Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics or BEAM http://www.beammath.org as it is now more commonly known, is an organization that has been working with low-income students throughout the New York City region since 2011 to make sure they get on and stay on the existing STEM pathway. The student program has steadily grown in the past five years from an intensive summer math program to a year-round mentoring program along with a core summer program. The organization has already served 251 students, 51 percent of whom are female and 49 percent of whom are male, and 80 percent of whom are eligible for federally subsidized school lunch.
Lynn Cartwright-Punnett, director of programs and development, generously took time to answer a few questions about BEAM via email earlier this summer.
Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics or BEAM http://www.beammath.org as it is now more commonly known, is an organization that has been working with low-income students throughout the New York City region since 2011 to make sure they get on and stay on the existing STEM pathway. The student program has steadily grown in the past five years from an intensive summer math program to a year-round mentoring program along with a core summer program. The organization has already served 251 students, 51 percent of whom are female and 49 percent of whom are male, and 80 percent of whom are eligible for federally subsidized school lunch.
Lynn Cartwright-Punnett, director of programs and development, generously took time to answer a few questions about BEAM via email earlier this summer.
Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics or BEAM http://www.beammath.org as it is now more commonly known, is an organization that has been working with low-income students throughout the New York City region since 2011 to make sure they get on and stay on the existing STEM pathway. The student program has steadily grown in the past five years from an intensive summer math program to a year-round mentoring program along with a core summer program. The organization has already served 251 students, 51 percent of whom are female and 49 percent of whom are male, and 80 percent of whom are eligible for federally subsidized school lunch.
Lynn Cartwright-Punnett, director of programs and development, generously took time to answer a few questions about BEAM via email earlier this summer.
Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics or BEAM http://www.beammath.org as it is now more commonly known, is an organization that has been working with low-income students throughout the New York City region since 2011 to make sure they get on and stay on the existing STEM pathway. The student program has steadily grown in the past five years from an intensive summer math program to a year-round mentoring program along with a core summer program. The organization has already served 251 students, 51 percent of whom are female and 49 percent of whom are male, and 80 percent of whom are eligible for federally subsidized school lunch.
Lynn Cartwright-Punnett, director of programs and development, generously took time to answer a few questions about BEAM via email earlier this summer.
Was there any point in your five year history when BEAM received a critical gift?
We simply would not be where we are without the early and sustained support of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation (JKCF). The first summer of BEAM (then called SPMPS) was held in 2011, funding by a bequest of an individual who wanted to contribute to math equity in NYC. In June of 2011, as Dan Zaharopol (our founder and executive director) was planning for that first summer, JKCF put out a request for proposals "from nonprofit education organizations or universities operating summer academic enrichment programs for grants of up to $250,000 per year for a total of up to three years to expand or initiate work with low-income, high-achieving students entering grades 6th thru 12th." This serendipitous RFP led to five years of funding, totaling over $1,000,000 to support our work in 2012-2016. This year, JKCF's support is enabling us to expand BEAM with our pilot 6th grade program. In addition, the connections we made through JKCF have led to our new support from the Edwin Gould Foundation (who heard about us in a JKCF press release), students being accepted to the Carleton College Summer Quantitative Reasoning Institute (Carleton's summer programs were also selected from that first JKCF RFP), and well as considerable advice to Dan and our staff in the early years. While we do not anticipate this funding lasting forever, and we have made plans for FY2017 assuming no further support from JKCF, we would not have been able to make plans and expand during those first three years of funding without knowing that the JKCF support was in place. By supporting the first three years, they let us get to a place where we had results to show and time to mature before having to seek additional, new funding.
Maintaining such a close focus on your students' progress during the academic year with a small staff has got to be challenging. Have you developed any short-cuts to communicating efficiently with students and teachers during the academic year?
Maintaining such a close focus on our students' progress during the academic year with a small staff is the most challenging thing we do. Every year we get better, and yet we find room for improvement. With the 8th graders, our most critical age, we send out information and then triage. Some people respond to emails. Some RVSP for events after getting postcards in the mail. Some have teachers who will help us track them down. We encourage students to come to our weekly office hours. Once we have exhausted those methods, we resort to phone calls, individual texts, and Facebook messages. This year, for example, I spent weeks trying to figure out where one of our 8th graders had gotten into high school, finally succeeding when I posted in the BEAM 2015 Facebook group asking if anyone had heard from him recently. Chagrined, he checked his email and got back to me: he got into one of the best high schools in the city! We have even, in critical situations, gone to students' houses and knocked on their doors to explain the difference between a 1040 and a W2 so they can finally finish a financial aid application. We are excited to add group texting to our portfolio of communication methods this fall; early research in educational outreach seems to show that mass texting systems are one of the best ways to remind students about deadlines and action items, as well as to gather information (like which high school you got into). We are also excited because this should help us gather information from families who speak sufficient English to text, but not to talk on the phone. (The majority of our families speak English or Spanish, and that's simple; every year, however, we have a few families who speak other languages not shared with our staff, where the English is too limited to have substantive conversations.)
BEAM recently met a matching grant -- congratulations! Any insights or surprises along the way -- particularly in appealing to individual donors?
Honestly, I think we're all a little surprised at how well our individual giving has gone. We run a great program and hold great events, but our reputation has mostly spread through word of mouth. We are very slowly building a network of supporters and potential supporters, so that we can, for example, invite individuals to fundraising events and send out appeals. As we expand our communications (like our new quarterly newsletter and our soon to be published first ever annual report), increase how we thank donors (with an honor roll on our website and mailed New Year's thank you cards, both new in fall 2015), add social media (we joined Twitter in fall 2015 and have seriously increased our use of Facebook), and show up in the media more often (with spring coverage in The Atlantic, Education Week, The Washington Post, Bloomberg View, and Black Enterprise), we see opportunities to connect with supporters better than we ever have in the past.
Thanks, Lynn!