2007 Selected Strategic Highlights

• Our work with foster youth took shape with the opening of The Academy, co-run by The Door and FEGS, that prepares 100+ young people for adulthood with GED tutoring, job training, etc. The Academy has received widespread notice in both private and public philanthropic circles, and The New York City Department of Small Business Services has provided support for its continued development.

• Our Summer Meals program served 183,003 more breakfasts, and 202,716 more lunches in 2007 than in 2006. The program also made significant progress in engaging and sustaining key partnerships with city agencies, advocates and community-based groups. Heckscher funding enabled the implementation of a successful media campaign that alerted needy families to the availability of food.

• The Bridge Builders project, which focuses on improving the foster care record in the Highbridge section of the Bronx, continued as a strategic focus of our philanthropy. The project is in its sixth year and is being exhaustively monitored by the University of Chicago's Chapin Hall and an executive committee. The Foundation funded a chapter of Club Success, a program begun in University Heights, which has proved effective in connecting youth with job opportunities, education and housing resources.

• The Teacher's Aid Program (TAP) continued to address the needs of teachers who serve under-resourced communities by providing funds for tools and supplies that are excluded from standard classroom budgets. TAP grants typically range from a few hundred dollars up to $1,500.

• We began a new strategic initiative seeking to learn more about the effects and benefits of extended-day schooling by initiating and funding a research study at the National Center for Children and Families at Columbia University's Teachers College entitled: Extended-Day Schooling in New York City: Examining Prevalence, Content and Structure, and Academic Benefits. The project is expected to yield a series of products to guide funding agencies, policymakers, and school officials as they consider the implementation of extended-day schooling in New York City.

• We launched another new strategic initiative to build "campus" libraries in public school buildings. Run by New Visions for Public Schools, the project will issue an RFP to select three campuses where state-of-the art library facilities will be built with City Council Dollars and then managed by multi-school teams. Both university and corporate partnerships will be sought to sustain the facilities after Heckscher's involvement.

• Heckscher supported the important work of District 79 in New York, which was established by the City to help create alternative pathways for students by combining diverse and innovative educational opportunities with rigorous academic instruction and meaningful youth development. Our grant will help launch new borough-based GED "hubs". Staff will receive a year-long series of trainings to maximize their abilities to motivate, teach and retain young people who are working toward their GEDs and a better future. The hubs are expected to serve more than 15,000 students during the school year.

• We issued an RFP, following the successful RFP of 2006, to provide one-time grants dedicated to the development and implementation of measurement tools that determine by objective standards the efficacy of programs for young people. Applicants submitted proposals regarding the creation of data collection systems and/or their efforts to align program outcomes with New York State, City or other relevant criteria.

• Building on our efforts to renovate public school sports facilities through the "Take the Field" strategic initiative, as well as our transformation of playgrounds on the Southern and Northern edges of Central Park, we identified a greenspace along the Hudson in need of repair and are working with the Parks Department to sponsor its rejuvenation as a baseball field.

• We expanded our CPIC Fund for Service Internship Program which places minority and other youth at host organizations in New York City, providing manpower and on-the-job training in and for nonprofit agencies serving families and youth.

• For the second year we ran our own successful internship program for high school students, combining service to not-for-profit agencies, individual tutoring, college guidance and life skills training.

• We continued to expand our Urban Scholars Program which provides critical manpower to needy public service organizations while encouraging careers in service and the not for profit industry.

• We supported the small schools initiative by funding the Urban Assembly, a model small schools network that contracts with the City to operate 17 schools and whose accountability measures exceed those of other experimental DOE programs.

• We saw the Summer on the Hill program, which uses private school facilities for needy public school students during the summer months, grow and become an independent 501(c)(3) organization without any further funding from the Heckscher Foundation.

• We opened lines of communication and collaboration with courts and other foundations geared towards developing projects in the foster care area.

• The Foundation received more than 1,500 proposals for grants.

• Heckscher grants benefited hundreds of agencies and programs in 2007, reaching millions of youth.