Most Americans know of Goodwill as the place where they drop off or pick up gently used goods. Yet, its true mission is bigger: to enhance the quality of life of individuals and families through education, skills training, and work. Here, we feature the Goodwill Excel Centers of Central and Southern Indiana for its innovative approach to addressing the needs of poor, rural youth, many of whom are also parents.

We chose to profile Goodwill Excel Centers of Indiana for three reasons. First, it has demonstrated a statewide capacity to reach all locations, including rural areas, where the disconnected youth rate is the highest. Second, it has developed a particular focus on parents. This is key because children born into poverty, and to parents without a high school degree, are far more likely to remain poor. Finally, its affiliation with Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP)—a well-established nurse-home visitation program with proven benefits for mother and child—demonstrate how philanthropy can encourage novel collaboration, built off of past success.

The Excel Centers are public charter schools that offer a path to a high school diploma (rather than GED), as well as industry-recognized certifications and even post-graduate education at select sites. The key to its learning centers is the flexible schedules and wrap-around supports they offer students, allowing adults ages 17 to 50 to break the cycle of poverty. Since 2010, Goodwill of Greater Indiana has opened 11 Excel Center sites in central and southern Indiana, serving more than 5,000 students a year. It is one of the oldest and largest statewide networks of Excel Centers.

The schools are organized to better meet the needs of older youth, adults, and parents—and to provide additional services such as one-on-one coaches, transportation assistance, and onsite childcare. The model is known for providing flexible, accessible education in year-round, eight-week terms to give students flexibility to attend, leave, and return with frequency. Students are not penalized for dropping out and returning. Many schools also offer flexibility to choose between morning, afternoon, evening, and online classes. Additionally, the Excel Centers offer specialized learning for ESL and special education students.

In rural locations over 70% of Excel students are between the ages of 16 and 24, a higher percentage than in urban areas. Excel Centers adapt curriculum and employer partnerships to respond to the local economy and unique needs of students. For example, through partnership with a local hospital in the rural community of Shelbyville, Indiana, local centers created a medical assistance and pharmaceutical industry certifications program, with an on-site internship component. The program created an employer pipeline for local Excel Center graduates. Indeed, that pipeline is so strong that the centers had to adjust coursework and graduation requirements to meet the needs of the employer while still giving participants enough time to graduate with a high school degree.

To meet the needs of young parents, the Excel Centers provide on-site childcare, along with access to maternal and child health services through NFP, whose nurses are co-located in two Goodwill Indiana locations—making it even easier for young parents and their children to receive health services on-site. The partnership also works in reverse. NFP nurses refer over 20% of the young mothers they serve to Excel Centers to further their education.

Donors can facilitate high-quality affiliations such as the one between Goodwill Indiana and NFP to encourage innovative and promising ways to reach the most disconnected youth. In addition to Indiana, Goodwill currently operates Excel Centers in Texas, Washington D.C., and Tennessee, with two more opening in Hawaii and Arkansas. And they have the potential to reach many more communities given the existing Goodwill network. The goal is to expand to 25 states by 2023. Interested donors can help expand the centers to new communities.

More mature programs are largely funded by state and federal grants, with support from Goodwill Industries. For these programs, philanthropy provides a critical, flexible pool of funds for identifying and building out new career pathways and employer partnerships. Philanthropic funds can also help cover smaller costs not covered by state and federal grants, such as a monthly transportation allowance—a significant detail considering that without it participants wouldn’t be able to get to school or a new job. As the Excel model expands to new communities, philanthropic funding will also be crucial to support the creation of a national office to share best practices and technical assistance across sites. To help, you can donate any amount to Goodwill Excel Centers of Central and Southern Indiana or Goodwill Excel Centers in Central Texas.

Interest in two-generation approaches to helping families gain more personal and economic stability has grown over the last few years. Donors have supported the efforts of multiservice organizations to better integrate existing programs for parents and children, as well as partnerships between organizations (like the Goodwill-NFP relationship) to provide more comprehensive services. While such partnerships can ease the transition between services for young parents and children, they often require additional time and effort on the part of social service organizations. Donors can provide this necessary “glue” money that helps organizations clear logistical hurdles to closer cooperation.

Many programs like NFP and Goodwill rely on existing federal funding sources (such as money for home visitation under the Health and Human Service budget or Workforce Innovation and Opportunity financing under the Department of Labor). The National Center for Children in Poverty offers a useful, short summary of the kinds of policies at the state level that can facilitate or impede efforts to help poor families.

Finally, though promising, the evidence around the effectiveness of two-generation programming, such as the partnership described above, is still emerging. Funding rigorous study and evaluation of models is yet another opportunity for philanthropy to help, one with the potential of strengthening the field overall.