FutureMap's "Dream Green" Program

FutureMap's "Dream Green" Program is a workforce development program bringing diverse talent to the climate change movement across the US. Our program addresses the challenges of developing a diverse workforce in the green sector, particularly for small nonprofits in interior US regions. It also addresses employment access barriers faced by first-generation college students, who are majority minority and low-income. Our solution scales a program we successfully implemented this summer: we worked with 8 nonprofits to develop 20 internships, secured funding (since unpaid internships block participation of low-income students), and specifically recruited from FutureMap's pool of first-gen talent. For the students, FutureMap provided job readiness training and ongoing professional development support over the summer to ensure the interns succeed in their roles (e.g. overcoming imposter syndrome, communication, etc.) 100% of our partners asked to participate again. If scaled, we'd create hundreds of jobs and develop tomorrow's climate leaders. 

The green economy is geographically dispersed and growing, making it promising for workforce development initiatives. The first problem facing this sector is that climate change disproportionately affects low-income communities of color, but the movement lacks representation (in 2019 people of color made up less than 12% of employees in the space). The movement needs a pipeline. The second problem is supporting the 50%+ of undergraduates in the US who are first in their family to pursue a degree, and face systemic employment barriers. Over 50% of first-gen students are people of color; 70% are low-income. They're less likely than non-first-gen peers to use familial connections to find a job, a disadvantage in a nepotistic job market; they make $600 less per month on average than their non-first-gen peers; they're less likely to have internships, which impacts full-time prospects; they're more likely to be underemployed, which impacts lifelong earning potential. To drive equitable climate solutions, we need workforce programs to attract and retain diverse talent, particularly in underserved geographic regions of the US. First-gen students actually want to enter the nonprofit and government sector at a greater rate than their peers, suggesting that this solution meets the needs of all stakeholders.

Our program is a climate-change and first-gen specific workforce development pilot, aiming to scale our summer prototype (20 internships). First, we want to work with a network of 70+ climate-change nonprofits in our networks (many based in the Midwest and South) to develop DEI strategies and 400 internships. Second, FutureMap provides Job Readiness training to all first-gen students, providing lifelong career readiness skills. Third, we will select top candidates for internships and match them with the organizations. Finally, we provide ongoing professional development support and community-building over the summer to ensure the interns succeed in what is often their first-ever professional work experience. Our volunteer coaches conduct workshops and coaching sessions on impostor syndrome, effective communication at work, and other retention-focused skills. This program is lean and scalable: with just a couple of project managers, we could manage operations and support hundreds of interns. Additional funding beyond hiring entry-level project manager(s) will go directly to paying interns to work at nonprofits that can't afford to pay. The outcome of this program is job creation of 400 internships and the creation of a diverse, national, sustainability-focused talent pool, setting us up to grow to thousands of internships in subsequent years.

"First-generation" is an intersectional demographic representing many cultures, races, children of immigrants, and rural geographies. FutureMap has worked with over 300 first-generation students in one year (90% identify as people of color, 50% have family financial responsibilities). We have developed a deep understanding of their specific experiences transitioning to the workforce. Some of the themes of their experience include impostor syndrome; not knowing unspoken professional workplace expectations like how to write professional emails; networking and finding opportunities; and struggling to have difficult conversations about race and belonging at work. We have developed our professional development curriculum in partnership with our own first-generation interns, who have shared their personal questions and experiences. As one of our interns said this summer, “FutureMap carved out a space where we could reflect on our experiences with people who could empathize with us through having the shared identity of being first-gen. It was a really supportive environment that also gave me a lot of resources to think about each week.”

Regarding the needs of the climate change movement, our solution has been tested and co-developed with our existing nonprofit partners. 100% have provided positive feedback and want to collaborate to employ interns. 

The primary dimension directly addressed by the FutureMap "Dream Green" Program is matching current and future employer and industry needs (the green economy, particularly small nonprofits in underserved US regions) with our workforce development program, specifically targeted to diverse first-generation job seekers. The program also supports two other dimensions: driving resources to BIPOC (since 90% of our students identify as BIPOC); and increasing access to high-quality development and skill-building for first-gen students entering the professional workforce during college, often their first time being a summer intern. These internships will lead to full-time roles, valuable networks, and lifelong career skills. 

• Our leadership team (part-time volunteers / contractors): 4 individuals who will be supporting the strategy conversations with nonprofits as well as the summer coaching for the interns
• Contractor: 1 or 2 individuals who are paid to manage and administer the operations of the program

FutureMap is a nonprofit focused on supporting the college-to-career transition for first-generation students. Our mission is to equalize the professional playing field, increase social capital, and tailor our services to the Gen Z / First-gen experience. We were founded by two women of color who are children of immigrants, Millennials, and personally experienced discrimination and obstacles in the workplace. Our leadership team is 75% women, 75% BIPOC, and 25% LGBTQ; we hire first-gen students as interns and actually put them in charge of developing culturally relevant curriculum and programs; and we are constantly developing our own anti-racism programming. As part of our mission, FutureMap also provides DEI consulting services to the nonprofits and partners we work with. Our team has had very nuanced conversations about intergenerational workplaces, having conversations about race, impostor syndrome, and what aspects of the system should be challenged while we also empower individuals.

One partner, Solar United Neighbors, has said that in all their years trying to "crack" the diverse talent challenge for their nonprofit, they had never encountered a program that worked until ours. Here's why it's innovative. 

1. Other workforce development programs and pathways are not focused on the growing green economy. 
2. We are solving a marketplace problem that would not have been possible without the rise of remote work. We match underserved college students with small nonprofits, many of which are doing work in interior regions of the US (Kansas, Wisconsin, etc.) who would normally not be able to attract this talent. 
3. We don't just match and leave; we provide community, resources, and important career skills while on the job. This is a huge gap in many college access and career-focused organizations that just prepare folks to get the job. Our interns surpassed other interns in the skills of taking initiative, time management, and other skills we specifically trained them on. 
4. We build capacity for the nonprofits, not just the students. We provided inclusive recruiting strategies, templates, and workshops that help the nonprofits develop a long-term approach to engaging with communities. 
5. Our students bring innovation. For example, several Latinx interns noticed that their own community was being underserved at their nonprofits, and launched Spanish outreach. New perspectives, driven by changing demographics of our country, is critical if we want to build inclusive movements. 
6. Our approach can be scaled and applied to a variety of sectors, populations, and geographies. 

FutureMap's founders work in tech and have engineering backgrounds, and we evaluate our tech needs in the short- and long-term. 

Short-term: We see tech as an enabler. Our pilot was extremely low-tech, but proved the proof of concept. With very little capital (just $25K), we created 20 jobs AND built the infrastructure to help us scale even more. Tech will help us organize and match candidates with nonprofits (AirTable), track engagement and metrics (EZText for pulse checks, Google Forms for surveys), and scale the efforts of one project manager to manage hundreds. Remote work technology is also critical: community development relied on having small cohorts of interns (who meet via Zoom, Slack, WhatsApp) meeting regularly to discuss on-the-job challenges. Our program does not rely on an expensive technology investment to work, but uses text messaging, simple back-end processes, and remote working software. 

Long-term: We see two applications of technology. First, we'd like to build a platform that manages cohorts in a transparent and scalable way. The creation of community is critical to enabling intern success; technology will help us scale that feeling of closeness. The second is using AI and machine learning to develop AI-driven "coaching" -- since we get so many common questions about succeeding at work, we believe AI can help us reach more people when they have tough situations with recruiting, DEI, or workplace skills. 

AirTable, Zoom, EZText, and Google Forms are well-established and widely available technologies that allow us to quickly scale and grow. Longer-term, developing a platform for managing cohorts would simply require some programming and web development to automate some of our processes. Regarding AI and machine learning, we believe chatbot technology is a great analogue and could be leveraged to create our next generation virtual coach. 

Activities (Students): 

• We provide a 5-workshop job readiness training series (interview prep, resume guidance, etc.) to every first-gen student who applies. 
• We select and match the best candidates for roles that are tailored specifically for them.
• We provide training, support, and professional development throughout the summer to help them transition to the workplace. 

Activities (Nonprofits):

• We provide DEI strategy workshops and advising. 
• We support the development of effective internship project plans.
• We provide training to all supervisors, including how to create inclusive teams and work with first-gen students. 
• We provide support and troubleshooting to the nonprofits. 

Outputs (Students):

• Students get access to an opportunity that they may have not acquired without us. 
• Students gain competencies in job hunting, career development, and professional skills like communication and networking.  

Outputs (Nonprofits)

• Nonprofits develop inclusive recruiting strategies.
• Resource-strapped nonprofits can leverage interns to complete projects. 

Short-term outcomes (Students):

• Students explore a career path, put a critical professional internship experience on their resumes, and have the potential to be hired full-time. Note that internships are strongly correlated with stable full-time jobs post-graduation. 

Short-term outcomes (Nonprofits):

• Nonprofits can "test-drive" interns to be full-time hires, saving them time and money on recruiting. 

Long-term outcomes (Students):

• Students build a network in the environmental movement which can serve them for their entire careers. 

Long-term outcomes (Nonprofits):

• Nonprofits now have a skilled talent pool (the entire FutureMap first-gen community) and long-term inclusive strategies
• Nonprofits have access to innovation and culturally-relevant programming for our continuously evolving, diverse communities

Next year: Grow and scale our "Dream Green" program to create 400 internships across the US, aiming to have at least 65-70% from Midwest and South. This 400-internship pilot will enable us to test what is required for scale. 

In the next 5 years: We want to grow the Dream Green program to serve 3000 students across the U.S., and also move into full-time roles (not just internships). We also want to replicate the success of this program for other industries and create 1000 opportunities with new industries for first-gen students, such as Media & Entertainment and Startups & Entrepreneurship

• Financial barriers: Since this program creates jobs at nonprofits, many of whom cannot typically afford interns, it requires funding to pay the interns. 
• Technical / Process barriers: As we scale, we need to ensure that we maintain the community aspects of the program that make it successful, such as the coaching and mentoring.
• Cultural barriers: Bringing DEI to organizations is a complex endeavor. This summer we supported students and organizations through some challenging scenarios including how to discuss racism and microaggressions at work. This cannot necessarily be solved by just a workshop here and there -- it requires sustained cultural change to include new types of individuals in the workforce.  

• Financial barriers: We would like to find grants, workforce development boards, funds, and philanthropists who are passionate about climate change and workforce development to fund the internships. We have many partnerships in the nonprofit and climate change space, so this is a matter of really being proactive and using networks to build the kind of funding needed to scale and grow. 
• Technical / Process barriers: Tech will certainly help us scale the cohort model as well as the back-end project management. We will use our collective tech experience to develop a platform over time. 
• Cultural barriers: We are currently developing a series of workshops and exercises to increase empathy and capacity for having challenging conversations about inclusion at work. One of our unique offerings here is that we are working with our first-gen/Gen-Z students to co-create this content, as well as working with a Kellogg MBA professor to design an experience for both students and managers to lead with empathy. 

Longitudinal outcomes are hard to measure but extremely important. We need to be able to track this over time and post-graduation. Nurturing our community over time will be critical to collecting this type of data. 

•  Are our interns continuing to have careers in the environmental space? 
• Is this program actually removing the full-time work barriers that we expect them to remove? (e.g. underemployment, lower starting salaries, lower job offer rates) 

FutureMap was founded by two women of color. Out of the four-person leadership team, three are children of immigrants (first-generation Americans). One was also a first-generation college student in the US. Three are women in tech and finance (extremely white-male dominated industries), and one is an LGBTQ man of color in finance and tech. Two of us have MBA's and one is pursuing her MFT to become a therapist. Together we have collective experience in a variety of industries: a Google recruiter, ex-Goldman, ex-Bain consulting, startups, ex-Peace Corps, nonprofits. Every single member of the leadership team has had personal experience with discrimination and barriers transitioning from college to career, working in professional environments while managing intersectional identities, and advancing equity and justice both at work and outside work. While we also have full-time roles, our industry positions enable us to bring unique perspectives and opportunities to our students and partners. Anecdotally, we were able to launch our internship prototype in the summer while the entire team was working 80+ hour weeks, suggesting that by simply hiring a full-time employee, we could scale this impact immensely. Our value system is to bring empathy, social justice, coaching, and practicality to solving inequities in the job market. 

1. We partner with college access nonprofits like Minds Matter, Posse, All Ways Up Foundation, The Schuler Scholar Program, Foster Nation, and SEO Scholars to source our first-gen talent. We conduct workshops and job readiness trainings with them and their students.
2. We would like to partner with universities who have programs specifically for FGLI (first-gen, low-income), in a similar manner to the college access nonprofits.
3. We partner with sustainability-oriented nonprofits such as the Center for Biological Diversity, Solar United Neighbors (in Florida and Ohio), the Climate and Energy Project in Kansas, the Sustainability Institute (serving the Driftless region of the Midwest), Faith in Place (Illinois faith-based environmental conservation programs), the West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum, and more. They are our partners for hosting interns and all of them want us to continue the program and introduce us to more of their network.

We have a B2B2C model. 

• Value proposition: We provide diverse talent to climate-change oriented nonprofits who want to attract this talent. For the talent, we provide curated job opportunities and professional development. 
• Customers: Nonprofits and students
• Products and services: For students, we provide job readiness training and professional development on the job as well as curated internship opportunities. For nonprofits, we provide DEI strategy support, manager training, intern training support, and the recruiting support. 
• Partners and Stakeholders: College access nonprofits who give us the students, and sustainability nonprofits give us the internships. Grants and donors give us the funding for the internships. 
• Costs: The total cost of this program is about $630K. We would like to pay up to 2 project managers who are paid $55K each, each of whom can manage 200 interns and 25 nonprofit relationships. Beyond that there are a projected ~$40K in tech, leadership consulting, and legal fees. Any additional funding will go directly to pay students for their internships. We expect to fund 70% of the internships for smaller nonprofits that can't afford interns, meaning that we would like to raise ~$350,000. 
• Measures of success: Number of internships created. Number of interns trained. % of interns who would be hired full-time if the nonprofit had funding. % of organizations that would recommend this program to others. % of interns who would recommend this program to others. % of skills where our interns surpass other interns.  % of interns who actually convert to full-time. 

• Diversity consulting services: Workshop fees and service fees will end up covering 40% of our overall operating costs. 
• Employer referral fees: For any talent that gets hired full-time, we will implement referral fees that cover 15% of costs. 
• Job Readiness trainings: Services that we deliver to college access nonprofits (job readiness trainings and workshops) will end up covering 15% of costs. 
• Donations and grants: We expect donations and grants to fund 30% of overall operating costs. 

• In 2019 we generated approximately $10K in our first year of operations. Most was from Kellogg School of Management Social Impact grants and winning a VentureCat pitch competition. The remainder was from service fees from college access nonprofits. 
•  In 2020 we raised approximately $20K from donations, most of which went directly to funding interns. We raised about $7K from college access nonprofits who paid us for services and workshops. 

• We are seeking a maximum of $630K to fund the entire program. $480K will go directly to paying first-generation student interns. $150K will go to administration of the program including hiring project managers, any tech, and legal fees. 
• The most critical aspect of the program to be funded would actually be the project management which is our main bottleneck for continuing to raise funds from external donors. We believe that part of the $480K could come from workforce development boards, philanthropists, grants, and the nonprofits themselves. 

• Our expenses will entail paying for two full-time employees (~$110K), paying for administration, tech, and legal fees (~$40K), and paying interns (~$480K). 
• Additional expenses are minimal since we operate through volunteers primarily. 

Our summer 2020 prototype was an innovation driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and the immediate needs facing our first-gen students. The overwhelming success of the prototype (100 applicants, more internships and nonprofit partners than we had funding for) is what has prompted us to seek ways to scale and expand the program. As our leadership team has begun researching sources of funding, we have realized that foundations rarely have "open applications" (grants are often by invitation only), and the process is  network-driven. Our primary hope for participating in the Reimagining Pathways to Employment in the US challenge is to (a) increase exposure of our efforts to organizations and stakeholders that are interested; (b) get access to some basic funding in order to scale our prototype, (c) work with advisors who can join our board and guide our growth. 

• We'd like to find funding partners who believe in our intersectional goals of workforce development for first-generation students and combating climate change. Partners could help introduce us to philanthropists and foundations that have a passion for bringing equity into the sustainability movement.
• We are also seeking to build out our board with advisors who have experience with nonprofits, workforce development, and fundraising. 

While we have partnered with 8 nonprofits so far, there are many others in the Midwest/South US that have reached out that we would like to also partner with, including the Re-Amp Network, Power Shift Network, GreenHome Institute of Michigan, and more. These partners would help us create more internships at their organization. 

We have also been seeking conversations with foundations and organizations (Kendeda, Libra, Overbrook, Surdna) that focus on movement building, environmentalism, and equity. They could help us invest in our operations and fund more internships.

Finally, we are interested in the potential of local workforce development boards to fund and subsidize our programs to reach more and more first-generation college students in local communities. We could use WDB's to actually match students with local business needs as well, thus broadening our network.