About Us

Introduction

The College Bound Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in 1996, pairs mentors, our “Learning Coaches,” with children from San Francisco public housing developments. We begin with children in the first or second grade and work with them through high school graduation. Our goal is to help children succeed in school and eventually go on to college. Each Learning Coach makes a one-year commitment to meet once a week with his or her student for about two hours. Sessions include activities such as helping the student with that evening’s homework, reading a book together, a trip to the library, a basketball game, or eating pizza. The concept is to encourage learning by providing a role model and devoting one-on-one attention.

The program is ideal for busy people and the application process is streamlined and easy. (See How to Volunteer.) Meeting times are flexible and can be scheduled for weekends or evenings. The Learning Coach and child decide on convenient meeting times for both participants.

Our Program Coordinator matches each new Learning Coach with a child, provides an orientation for the Learning Coaches, children and parents, and works to monitor the relationships and progress of all the participants.

The Foundation arranges several activities each year, including a weekend camp trip, a swim party, ice skating, and an opportunity for Learning Coaches to share ideas and experiences.

The Children We Serve

The children, ages 6 to 18, who participate in The College Bound Foundation are low-income, at-risk students living in public housing developments throughout San Francisco. The average income for the children’s households is about $10,000 per year. Many children come from one-parent households or households with a relative acting as a guardian. More than half the children are African-American and the others have widely varied ethnic origins.

Participation by the children is entirely voluntary, thus all of the children in our program want to participate in it. Their motivations for participating vary, but generally include a desire to spend one-on-one time with a caring adult, and a desire to perform better in school.

The children want and need the help this program provides, but unfortunately there are always many more children interested in the program than there are coaches available. If you think you may be interested in this program, or you are just curious about it, please contact us.

Framework for Our Learning Coaches

Every child is unique and every Learning Coach is unique. So there is no cookie-cutter formula for success. Each Learning Coach’s creativity, love and perseverance are the best tools. However, more than a decade of experience has taught us that successful Learning Coaches follow some variation of our “BAMSS” framework.

Build a relationship.
Advocate for your child with his or her school and teachers.
Monitor his status at school.
Support his educational advancement and extracurricular activities.
Set the bar higher.

Build a relationship. This is the foundation for success as a mentor and the cornerstone of our program. A relationship founded on trust, love and respect is the reason a child may follow in the footsteps of his or her mentor and it is the source of the mentor’s influence. One-on-one time with the child is the key ingredient for building a relationship, which is why our volunteers meet at least two hours every week with their assigned child. Typical activities include helping the student with that evening’s homework, reading a book together, a trip to the library, a basketball game, or eating pizza.

Advocate for your child with his or her school and teachers. Children from low-income families, particularly minority children, are often typecast by teachers as bad students. Compounding this problem, many of the parents are uncomfortable communicating with teachers and school administrators, or simply do not know how or why to do so. Ideally, Learning Coaches should, after obtaining approval by a parent, regularly call the teacher to discuss how the child is performing and what steps the school, Learning Coach and parents could take to improve performance. Even a seemingly uneventful conversation with a teacher may assure the teacher that someone cares and prompt the teacher to make extra efforts to help the child.

Monitor his/her status at school. For example, mentors may ask the child and parents to see his or her report card, spot check homework and tests that have been graded by teachers, and talk with the teacher about the student’s performance. There may be a beneficial effect simply from a child knowing that the mentor knows how he or she is doing in school. While a child would never admit it, he will be secretly proud that a mentor cares enough to check on him.

Support his/her extracurricular activities. Children involved in extracurricular activities generally perform better in school and stay out of trouble, so almost all children should be encouraged to become involved and stay involved. Low-income children face many barriers to such involvement, thus they need additional encouragement and assistance. Our program coordinator, Lisa Harris, is an invaluable resource for Learning Coaches trying to help their child overcome these barriers.

Set the bar higher. Love, praise and encouragement are critical, but most children also need someone to let them know they could jump higher, run faster, and get better grades, if only they believed in themselves and worked towards achieving their goals. Of critical importance, the bar for the short-term should be set only a little higher—high enough so that the child can achieve it with some extra work, but not so high that it appears insurmountable. Long-term goals should be loftier, such as a college or post-graduate degree.

These and other guidelines are discussed in greater depth in our Orientation Guide. [hyperlink to Orientation Guide].

Our History of Success

Of critical importance, the definition of “success” depends greatly upon the individual child. We do not select the children for our program based upon their aptidude or grades. The only requirements for joining our program are a desire to participate and residency in San Francisco public housing. While academic achievement is one of our goals, an even more important goal for each child to make better life choices by avoiding crime, teen pregnancy and drugs, and staying in school. For some children, academic success may entail graduating from high school, obtaining a job or developing a trade. For many others, academic success may be much loftier. One of the children who our entered our program as a second grader in 1996, our first year, is attending University of California, Santa Barbara. For her, success will be nothing short of reaching her goal of becoming a physician or obtaining a masters degree. Another boy who joined our program in 1996 is attending San Francisco City College. For him, success may be obtaining an associates degree. One of our proudest successes is a boy who has been in our program for almost a decade. He attends special education classes and routinely earns A’s and B’s.

Almost all of the children who entered our program as first or second graders over a decade ago have remained in our program or remained in touch with us throughout high school. None of our children is involved in the juvenile justice system, almost all of those in high school are on track to graduate, and some have already entered college.

One of the most extensive and systematic studies of mentoring was an examination 959 children with a mentor assigned by Big Brothers Big Sisters compared to a control group of children who remained on that organization’s waiting list. The study found that after only 18 months, the children with mentors were

*52% less likely to skip school
*46% less likely to begin using illegal drugs
*More likely to get along with their families and peers

(See Making a Difference in Schools: The Big Brothers Big Sisters School-Based Mentoring Impact Study by Carla Herrera, Jean Baldwin Grossman, Tina J. Kauh, Amy F. Feldman and Jennifer McMaken with Linda Z. Jucovy [August 2007])

Stories by Our Learning Coaches

Matt Kretzer and His Student

Some of our Learning Coaches have written the stories of their experiences to share with prospective volunteers and others interested in our program. Below are stories by several of our long-time Coaches; all have been mentors for at least five years and some have been mentors for over 10 years. Their stories reveal a variety of experiences, a range of successes, periods of frustration, and moments of joy.

Our Finances

The College Bound Foundation operates on a budget of less than $40,000 per year. Our primary expenses are approximately $27,000 per year for compensation and payroll expenses for our part-time program coordinator, approximately $5,000 per year for four annual group events such as our camp trip, approximately $1,800 for liability and workers’ compensation insurance, and about $3,000 for grants to selected students for colleges and enrichment activities. We pay nothing for rent, computers, copy machines, or postage, which are all provided free of charge by Jenkins Goodman Neuman & Hamilton LLP. Our only paid employee is for our part-time program coordinator; our president accepts no salary or other compensation. Our sole fundraising expense is for stationary that costs less than $100 per year. We are a tax-exempt organization pursuant to section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, thus we depend upon the generous support of our donors.

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