GO Foundation Partners with Ideas United to Find Elite Tutors

Ideas United is super excited to be working with our new partner, the GO Foundation, to amplify their impact in education - specifically to improve recruitment for their High Dosage Tutoring program.

The mission of the GO Foundation is to provide students with access to a quality education through High Dosage Tutoring. They recruit, train, and support a corps of young adults who are placed as Fellows in GO partnered district and charter schools, where they tutor students as part of a year of service through the federal AmeriCorps program. The GO Fellows program improves education outcomes for students with its intense focus on individualized instruction and addressing students’ developmental needs.

Their organization currently partners with 12 schools across 4 states enrolling over 4,000 students. Across the program, the share of students in grades served by Fellows who met fall 2020 to fall 2021 growth targets improved 15 and 9 percentage points in reading and math, respectively, compared to students in grades not served by Fellows. 

And demand for the program is growing even more: over the next several years, GO plans to train 1,000 AmeriCorps Fellows to mentor and provide high-dosage tutoring to 10,000 elementary, middle, and high school students each year. There’s just one problem: recruitment. Last year, GO struggled to enlist enough AmeriCorps Fellows to meet the rising demand from students.

“Recruitment has been challenging for all AmeriCorps service programs due to the job market and economy, as well as the national teacher shortage,” says Darius Rose, Director of Recruitment at the GO Foundation. 

Committed to combating racism, GO intentionally recruits a diverse group of tutors who reflect the children they serve and fosters inclusive learning environments for all students and staff.

“It’s a great opportunity for students, especially students of color, to see other figures who have been where they’ve been, gone to college, and come back to give to the community,” says Rose. “But it’s also a great experience for people who don’t come from these backgrounds, who don’t know under-resourced communities, to see what some of these communities might be facing when it comes to equity in education. So it’s a great opportunity for everyone - for our students to learn and for our Fellows to get a firsthand experience of both the challenges and the potential our students have.”

So where does Ideas United come in? The GO Foundation found that the size of the organization had outgrown their previous marketing partners - and their content, which wasn’t keeping up with the fast pace of Gen Z. With no one on staff to produce high quality video content, they couldn’t find a way to convince young graduates to take on a low-paid service role despite considerable perks like free housing.

“A lot of the content we’ve had in the past was in a format that doesn’t hit as hard or as often as the generation we’re recruiting now,” says Rose. “We thought Ideas United would do the best job of telling the story of our Fellowship program, a day in the life of a Fellow, the impact they’re making in the classroom - to really paint a picture that would hit home for this generation.”

And GO was right. Although the project is still in progress, they’ve already seen a jump - not only in applications but in hires. They’re not just getting more applicants, but more qualified ones.

“The one thing I appreciate the most about Ideas United is that they truly do take the time to get to know you and your organization inside and out,” Rose says. “Out of all the partners I’ve worked with on marketing the fellowship program, iU took the most time to dig in and try to find the value, the challenges, and how to communicate them to our audience. The iU team is super intuitive and interested in getting to know their partners and tell their story in the best way possible.”

We’re thrilled to know our work is already making an impact. At Ideas United, we’re passionate about not only changing the way stories are told, but in amplifying causes we deeply care about. Our partnership with the GO Foundation works largely because we share key core values, including DEI and education. We’re glad they chose to partner with us. Stay tuned to hear how the story ends!