One year after work with Accenture volunteers, CYC experiences sustained nonprofit impact enhancement
Carolina Youth Coalition is a college-access nonprofit organization that prepares high-achieving, under-resourced high school students to get into, excel at, and graduate from college so they can become full participants in society. Winners of this award receive up to $50,000 in value of consulting services and $10,000 in cash to implement their technology solution to help address economic mobility in Charlotte.
Carolina Youth Coalition was the winner of Apparo and Accenture’s 2021 Mission Possible Award. Read more about the Community Impact Project they won and completed. One year after their project wrapped up, we checked in with Lindsey Graves (Associate Director of College Programs) and Aaron Randolph (Executive Director) to learn about its sustained nonprofit impact.
CYC has successfully implemented online training and are achieving critical benefits
- Time savings of 200 hours annually (10 hours per week for 10 weeks a year for two staff members) is being realized to time saved scheduling and running in person meetings
- Higher quality support to student Fellows because of more consistent training of mentors and also volunteers – they are more confident and better prepared
- Decreased organizational keyman risk, as running training could now be transferred to another staff member if necessary
- Support of organizational growth goals – The organization is expecting to grow by 33% (from 60 to 80 students) by the 2024-2025 school year and Relais is adaptable, allowing them to
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- Add new trainings as new mentor and other volunteer roles change
- Increase volume of trainings without expanding staff
- Train remote volunteers, thus broadening their base of support for students
In closing, Aaron shared, “A lot of the time nonprofit leaders have to deal with only what is right in front of us. We’re in the weeds and putting out short term fires. This project gave us a chance to think bigger, think long term at a higher level and dream about what could be.
“Thanks to this thoroughness of this work with our Accenture volunteers, I have the confidence that we’ve selected the right tool. This is very important for helping our organization evolve and change for the better.”
We look forward to continuing our work together as CYC embarks on another Apparo Community Impact Project this summer.
