Purpose Prize

Marc Freedman Portrait

The Latest from CoGenerate

New Survey Reveals Benefits of Older-Younger Tutoring Teams

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For the past year, Ampact, with support from CoGenerate’s Generations Serving Together program, placed cogenerational pairs of AmeriCorps members in elementary schools. The older and younger adults worked side by side to improve students’ reading and math skills. A...

The Billionaire Who Gave Away His Fortune Took a Big Chance on Us

The Billionaire Who Gave Away His Fortune Took a Big Chance on Us

We at CoGenerate (formerly Encore.org) are mourning the loss of Chuck Feeney this week. Without Chuck's vision and generosity we likely would not exist as an organization. Twenty-five years ago Atlantic Philanthropies took a chance on our start-up, playing a...

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Virginia Donohue

Purpose Prize Fellow

My ‘Aha!’ moment came in 1998, when I was 52 years old. I was buying dorm room bedding for Nick, who was in a program for chronically homeless youth. I had helped him get into one of the best music conservatories in the country. I was CFO of a computer distribution company, but for eight years, I had volunteered at a homeless shelter in Fulton, NY, assisting kids like Nick with the college application process and fees, campus visits and essentials like bedding.
Nick turned to me and said, ‘Because of you I am going to have my dream. What’s your dream’ What’s your passion’ If it’s not the life you’re living, what steps are you taking to change it.”

His question inspired a revelation. Helping kids like Nick was my passion.
In 1999, I quit my corporate job and found On Point for College to help marginalized young adults – refugees, homeless youth, kids who aged out of foster care – go to college.


  • 4,600 youth enrolled in 219 colleges in 15 years 

  • Nearly 800 graduates, almost all first-generation, low-income minority youth 

  • 160 mentors – most over the age of 50 – drove over 190,000 miles in 2013, connecting youth with colleges


 

For 18 months, I worked out of the trunk of my car. Because of my CFO experience I knew how to set up a new company, diversify sources of funding, budget, supervise employees, negotiate and plan. That first year I helped 26 kids enroll in college. Today our 27 employees and 160 volunteers counsel 6,000 youth every year.

Our approach is novel because we focus on older youth, age 17 to 29, many of whom feel stuck in low-wage jobs. Ninety percent are first-generation, low-income minority youth. A third have no parent in the picture.

We reach out to them in Boys and Girls Clubs, settlement houses, homeless shelters, GED sites, refugee schools, housing projects, libraries and soup kitchens. We help them with essential basics, like admissions and financial aid applications and fees, dorm deposits, backpacks, textbooks and transportation. In the last year alone, our mentors – most older than 50 – drove students 190,000 miles to and from college.

So far, we’ve helped more than 4,600 students enroll in 219 colleges Nearly 800 have graduated. They’re architects, lawyers, doctors, firefighters, teachers, bankers, nurses, accountants and counselors. Our program has been replicated in 10 community centers in New York City and Utica.

I used my savings to launch On Point for College when I left my corporate job 15 years ago. But the joy I feel today when someone walks across the stage to get their diploma is easily worth a million dollars.