Empowering NYC's Youth with Management Acceleration

Poverty-fighting nonprofits often lack the resources and tools they need to strengthen their resiliency and scale their impact. To address this, Robin Hood’s Management Acceleration team partners with grantees to solve key management challenges while helping to build their networks, develop skills, and fund capacity-building projects. We’d like you to meet one of those community partners: iMentor.

In a world where educational disparities remain prevalent, organizations like iMentor strive to bridge the gap and offer personalized support to students in underserved communities. However, without the right resources and capacity, even the most purposeful nonprofits can face challenges in achieving their vision. This is where Robin Hood’s Management Acceleration team helps out, providing essential support to iMentor in their quest to ensure every student in their partner schools is paired with a dedicated mentor and receives the guidance they need to pursue higher education.

Robin Hood’s MA team specializes in nonprofit capacity building, bolstering the capabilities of our community partners, like iMentor, by connecting them to pro bono opportunities, extending grants to support critical projects, and offering advisory support to help these organizations thrive and fight against poverty in New York City. Through a collaborative and consultative approach, Robin Hood MA worked closely with iMentor to help them attract more mentors and ensure every student in their partner schools has the opportunity to be matched with a dedicated mentor to empower them to overcome obstacles and reach their full potential.

Capacity building services for community partners are delivered by Robin Hood’s MA team, which delivers targeted technical assistance grants, providing $1.5 million in paid grant making and multi-partner initiatives and $5 million in pro bono consulting projects annually.

Krista Njapa, Senior Director of Mentor Engagement (NYC), expressed her gratitude for the support from Robin Hood: “Thanks to Robin Hood’s Management Assistance, we were able to tap into things like an amazing engagement with Deloitte’s Service Corps — a pro bono consulting service that allowed us to unlock insights into problems and challenges that we weren’t able to do on our own — and through those insights, we were able to solve problems like some of the critical challenges we faced in recruitment.”

If you are interested in becoming a volunteer mentor, get started at imentor.org, but don’t forget to watch their story and learn how you can help make sure every New Yorker gets a fair shot.