Education philanthropy typically concerns itself with what happens in the classroom, but how children spend time outside of school matters, too — and it matters a lot. Children spend far more of their waking hours out of school than in, including over the summer when schools are closed. Quality out-of-school programs boost social-emotional development, prevent learning loss, and give young people access to caring adults, hands-on learning, time in nature, companionship and fun.
The Wallace Foundation has long recognized the importance of out-of-school time to youth development, and has made it a key focus of its giving. To date, Wallace’s work has emphasized out-of-school programs for elementary-age children, but a recently launched initiative shifts that focus to adolescents in middle through high school.
The program, “Advancing Opportunities for Adolescents,” will seek to increase adolescents’ access to quality out-of-school opportunities “that spark new interests, skills and an awareness of potential future careers they may choose to pursue.”
Today, many young people are experiencing mental health issues, and a number of funders are rallying to respond to the widespread youth mental health crisis. The causes of the crisis are complex, but have been linked to isolation and the absence of a sense of belonging, among other factors. Quality after school programs can provide one solution by offering a safe and enriching space in the company of peers and concerned adults.
For its new program, Wallace identified seven communities where it will provide support for local cross-sector partnerships to promote out-of-school opportunities for kids from seventh through 11th grade. Like much of Wallace’s other funding, the geographic scope is national, ranging from Wayne County, New York, to Monterey County, California.
“This initiative is about working with communities to help them build lasting systems that support young people’s growth, learning and wellbeing based on a set of proven principles,” said Gigi Antoni, Wallace’s vice president of youth development, when the initiative was announced. “Although these seven partnerships have different zip codes, what they all have in common is their commitment to economic mobility, their openness to learning and trying new approaches, and the strong foundation they each have in place to take on this endeavor.”
A Reader’s Digest fortune backs arts, education, and youth development
The Wallace Foundation is built on the fortune of DeWitt and Lila Acheson Wallace, who founded Reader’s Digest in 1922. The Wallaces championed education, youth development and the arts, and the foundation continues to support those priorities today. IP’s Mike Scutari has reported on the foundation’s funding for the arts, including for arts organizations of color and building audience engagement. In 2024, the foundation’s total assets approached $2 billion, and its total giving topped $54 million.
In terms of education, its largest giving area, the foundation promotes the development and retention of strong school leaders and youth development, including via arts education, social and emotional learning and out-of-school opportunities. The foundation has also worked to create comprehensive after-school systems in cities across the country.
Wallace makes the case that access to quality out-of-school programs is an equity issue. Prosperous families have no problem finding and paying for stimulating after-school programs and summer camps with all the amenities. High-income families spend nine times more on out-of-school activities than low-income families, according to the Afterschool Alliance’s “America After 3 p.m.” analysis. Cost is the greatest barrier that prevents families from enrolling their children in programs, that study found, followed by transportation issues and lack of programs. And as parents struggling right now to plan summer activities for their children know, costs just keep shooting higher. “Concerningly, of the 29.6 million children whose parents want afterschool programs for them, more than 3 in 4 (77%) are being left behind,” the report concludes.
For many families, these barriers create real hardship, with parents forced to juggle work schedules, miss work altogether, or leave children unsupervised. Some families rely on relatives to help out; other kids end up enrolled in poorly resourced programs where there are few activities and a small ratio of adults to children. As Antoni put it, “Some kids get Wheaties in this space, and some kids get Fruit Loops.”
How Advancing Opportunities for Adolescents works
For adolescents, lack of access to quality out-of-school opportunities can mean long, unsupervised hours after school and over the summer with little to do, which can increase the likelihood that they will become involved in risky — even criminal — behavior. Research by RAND has demonstrated that involvement in quality afterschool not only improves academic outcomes, but reduces involvement in drug use and other illicit behaviors.
The foundation’s new program will support local partnerships that offer enrichment, mentorship and skills development.
As a funder, the Wallace Foundation’s approach is methodical and rooted in research. “The Wallace strategy has to do with making large investments in places that are working toward shared goals,” Antoni said. “The way we lead up to that is we take a look at what’s happening in the field. We talk to experts, researchers, other philanthropies, and we also talk to practitioners. We look for where there is a gap — an implementation gap or an information gap that the field is grappling with — and then we dig into that space in our funding. We pull together a cohort of communities that are already working on the problem and we work with them over a period of time to accelerate their implementation or catalyze the improvements that they’re trying to make in their community.”
The foundation commissions research on its initiatives as they unfold, exploring what works, what doesn’t work, and their impact, and then publishes and distributes the findings. “The idea is that we can’t fund everywhere, but we can fund in a way that can inform policy and practice more broadly than the communities we fund directly,” Antoni said.
The decision to focus on adolescents in this recent initiative is rooted in research on youth development. “Everybody understands that early childhood is a period of brain plasticity, it’s a very generative time for us to learn,” Antoni said. “That is also true in adolescence, and it provides another opportunity, developmentally, to impact young people in very powerful ways that can change the trajectory of their lives and the way that they move forward into adulthood.”
But out-of-school opportunities are far less available to adolescents than they are to elementary school students. For the Wallace team, this disconnect between an important youth developmental stage and available opportunities was a gap that needed addressing.
To seek out local partnerships working to strengthen positive youth development, the Wallace team issued an open call, and received 1,700 expressions of interest from communities all over the country. The response “confirmed to our team that there was a ‘there’ there,” Antoni said. “This kind of cross-sector partnership work wasn’t just happening in a few places—it’s all across the country.”
The foundation funded 30 of those community partnerships for a year, and then selected seven final candidates. “The focus that we saw [in these community partnerships] was these highly valued civic outcomes — not just about graduation or postsecondary attainment, but about economic mobility more broadly,” Antoni said.
The seven selected communities include: Adams County and Broomfield County, Colorado; Akron, Ohio; Hamilton County, Tennessee; Poughkeepsie, New York; Monterey County, California; South Salt Lake City and Millcreek, Utah; and Wayne County, New York.
The foundation anticipates spending up to $120 million on the six-year effort, with each community receiving $6 to $10 million, as well as technical assistance, peer-learning opportunities and ongoing support. Research will be led by American Institutes of Research.
As it was developing the initiative, the Wallace team found that most college and career pathway programs don’t start until the later high school grades. But when the team spoke to administrators for those programs, most said they wished that they had started earlier, so Advancing Opportunities for Adolescents programs will start in middle school.
Mentorship will be a major component of the partnerships. Participating young people will be paired with a trained and caring adult who will help guide and support them, and connect them to experiences and resources that align with their interests. The mentor will help the student overcome barriers to accessing opportunities and support the student as they choose what high school they want to attend and what college or career track they want to pursue.
The centrality of mentorship reflects the foundation’s emphasis on social-emotional learning. ”We know that all young people need strong developmental relationships with adults,” Antoni said. “This is really a game changer for kids, and a lot of kids have that, but some kids do not. In this initiative, adults will make connections between the different environments that young people are learning and growing in, and help make those connections stronger.”
Related Inside Philanthropy Resources:
For Subscribers Only
Out-of-school — a better investment than ed tech?
The Wallace Foundation is a funding leader in the out-of-school space, but other funders are stepping up, too. The Ballmer Group and Bloomberg Philanthropies have both backed summer learning initiatives, for example, and Marguerite A. Cargill Philanthropies and a handful of other funders support access to summer camp.
Meanwhile, with support from funders including Wallace, the Children’s Funding Project and the After School Alliance are leading a coalition that is pushing to have potential settlement dollars awarded in lawsuits against big tech companies fund support for out-of-school programs. (Just last week, in a lawsuit many consider a bellwether, a young plaintiff won her case against giant tech companies, which she accused of creating features designed to be addictive).
Still, out-of-school is an area that could use more support, particularly at a time when so many young people are experiencing mental health issues. Today, big education funders are deploying vast sums to promote tech and AI in schools, even amid signs of a growing ed tech backlash. Those dollars might be better spent expanding kids’ access to in-person enrichment activities and mentorship opportunities — the kind offered in quality out-of-school programs. Because today, most of our kids could use a little less tech, a lot more human connection.
