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Authors: Michelle Hynes and Cal Halvorsen of Civic Ventures; Ellen Pechman of EMP Consulting.

Click here to download the PDF of the report.

This paper highlights four organizations that are using boomers’ professional expertise and life experience to help deliver more and better services to young people. By rethinking how to use talent, these organizations are strengthening staffing for after-school programs, boosting high schools’ support for first-generation college applicants, expanding leadership for the nation’s largest dropout prevention network, and improving the performance of education nonprofits and their overall ability to help kids. After describing these four models, we recommend ways to tap more encore talent for these youth-serving roles.

The programs highlighted are:

• Aspiranet's Encore After School initiative, which is helping to build a stronger after school workforce
• ReServe's READY program, which uses encore talent to help New York City students go to college
• Communities in Schools' Baldwin Fellows program, which engages experienced and emerging network leaders to tackle strategic and leadership challenges to reduce dropout rates
• Civic Ventures' Silicon Valley Encore Fellows program, which places fellows in youth-serving organizations to make education reform and make the organizations more effective

We at Civic Ventures hope the four approaches described in this report will inspire others. Further, we hope this paper will spark a conversation with those who want to engage experienced professionals in encore careers that make communities better places for children and youth. If you want to join the discussion, pose questions, or share another great program example, please write to Michelle Hynes at mhynes@civicventures.org or click "Add new comment" below.