My Nonprofit Reviews

I have been on the board of Aim High for 12 years. Other reviews on this site posted by students, parents and teachers eloquently attest to Aim High's impact and excellence. Everything I have seen of the program over many years is consistent with these assessments. I would like to add my perspective as a person who has seen Aim High primarily as a board member, and also as someone who has served on many boards so can evaluate Aim High within that context. Aim High is one of the most highly functional organizations (whether for profit or nonprofit) that I have ever seen. There is a deep commitment to organizational integrity and development, a continuous practice of honest self-evaluation and self-improvement and a rigorous discipline of grounding key decisions in mission and core values. All of these attributes have allowed Aim High to expand its impact through the growth of program size and the expansion of its served geography while also maintaining high quality. These attributes also make Aim High a wonderful steward of donor dollars, ensuring a strong return on investment in the program. I cannot recommend Aim High more highly to a student, a parent, a teacher or a donor.

I have now been affiliated with Aim High for over ten years as a board member and parent of 3 teaching assistants/organizational staff for Aim High. Viewing the arc of the organization's development over the past 10 years, what most impresses me is their commitment to the on-going growth and improvement of the program through continuous and rigorous self-evaluation and bench-marking, all with relation back to Aim High's core mission and core values. Aim High is blessed with a highly professional and deeply committed leadership team that has the skills and conviction to move the organization forward and also an openness to new ideas, new collaborations and new approaches that will improve the overall outcomes for the populations they are seeking to serve.

This is the seventh summer that I have seen Aim High in action and their performance remains consistently strong. The combination of a well-structured academic program with the personal development focus of the "Issues & Cjoices" curriculum and the extracurricular/enrichment offerings makes for a program that really engages students and prepares them for success in school and in their personal lives. In addition, the fact that about one-third of the Aim High faculty are themselves graduates of the program provides credible and authentic role models for the students - I think this is an important contributor to Ain High's success. Overall, I think Aim High does a remarkable job of, as one graduate so eloquently put it, "convincing me that I had a right to an education, that I had the ability to succed academically and that I had a responsibility to myself, my family and my community to get an education".

More Feedback

I have a broad perspective on Aim High because I have served on the Board for about 5 years, two of my children have worked as teaching assistants in the summer, and a number of our employees' children have participated in the summer program. Aim High is an extraordinarily effective program that is meeting a critical and life-changing need (educational enhancement) for the most underserved members of our community. Aim High has demonstrated its success at providing the skills and motivation necessary for its students to graduate high school and matriculate at college. As one student put it: "Aim High is the place where I learned that I had a right to an education, I had the skills necessary to get an education and I had a responsibility to myself, my family and my community to get an education".

More Feedback