UPchieve

Education should serve to level the playing field for all students. However, in America’s current education system, the students who start at a disadvantage (e.g., low-income students and students of color) often receive the lowest quality education and the least amount of academic support. 

In addition to attending public schools with fewer financial resources, advanced course offerings, and guidance counselors, low-income students also receive less academic support after school and in their homes. Even if a student is fortunate enough to attend a school which offers after-school tutoring, part-time jobs and family commitments often prevent them from focusing on schoolwork until later in the evening. Additionally, 61% of low-income students have parents who have never been to college and typically can’t help them with schoolwork.

Unequal access to academic support ultimately leads to gaps in academic achievement between low- and high-income students. Currently, only 14% of low-income 10th graders will go on to earn their Bachelor’s degree, compared to 60% of their higher income peers. Despite the billions of dollars being invested into education nonprofits each year, the majority of low-income students still don’t have access to academic support when and where they need it most: late at night in their homes.

UPchieve significantly increases low-income students’ access to academic support by providing free, online tutoring and college counseling, available 24/7 from any device. 

Here’s how our platform works:

1. Students make a request for help in a specific subject (e.g., Algebra 1 or Biology) any time they need it.

2. UPchieve texts volunteers who are certified in the subject requested and have marked themselves as available during the requested time window. 

3. Within 5 minutes, the student is paired with a volunteer in our virtual classroom (equipped with an interactive whiteboard and text-based chat), where they can get help with anything they need.

Sample ways that students have leveraged UPchieve’s free technology to-date include: finishing homework, researching colleges, reviewing for an exam, writing college application essays, and learning concepts that they missed while out of school.

UPchieve also recruits, trains, and certifies volunteers to be high-quality tutors or college counselors (together referred to as “coaches”) on our platform. Coaches must pass a certification quiz in every subject prior to tutoring, and they also have the flexibility to select the times they’d like to receive notifications if a student needs their help from a 24/7 calendar.

Who we serve
UPchieve is only available to low-income high school students in the U.S. We’re specifically designed for and targeted at students who do not have access to academic support in their schools and homes. This includes students who work part-time jobs or have family commitments after school, students raised by single parents or whose parents do not speak English, and students who would be the first in their family to attend college. Our students often belong to multiple marginalized groups. In addition to being low-income, more than 75% of our current users are either Black or Hispanic, and many come from immigrant families.

UPchieve’s impact
UPchieve makes it possible for low-income students to access support any time they need it. So far, UPchieve has matched more than 60,000 on-demand requests for academic support from students. Our platform has helped students finish homework, prepare for exams, write college application essays, and more. On average, struggling students report that their understanding increases 1.9 points on a 4-point scale after a single tutoring session on UPchieve (moving from “I don’t know how to do this at all” to “I can do this on my own”). 97% of students who have used UPchieve 10+ times say that UPchieve has improved their grades, and 89% say we make them feel less anxious about school work.

For some students, UPchieve can literally make the difference between graduating high school or not. Last year we helped Javier, a senior at one of our partner schools in Arizona, conquer the last thing standing between him and a high school diploma: math class. He needed more support than his teachers had the bandwidth to provide, so they recommended he use UPchieve. Over the course of May, Javier received more than 20 hours of tutoring on UPchieve and was ultimately able to pass math and graduate on time! 

For others, UPchieve can play a crucial role in helping them get to college. For example, we helped Jeikof, a recent immigrant from Costa Rica, pass the college entrance exam standing between him and enrolling in his dream college to study journalism. In response to our question about how UPchieve had impacted him, he wrote, “UPchieve helped me to be the first member of my family to go to college. UPchieve tutors explained every topic of the test and were very patient with me. I had no money for tutoring but I wanted to fulfill my dream. I discovered UPchieve and I enjoyed every session. Without this website, I couldn't have had a great score on my tests. UPchieve changed my life!!!”

Finally, for some students, our impact is all mental. Below are just a few examples of what students have to say about our impact on their stress levels, confidence, and attitudes towards school and math:

• "UPchieve has eased my stress with school and helped my grades so thank you! I can't afford normal tutoring so this platform is really amazing, thank you!"- Kahlia
• “When I finally understood the math being shown to me I started crying. I’ve always struggled with math but now thanks to you and so many more I’ll finally be able to succeed.” - Naima
• “I am so much more confident now!!!! Thanks, UPchieve, I am so thankful to have found this website.” - Michaela
• “The site has really helped improve my work ethic and helped me overcome stressful times in my school life.” - Chaselyn

Our team
UPchieve is led by a team of 9 individuals who bring unique backgrounds and qualifications to our organization. Our staff is also highly diverse and representative of the students we serve: 67% are people of color, 56% were low-income students, 56% are first or second generation immigrants, and 44% took nontraditional paths after high school. You can see our full team and read more about them here.

Founder story
UPchieve was founded by the current Executive Director, Aly Murray, to help more students like her have the opportunity to achieve upward mobility. Aly was raised in a low-income household by a single mom who immigrated to the U.S. from Cuba. As a result of limited access to academic support, Aly began her postsecondary education at a local community college. From there, it took her 6 years to transfer to the University of Pennsylvania and finish her Bachelor’s degree while working part-time. Attaining a college degree ultimately helped her secure a job at J.P. Morgan and achieve upward mobility herself. In 2018, Aly quit her job at J.P. Morgan to begin working on UPchieve full-time.

Understanding students’ needs
UPchieve prides itself on being extremely student-centered. While building the first version of UPchieve, we conducted surveys, user interviews, focus groups, and user testing with hundreds of low-income students. These helped us understand key aspects of students’ needs and preferences and led to our unique on-demand and text-based tutoring model. Since then, we’ve continued to integrate student feedback into our product development process. Our product roadmap is heavily influenced by post-session feedback from students, and we’ve launched many of the features requested by students in the past (e.g., photo uploading and the addition of new subjects). We also conduct additional user interviews with students whenever designing a new feature. In the future, we hope to further elevate student voice within our organization by forming a student advisory council and inviting a former student user to join our Board of Directors.

UPchieve’s greatest challenge at the moment is getting the word out to potential students and potential customers (schools, companies). MIT’s network, as well as the press associated with becoming a Solver, could be invaluable to us in our mission to scale free tutoring to every low-income student who needs it. We’re excited for opportunities to connect with potential partners and funders during MIT Solve events. Additionally, based on our research it seems like many large, STEM-focused companies are a part of the broader Solve community, and these companies could be a great fit for our employee engagement partnership program (which helps drive both funding and volunteers to our organization).  Finally, we’d also hope to utilize the Solve network to meet researchers in the field who could help us further study the impact of our platform on students. 

On-Demand, 24/7 Availability

We’re the only nonprofit providing on-demand, 24/7 academic support to students. By “on-demand”, we mean that students do not need to pre-schedule their tutoring sessions. Most students don’t know ahead of time when they’re going to get stuck on their homework or have a question about college. Being able to speak to someone any time they need it is game-changing, especially for students who may not always be able to prioritize their schoolwork. The majority of requests on our platform also come in late at night (after 9pm ET) when students would typically not be able to get in touch with their teacher or anyone else that can help. 

Student-Driven Support
UPchieve’s model is specifically designed to put students in control of their own learning. Other programs require parental involvement in order to sign up and long-term commitments to attend regularly recurring tutoring sessions in order to participate. In contrast, eligible students can find and sign up for UPchieve without any help from their school or parents and begin speaking with a live tutor in under 5 minutes. We also increase students’ agency and self-efficacy by letting students determine: 1) when they need help, 2) what they need help on, and 3) how much help they need. We don’t force all students to receive the same dosage of tutoring, because not all students need the same amount of help. As a result, some students on UPchieve have used us hundreds of times (e.g., as a supplement every night with homework), whereas others use us only while prepping for exams or for help with a specific unit in which they feel confused. 

Low Cost & High Scalability
UPchieve delivers the most scalable solution to improving education for low-income students in the U.S. Our virtual platform makes it very easy to reach students and volunteers across the country (including in rural regions). Our on-demand model makes it possible to sustainably recruit thousands of volunteers, because volunteers have flexibility over their schedule and don’t have to make any long-term commitments. Additionally, on-demand support is highly efficient in that we don’t require a 1:1 ratio of students to volunteers. Finally, by leveraging volunteers to provide academic support (instead of paid tutors), we are able to keep our costs extremely low. We can provide one student with an entire year of unlimited tutoring and college counseling for just $10. In comparison, in-person tutoring programs typically cost $3,000+ per student per year.

UPchieve’s core technology is a web and mobile application that facilitates on-demand matching of supply (volunteer tutors) with demand (low-income students looking for help). The technology used in our app includes 1) real time push notifications and text messaging to notify volunteers of incoming student requests, 2) a text-based two-way chat and collaborative whiteboard and document editing during the session to facilitate online tutoring and college counseling, 3) an automated volunteer approval, onboarding, and certification system to increase the supply of tutors, and 4) in the future, big data and predictive analytics to more effectively match supply and demand. You can see a demo of our platform here.

UPchieve was founded to improve educational equity in the United States and help low-income students achieve upward mobility. Additionally, with a Latina founder and a majority-POC team and Board of Directors, DEI has always been an important part of our organization. That being said, we believe improving DEI within our organization will be a never-ending journey and have recently begun working with a consultant to further prioritize building an anti-racist culture at UPchieve. 

Here are a few of the ways we already incorporate DEI into our work: 

Hiring practices
UPchieve sources diverse candidates by widely publicizing job opportunities, having no minimum education requirement, and focusing our hiring rubric on demonstrable skills and personal connection to our cause (as opposed to years of experience and prior job titles). These practices have helped us hire an incredible, diverse team that has a personal connection to our cause. 

Targeted programming
Only low-income students are eligible for UPchieve in order to promote equity. In addition to that eligibility requirement, we prioritize serving students of color by seeking out partnerships with Title 1 high schools and nonprofits located in highly diverse, urban regions. About 75% of the current students on our platform are Black or Hispanic. 

Volunteer and staff training
All volunteers on our platform complete a mandatory DEI training that includes: 1) reading our DEI policy, 2) completing an outside course on implicit bias, and 3) taking a race implicit bias test. New full-time staff members go through the same training during onboarding. 

Pay transparency
We help ensure pay equity across race and gender by making all staff salaries fully transparent within the team and using a simple formula to calculate how much someone should be paid. We also use Buffer's level and step framework to give very clear definitions of what it means to be at a given level and step and work closely with staff on professional development to help them chart pathways to increasing responsibilities and compensation.

Summary
UPchieve generates impact by operating a two-sided marketplace that connects low-income students who need help with volunteers who want to help. Our costs are very low, and we cover them by selling to schools and companies that refer students and volunteers to us. 

Value Proposition

• Students: We’re available on-demand 24/7, making it easier to access academic support, especially late at night in their homes 

• Volunteers: We give volunteers complete control over their schedule, with no long-term commitments, making it more flexible and convenient to volunteer

• Schools/teachers: We help improve academic outcomes for their students, minimize the number of late-night emails teachers receive from students, and provide data about student usage

• Companies: We help them engage their employees as volunteers, which improves employee satisfaction and retention, and provide data and stories about their impact

Channels
UPchieve acquires the majority of our users through SEO (e.g., students searching for things like “free math tutoring”, volunteers searching for things like “volunteer online tutoring”). We also acquire students through partnerships with schools/nonprofits and volunteers through partnerships with companies. Most of our partnerships to-date have been reverse inquiry.

Although UPchieve is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, financial sustainability is an important part of our business model. In 2021, we generated more than 50% of our annual budget in earned revenue, and our goal is to expand our earned revenue to cover 100% of our operational expenses within 5 years. To-date, we’ve generated about $1M in earned revenue. Our current annual recurring revenue (ARR) from all sources is $700K. Our revenue streams include:

Employee engagement partnerships
We charge our employee engagement partnerships between $10,000 and $150,000 annually (depending on number of employees and supports included) in exchange for a premium-tier volunteer experience for their employees and data on employee activity. Our target market consists of tech, finance, and consulting companies that have a large number of busy, math-savvy employees. These partnerships are integral to our expansion strategy because they offer a consistent pipeline of high-quality volunteers and sustainable revenue.

School/nonprofit partnerships
We also offer a paid partnership option to schools and nonprofits. We charge a flat $5,000/year partnership fee that includes implementation and outreach support as well as data on student usage. (The goal of these partnerships is not to generate revenue but rather to cover our costs and help us reach our target students.) We only partner with Title 1 high schools/districts and nonprofits that serve our target population. In addition to helping us reach our target students, these partnerships also give us access to valuable insights from educators in the field.

School sponsorships
Some of our employee engagement partners also work with schools/nonprofits in their communities and have begun covering the UPchieve partnership fees so that these school/nonprofits can partner with UPchieve.

Here are some recent examples of successes:

• Competitions, fellowships, and awards: Examples of recent funders in this category include the Roddenberry Fellowship, Schmidt Futures’ Tools Competition ($250K), and Company Venture’s City Fellowship.

• Accelerator programs: We’ve been through six accelerator programs to-date, including most recently Y Combinator ($100K).

• Employee engagement partnerships: Current partners include large companies like PwC, Goldman Sachs, Dell, and Verizon.

• Foundations: We’ve received grants from both small and large foundations, including most recently the Gates Foundation ($575K).