focused wholly on “how”.  How teachers can get the time and support they need to innovate, how to ensure learners have access to relevant tools, and how schools can use new technology to create efficiencies and increase learning opportunities for all students.

More than 40 schools reached out to the Tarrant Institute this year to pursue what most acknowledge as the most intensive and challenging school change they have ever undertaken.  The Institute sees this – and their daily experience in classrooms – as evidence of an incredibly and productively dynamic moment in Vermont’s education history.  As a Foundation, we see it as evidence of an investment in change that’s working – an indication that schools, teachers, families and communities are ready, able and excited to move forward.  

Next week the Tarrant Foundation will join the McClure Foundation and the Vermont Community Foundation as hosts to 45 funders from around Vermont and New England.  We will gather for a day to listen to experts in the education community speak about goals, pressures, tools and opportunities they perceive in Vermont’s system.  

As co-convenors of that meeting, the Tarrant Foundation believes greater shared understanding of education in Vermont will give important context to arguably all philanthropic activity in the state, regardless of field of interest.  We more specifically hope this will serve as an opportunity for funders to consider new ways to support Vermont learners and schools.

I think each of us here today could point to numerous examples showing that people all over Vermont – in word and deed – are aligning themselves with the notion of change: change to increase opportunity in education, change to create greater equity, and change to ensure the sustainability of our system – and our communities.  

I’m proud of the Tarrant Foundation’s role in fueling that momentum.  I’m also grateful to those who work in Vermont’s education system – and who are charged to support it – as you work carefully and with courage to ensure the greatest possible future for every Vermont child.

Thank you.

                                                                                                                                                 

Lauren A. Curry has been the Executive Director of the Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation since 2005.

Critical Lens

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Contributed by Lauren A. Curry

In philanthropy, sad stories are the coin of the realm.  They create awareness, inflame passions, awaken responsibilities, and pull people together.  They demand action and draw money.  They are the human (or animal or environmental …) face on the problem statements at the heart of each of our missions.

They can also sometimes distract from the business at hand.  The desperateness of the story can obscure mediocrity in a response, and doing something get in the way of doing something effective.

One of Rich’s mantras is “we leave our hearts at the door” any time we walk into the boardroom.  We are careful to respect and learn from stories, but base our decisions on a rubric grounded in strong leadership, fiscal responsibility, effective interventions, and meaningful outcomes.  It’s how we exercise due diligence in the expenditure of our resources.

That said, I’ve spent some time recently reading, watching, and thinking about sad stories.

The first real gut-wrencher was in a great New Yorker postmortem on Mark Zuckerberg’s failed $100M investment to reform the Newark School System.  Students in one school were prompted to write a poem using the word “hope”.  They responded in the context of surviving the violence and poverty that claims so many lives around them.  One student wrote:

My mother has hope that I won’t fall victim to the streets.

I hope that hope finds me.

Next up for me was a screening of the Sundance-winning documentary Rich Hill last month.  It’s a beautiful and awful portrayal of three boys growing up poor in Missouri.  It gets at complicated themes of mental health, juvenile justice, incarcerated parents, unstable housing, and temporary employment.  It’s real power for me, though, is where it lingers on the steady, quiet love binding families together.  And again, where we hear young voices with few prospects talking about hope:

I praise god.  I worship him. I pray every night.  Nothing’s came, but that ain’t gonna stop me.  This is what goes through my mind.  God has to be busy with everyone else.  Eventually he will come into my life.  I hope it happens.  It’s gonna break my heart if it don’t.  

Finally I went to an event that bridged my work with my personal efforts helping run a local food shelf.  We watched A Place at the Table, a high-powered documentary on food insecurity in the US featuring celebrities, politicians, and a handful of average Americans struggling to make ends meet.

The film tells lots of tough stories. There’s a young girl with big dreams whose empty stomach keeps her from concentrating at school.  There’s a veteran police officer who relies on a local food pantry to get his family through the month.  And there’s a young mother trying to meet her children’s needs through unemployment and low-wage jobs.  When that young mother gets her turn at the microphone at a DC press conference, her comments are pointed:

If we switched lives for a week could you handle the stress? If we switched salaries for a month will you be able to live and still keep your pride? Are you aware of my hope and my determination? Are you aware of my dreams and my struggle? Are you aware of my ambition and motivation? Are you aware that I exist? My name is Barbara Izquierdo and I do exist.

Hope.  There’s that word again.

These sad stories inspire all the things they are supposed to inspire – donations, legislative action, and renewed commitment to change.  In me, they inspire hope.

I will continue to push hard at work for the effective and efficient solutions.  I will do that in part by leaving my heart at the door.  In my own community I will keep my shoulder to the wheel, building local resources and looking out for neighbors.  I will work.

There’s much to be done.  And hope is a very good thing.

                                                                                                                                               

Lauren A. Curry has been the Executive Director of the Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation since 2005.