ANNUAL
REPORT
2016

2016 INVESTMENTS

2016 Community Investments

Helios Education Foundation invests its financial resources annually in education initiatives in Arizona and Florida that are building a pipeline of students who are prepared for success from the earliest years through college and career. Investing across the entire education continuum helps to create a college-going and completing culture in our communities. Below is a summary of the Foundation’s 2016 community investments. Included in the total investment figure are the Foundation’s charitable contributions toward education activities, including sponsorships, supporting organization grants, and other education-related community investments.

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Early Grade Success

With 90 percent of a child’s brain being developed by age five, it is important to lay the foundation for learning during that stage of growth. As a result, the Foundation’s work in Early Grade Success reflects a focus on building and strengthening sustainable early childhood education systems that create quality early learning environments for children. We focus on improving access to and the quality of early childhood professional development for teachers, administrators, and practitioners, and bridging the early childhood and K-3 education systems to help young children transition successfully into kindergarten and read at grade level by the end of 3rd grade.

Early Grade Success
Abriendo Puertas, Arizona

$2,240,000

2016 EARLY GRADE SUCCESS INVESTMENTS

  • $150,000

    Children’s Action Alliance
    Arizona Early Childhood Alliance

    The Arizona Early Childhood Alliance (AZECA), formerly known as BUILD AZ, is an alliance of 50 cross-sector partners statewide who work together to give every Arizona child a great start in life. AZECA is Arizona’s unified voice on early childhood, providing informed messages and credible resources that help leaders create positive change for our children. Strategies focus on raising awareness, increasing access, and advocating for policies and programs to ensure all Arizona children are prepared for kindergarten and are on track to succeed by the end of 3rd grade.

  • $1,590,000

    Orlando Repertory Theatre
    Dual Language Learning - Florida

    Orange County Public Schools, in partnership with Arizona State University, Childsplay, and Orlando Repertory Theatre, is implementing a dual language learning program in voluntary prekindergarten classrooms in order to improve the early language and literacy skills of native English-speaking and native Spanish-speaking students.

  • $500,000

    Phoenix Final Four Local Organizing Committee
    Read to the Final Four Arizona 2017

    The Read to the Final Four Literacy Challenge was a statewide reading challenge involving third graders in Arizona. The challenge was built off of the NCAA March Madness bracket concept where schools were broken up into regions and competed with other schools in their bracket on the number of minutes read. In all, over 34,000 third graders at 394 schools read over 6.2 million minutes as a result of this initiative. Helios partnered with myOn, an online digital reading platform, that enabled the third grades to access over 5,500 digital books.

College and Career Readiness

Helios’ largest area of focus is in the College and Career Readiness impact area. This area accounts for the critical middle and high school years for students. The Foundation’s emphasis on College and Career Readiness reflects the fact that the knowledge and skills students acquire during these years set the stage for their future success in postsecondary education. It’s also the time when students can better correlate what they are learning in the classroom with the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in a competitive global workforce.

College and Career Readiness
Take Stock in Children, Florida

$6,735,988

College and Career Readiness INVESTMENTS

  • $250,000

    ASU Foundation for a New American University
    CompuGirls Remixed i3 Match

    Launched in 2007, CompuGirls provides adolescent girls ages 13-18 from high-needs districts access to a culturally responsive computing curriculum. Initially implemented as an out-of-school experience, CompuGirls Remixed leverages this grant and federal Investing In Innovation (i3) funds to revise the curriculum as an in-school model designed to increase STEM self-efficacy.

  • $85,988

    ASU Foundation for a New American University
    Summer Melt Research

    This research project focuses on understanding the "summer melt" phenomenon in which students planning to attend college do not matriculate to a postsecondary institution following high school graduation. The research will consist of surveying students from Phoenix Union High School District who were accepted to Arizona State University but did not attend in the fall of 2016. Surveys will also be given to students who did matriculate as well as parents/guardians of both groups of students.

  • $300,000

    Be A Leader Foundation
    NextGen Matriculation Specialists

    This project provides matriculation specialists who will develop a comprehensive matriculation curriculum that supports Phoenix Union High School students from the beginning of their senior year through postsecondary enrollment the following fall semester. The ultimate goal is to increase the number of Phoenix Union students who transition into a postsecondary institution the fall after high school graduation.

  • $400,000

    Florida Philanthropic Network
    Community Foundation Challenge Grant for LCAN (Local College Access Network) Development

    The Community Foundation Challenge Grant for Local College Access network Development is a one-year initiative that builds on the success of the Florida College Access Network’s focus on improving college and career preparation, access, and completion for all students. Florida community foundations will have the opportunity to enhance, strengthen, and sustain their local college access coalitions with dollar-for-dollar matching challenge grants.

  • $1,050,000

    Stand For Children Arizona
    Sustainability Funding

    This grant supports Stand for Children’s implementation of a three-year business plan to increase internal capacity and sustainability, implement advocacy campaigns, recruit and train education champions, empower parents as education advocates, and ensure quality implementation of statewide education policy.

  • $300,000

    Tampa Bay Sports Commission
    Tampa Bay College Access Initiative

    Helios’ support of this effort was part of the College Football Playoff Foundation’s Extra Yard for Teachers initiative. The program helped the school districts of Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco counties empower schools, teachers, and community stakeholders to build a college-going culture for all K-12 students and help low-income high school seniors navigate the college-going process through a number of local initiatives.

  • $1,350,000

    Teach For America – Miami Dade
    Regional Sustainability Model

    This investment will help support Teach For America’s partnership with Miami-Dade County Public Schools in recruiting a diverse group of the nation’s most promising leaders to make an enduring commitment to educational equity, beginning with teaching for at least two years in high-need schools.

  • $1,000,000

    Teach For America – Phoenix
    Operating Support

    This investment in Teach For America – Phoenix fuels a pipeline of leaders for immediate and long-term work toward educational equity in Arizona over the next four years. These resources will help recruit, train, and cultivate leaders to become classroom teachers, while propelling them to become lifelong advocates for educational excellence for all.

  • $2,000,000

    University of South Florida Foundation, Inc.
    Florida C.A.N. Capacity Building and Network Development 2.0

    Helios' investment will advance Florida C.A.N.’s 2016-2019 strategic framework and position the network to build upon current strengths in research and data, continue to grow the organization's influence in the policy arena, and strengthen the growing college access movement in Florida.

Postsecondary Completion

Helios Education Foundation’s strategic mission is to create opportunities for every individual in Arizona and Florida to succeed in postsecondary education. With more and more future jobs requiring a highly skilled workforce, it is critical that all students pursue and complete some form of postsecondary education, including attaining a certificate, license or degree. Attainment of a postsecondary education will open the door to more opportunities for students and ensure that they can compete successfully for the jobs of the future.

Postsecondary Completion
First Generation Scholars Program, Florida

$3,765,000

Postsecondary Completion INVESTMENTS

  • $100,000

    Arizona Community Foundation
    Achieve60AZ

    Achieve60AZ is a statewide community initiative to increase Arizona's postsecondary degree attainment rate to 60 percent by 2030. This funding will provide capacity support to develop and complete an organizational structure, core mission, goals, and execution strategies to reach the 60 percent goal.

  • $65,000

    Be a Leader Foundation
    Phoenix Union High School District Summer Melt

    The Phoenix Union Summer Melt Project is a pilot project targeting 2016 Phoenix Union High School graduates who have been admitted to Arizona State University. The project will use an integrated, comprehensive service model, including case management and workshops, to engage students and their families with the goal of increasing the number of admitted students who enroll and begin postsecondary courses in the fall semester immediately following graduation.

  • $3,500,000

    Take Stock in Children
    Regional Scale Pilot

    Focused on increasing the number of students who complete a postsecondary degree, this pilot project will scale Osceola and Orange County affiliates by leveraging the use of predictive analytics to provide more insight into the selection of students and scholarships.

  • $100,000

    Valencia College Foundation
    Education Ecosystem Collaborative Design

    This grant supports Orange County Public Schools, the School District of Osceola County, the University of Central Florida, and Valencia College in designing an “education ecosystem” consisting of a unified data model that can be used to address questions regarding student readiness, success behaviors, and characteristics. In the long term, the entities are interested in the use of big data and predictive analytics to identify productive student pathways and effective interventions across the educational ecosystem to increase student success.

Innovative Initiatives

Community investments made through Helios’ Innovative area provide the Foundation the flexibility to support initiatives that address key education reform issues. Like the Foundation’s other focus areas, Innovative Initiatives support the Foundation’s broader strategic effort to build and reform effective and coordinated education systems in both states that prepare all students for success in college and career.

Innovative Initiatives
Ready Now Yuma, Arizona

$2,606,250

Innovative Initiatives

  • $2,000,000

    Expect More Arizona
    Operating Support

    This investment supports Expect More Arizona's work on increasing public will to support education by raising awareness of critical issues, building public support and spotlighting excellence, moving parents and voters to take action, and fostering statewide collaboration to achieve shared outcomes.

  • $26,250

    Florida Chamber Foundation
    Florida Partnership for Attainment

    The Florida Partnership for Attainment will support the development of a short-term (6-12 month) strategic plan. The plan will include organizational development, conducting a landscape analysis, strategic engagement with legislators and industry leaders, and articulation of a clearly defined problem statement regarding attainment.

  • $130,000

    NALEO Educational Fund
    Education Policy Institute

    Helios Education Foundation and NALEO Educational Fund are partnering to establish a public policy academy for Arizona elected officials at the state, county, city, town, and school district levels. This academy will provide policymakers with the content knowledge and governance skills needed to promote innovative and successful policies toward improving educational outcomes for Arizona students.

  • $450,000

    Partnership for Economic Innovation
    Velocity Initiative

    Velocity is a metropolitan business plan to accelerate and transform the Greater Phoenix region into a top market for innovation. The goal is to increase productivity of the region’s firms, people, and assets by reinvigorating its advanced industrial base, spurring the capacity for innovation, and optimizing the talent pipeline to better connect students and job seekers with employers and education programs.