Earlier this year, Peter Kiewit Foundation awarded Collective for Youth, $200,000 for 3 consecutive years to directly support the out of school time sector within Omaha.   The emphasis of the investment is to build the quality, capacity, coordination and reach of out of school time organizations.

Pat Thraen, Associate Program Officer at Peter Kiewit Foundation said, “We are excited about this partnership with Collective For Youth to improve and enhance the capacity of out of school time organizations in Omaha and hope this support will result in an increase in the number of high quality OST programs, a more qualified and knowledgeable staff, improved processes, sustainability, and engaging curriculum that ties to the school day.”

Organizations operating a 21^st Century Community Learning Center site in Omaha were given the opportunity to apply for up to $50,000 in funding through a competitive grant process.  Agencies were encouraged to submit proposals focusing on making improvements to their organization structure, allowing them to improve program quality and to more effectively serve the individuals in their afterschool sites.  

In late August, a team of community reviewers selected five organizations to receive capacity building grants for the 2017-2018 year.   Selected grantees submitted proposals that were focused on building their capacity to manage data utilization and tracking, improve continuous improvement practices, enhance curriculum offerings, and increase staff members’ skills through additional trainings. 

Chief Executive Officer, Robert Patterson, stated that funding from the Collective for Youth and Peter Kiewit Foundation Capacity Building Project supported the Kids Can Community Center sySTEMic Capacity Project”.  Patterson expanded further with “The core objective of our project is to advance the quality of STEMsmart program delivery by increasing best-practice curriculum accompanied by targeted professional development for frontline staff and leadership development of program management staff”.

Chris Tointon, President and CEO of YMCA of GREATER OMAHA remarked that, “the opportunity to expand the capacity of our 150 year old organization will support our efforts to impact the youth of the Greater Omaha community for decades to come.”  Tointon went on to explain, “as our sophistication evolves to meet the growing needs of the community, our data collection, analysis, and implementation are critical to being efficient and effective.”

Collective for Youth is extremely grateful to Peter Kiewit Foundation’s Board of Trustees for recognizing the need to build capacity in Omaha’s out of school time organizations.  Without this funding, our partners wouldn’t have the necessary means to expand high quality services and reach additional students in Omaha.

The 2017-2018 Capacity Building Grantees are:

Completely KIDS was awarded $50,000 in funding to increase quality services and organization capacity.

DREAM was awarded $50,000 in funding to build organization infrastructure.

Kids Can Community Center was awarded $20,000 in funding to advance the quality of their STEM smart program delivery.

Nebraskans for Civic Reform was awarded $50,000 in funding to strengthen administrative capacity.

YMCA of GREATER OMAHA was awarded $30,000 in funding to hire an outside consultant to review processes and procedures for data collection and analyzation.

For more information regarding the philanthropic work of Peter Kiewit Foundation, visit their website here.