Growth Strategy

Step Up's VISTA project is organized around three strategic pillars:
Resource Innovation, Scalable Reach, and Brand Prominence. Each pillar addresses a specific organizational barrier limiting Step Up's ability to reach low-income girls and young women at scale: insufficient fundraising infrastructure, insufficient community infrastructure to enter new markets, and insufficient visibility to ensure young people in those markets know Step Up exists. The project will seek to build the organizational capacity, community infrastructure, and fundraising systems needed to expand Step Up's programming into new markets, develop a partnership model for young women and teen girls, schools and districts and elevate Step Up's national visibility to ensure young people in low-income communities across the country can access the mentorship and career readiness resources they need to move out of poverty and into economic self-sufficiency.

• Create a smaller market landscape assessment methodology that will become Step Up’s standard approach to market assessment
• Conduct market assessments for priority communities — applying the methodology to the communities within reach of each region's existing markets to produce a structured report with a clear recommendation about expansion readiness and timing
• Create a community partner identification and outreach system — in each priority market, identifying the organizations and individuals that would be critical to a successful Step Up launch. This includes building the contact database and the initial relationship-building protocol, creating a warm network in each priority market before Step Up's formal entry
• Create a community expansion scoring rubric — a structured tool that weighs all the assessment factors and produces a relative ranking of priority markets

• Childcare assistance if eligible,
• Choice of Education Award or End of Service Stipend,
• Education award upon successful completion of service,
• Health Coverage*,
• Living Allowance,
• Stipend,
• Training.

• Permits attendance at school during off hours,
• Permits working at another job during off hours.

• Community and Economic Development,
• Community Outreach,
• Children/Youth.

• Communications,
• Community Organization,
• Computers/Technology,
• Writing/Editing,
• Youth Development,
• Team Work.

• CALIFORNIA,
• GEORGIA,
• ILLINOIS,
• NEW YORK,
• TENNESSEE,
• TEXAS Atlanta,
• Chicago,
• Dallas/Ft. Worth,
• Houston/Galveston,
• Los Angeles/Orange County,
• New York City (inc. Long Island CT NJ NY),
• San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose