Year Up United is an American nonprofit organization focused on education and job skills. The organization provides students without a 4- year

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Medieval Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six years ...

with resources, training and corporate internships with the aim of improving their job prospects and

social mobility Social mobility is the movement of individuals, families, households or other categories of people within or between social strata in a society. It is a change in social status relative to one's current social location within a given socie ...

History

The organization was founded in Boston in 2000 by Gerald Chertavian, who worked as a banker on

Wall Street Wall Street is a street in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs eight city blocks between Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway in the west and South Street (Manhattan), South Str ...

and later co-founded a software company. In June 2002, Year Up United's first class of students graduated its one-year program. The program had started in Boston in 2001 with 22 students. In 2011, Year Up United established a

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program, based in downtown Seattle. It opened a program in Phoenix in 2014. As of 2020, the organization worked with more than 250 companies that provided funding for the program and took on interns. In 2021, the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation in the

US Department of Health and Human Services The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a cabinet-level executive branch department of the US federal government created to protect the health of the US people and providing essential human services. Its motto is ...

(OPRE) published a report of a study it had sponsored, evaluating Year Up United's longer-term impact via a five-year randomized controlled trial. The study found that the Year Up United program had a statistically significant impact on earnings. In 2022, the OPRE reported that six years after completing the Year Up United program, past participants had an income 30% higher than a control group of non-participants. As of 2022, approximately 4,000 students per year participated in Year Up United's programs. In September 2024, the organization changed their name to Year Up United. They were also shown in a Netflix documentary, ''Untapped: Closing America's Opportunity Gap'', which released in October 2024.

Programs

Year Up United's program includes job skills training and internships in a corporate environment, for underserved students who have a

high school diploma A high school diploma (sometimes referred to as a high school degree) is a diploma awarded upon graduation of high school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary s ...

or equivalent, but have not received a college degree. As of 2024, the program was aimed at young people and accepted participants aged between 18 and 29 years old. The organization also runs a program providing materials and resources to other training providers working with students, including

community colleges A community college is a type of undergraduate higher education institution, generally leading to an associate degree, certificate, or diploma. The term can have different meanings in different countries: many community colleges have an open en ...

Funding and partnerships

The majority of funding for Year Up United is provided by its corporate partners. Additional funding is provided by sponsorships, donations and public funding, the latter of which represented 2% of the organization's budget as of 2018. In 2022, Google announced it was working with Year Up United and two other job training programs to provide funding and course content. Also in 2022, Year Up United received a grant of $3 million from the private equity firm

Blackstone Inc. Blackstone Inc. is an American alternative investment management company based in New York City. It was founded in 1985 as a mergers and acquisitions firm by Peter Peterson and Stephen Schwarzman, who had previously worked together at Lehman ...

References

{{reflist Non-profit organizations based in the United States Educational organizations established in 2000 Educational organizations based in the United States Non-profit organizations based in Boston 501(c)(3) organizations