First Graduate

In families where no one has ever studied beyond high school, a student's successful completion of college is more than cause for celebration. It's a momentous, life-altering event in that family's history.<br><br>First Graduate helps San Francisco students become the first in their families to earn college degrees. Our students are largely immigrants or children of immigrants facing daunting economic and often cultural challenges. Bright and eager to excel in their educations and eventually their careers, they need the sorts of long-term support their less-challenged peers receive to become, and remain, competitive high school and college candidates.<br><br>Beginning the summer after 6th grade and continuing through college graduation and beyond, we support each of our students with a comprehensive array of highly effective programs-from individual academic coaching and high school and college admissions guidance to career counseling and more. Lasting between ten and twelve years, the longest of

We believe that in order to create lasting change in the educational success of students attending S

Goal One: Grow impact by strengthening parent and family programming, growing corporate and community partnerships, and enhancing our college-to-career programming.

Goal Two: Strengthen our team by improving staff retention, increasing staff, board, and associate board collaboration, and growing staff and Board capacity.

Goal Three: Grow funding by building and implementing a multi-channel financial strategy.

We encourage staff to participate in webinars and classes to enhance their professional development. First Graduate provides $800/ staff person each year for staff to invest in their own leadership development. We also encourage our staff to participate in community leadership programs like CORO. Our regularly scheduled professional development staff workshops are on themes identified by staff as being of interest. Several of our staff and board completed a DEI certification program. We have monthly professional development sessions focusing on allyship, education developments, etc. Staff is included in all board meetings and is frequently asked to present. Our team meetings have rotating leadership as do our social get-togethers each week. Staff participates in Board-level committees and co-plan social activities.

First Graduate faced many organizational challenges due to pandemic restrictions. One of the greatest was a reduction in our revenue due to our inability to fundraise through events and individual meetings with donors. Simultaneously, many grant funders delayed or suspended their grant-making during this time, and some long-term foundation supporters lowered their gift amounts. At the same time, we are proud to have risen to the occasion and taken steps that were unplanned and not in our budget to adjust to the needs of our students and families during school closures. In addition to our pivot to providing all of our coaching and workshop training online, we stepped up to allocate the resources needed to purchase laptops and Hotspots for our low-income students, who often did not have the resources in their homes to remain current with homework and our programs virtually. We delivered snacks to help keep spirits up and to provide a little relief to those families experiencing challenges with food security. First Graduate’s Program team increased its virtual coaching for college students regarding job searching and networking and provided workshops on job and salary negotiations, resume writing, and more. We purchased graduation stoles and other “survival kit” gifts and drove them to the homes of our graduating seniors in a caravan to help them celebrate their accomplishments. We were able to hold our first in-person annual benefit and college graduation celebration in 2022. We initiated an Associate Board comprising young professionals, launched our Alumni Network, and added new board members and staff. We maintained the connection with one another through weekly virtual lunch socials led by staff members in rotation. We changed the format of our team meetings, rotating leadership and including "shout-outs" of appreciation for one another. We are proud of the ways we adapted during this extremely challenging time.