Roughly 75 percent of our grants to direct-service providers go to single-service organizations. These nonprofits deliver one service (such as mentoring) or program (such as home visits by nurses to new mothers), usually in several locales, and seek to expand elsewhere as well as to grow in the neighborhoods where they are already active. The evidence for the effectiveness of these organizations’ programs and services is usually strong. 

The stages of organizational development framework was developed with these types of organizations in mind. EMCF’s investment strategy for these grantees is, generally, to help them advance within a reasonable period of time to “Sustainable Growth” so that ever-greater numbers of low-income youth can benefit from programs that have been proven to enhance young people’s life prospects.

In addition to single-service organizations, the Foundation supports several multi-service organizations, which provide an array of services to youth in a particular community, and national networks, which provide services through local affiliates in many communities. The complexity of these organizations and the multiplicity of their programs make it harder to categorize their stage of development and prove empirically the effectiveness of their services. Yet because they reach so many youth in the United States, multi-service organizations play an important part in EMCF’s efforts to increase the number of young people who benefit from effective programs. In most instances the Foundation’s investment strategy with a multi-service organization is to help it improve the quality of its programs, increase the evidence of their impact, and use data more effectively to enhance performance and outcomes.