Financing Strategies for Youth Programs

Posted by on June 25, 2007

June Funding Tip

The Finance Project is pleased to announce a series of monthly funding tips for youth programs. These tips will cover different approaches to help programs finance and sustain their work.

About This Series

For promising youth programs to succeed, resources must be accessed and integrated in creative and strategic ways. As programs, intermediaries, and policymakers work together to tackle issues of financing for youth programs, it is useful to ground the approaches in clear principles. Effective financing strategies for youth programs should:

1. Be driven by a compelling and well-conceived policy and program agenda;
2. Be aligned with the programs and services they aim to support;
3. Take account of changing fiscal needs over a program?s life cycle;
4. Incorporate multiple funding sources that cut across programs and services;
5. Maximize the use of resources already in the system;
6. Use new funding to leverage other public- and private-sector resources; and
7. Contribute to a positive return on investment.

For more information on these principles, please see The Finance Project?s publication, Thinking Broadly: Financing Strategies for Youth Programs (http://www.financeproject.org/publications/Thinkingbroadly_PM.pdf) and the Youth Programs Resource Center (http://www.financeproject.org/irc/yp.asp).

Within the Youth Programs Resource Center you will also find an online clearinghouse (see http://www.financeproject.org/irc/youth/index.asp), jointly developed by The Finance Project and the Forum for Youth Investment. The clearinghouse contains a wealth of information and resources for supporting and sustaining youth programs and initiatives. It is designed to help you learn about data, tools, policies, practices, financing strategies, coordination efforts and technical assistance resources developed by organizations in the field that aim to improve the lives of youth.

Tip: Make Better Use of Existing Resources

Targeting existing funding can often be a useful first step in implementing strategic financing improvements. One way you can make better use of existing resources is to reduce service and administrative costs through operational efficiencies, so your dollars can be stretched further. Other ways may involve exploring approaches to cut costs for individual program elements, achieving economies of scale across programs, and changing rules and regulations to make it easier for programs to access and blend available funding.

Example from the Field: Increasing Operational Efficiency

Composed of six youth-serving nonprofit organizations, Boston TeamWorks provides its members with the opportunity to increase their operating efficiency and reduce their overhead costs. The nonprofit center offers a shared meeting and common space and centralized office functions while the member organizations retain their private offices and independent program development efforts. By streamlining basic operational tasks, the youth-serving organizations are able to concentrate their efforts on delivering sports and education services. Directors also report increased collaboration among the organizations as a result of this innovative partnership model. For more information, visit http://metrolacrosse.com/about/news/documents/Teamworks_release_final.doc