Organization
Connections to Success provides hope, resources, and a plan to help inspire low-income individuals to realize their dreams and achieve economic independence. They work with women and men from various backgrounds including those facing barriers to employment such as poverty, domestic violence, and criminal history. Their goal is to comprehensively address barriers to employment, and walk with individuals for the long-term as they change the future for themselves and their children.
Partnership 1
Connections to Success was looking to refine and expand their traveling clothing boutique, with a dual goal of being better able to offer interview appropriate clothing to individuals off-site, and bring designer fashion clothes to “parties with a purpose” as a social enterprise to support the organization. The Brown Sisters issued a challenge grant, which was leveraged by Connections to Success to raise 2:1 investment from new donors or increased gifts from existing donors, enabling them to launch a new truck in both the Kansas City and St. Louis markets. Ultimately, they’re better able to advance their outcomes, while becoming more sustainable.
Partnership 2
The agency approached Brown Sisters Foundation to help launch a new social enterprise – The Success Accelerator. The agency had identified a significant gap among corporations – difficulty in training and retraining entry level workers. This fit nicely into the agency’s core competency – which was built around helping people exit poverty and prepare for success in the workforce. CTS saw an opportunity to generate earned revenue while furthering their mission. They adjusted their existing curriculum to teach supervisors and corporations how to engage, train, equip, and understand entry level workers, while helping properly acclimate entry level workers to their place of employment. The Foundation provided seed funding to launch this new social enterprise and a challenge grant to raise additional funding from new or increased donors.