Meg and Bennett Goodman gift $25 million

A transformative $25 million from The Meg and Bennett Goodman Family Foundation is gifted to Year Up, a workforce development nonprofit committed to ensuring equitable access to economic opportunity, education, and justice for young adults.

The endowment allows Year Up to enhance its programs in ways that will deliver significant impacts, including achieving its goal of reaching ten times more young adults annually by 2030 than it does today.

Year Up serves young adults from under-represented communities and provides them with training and other resources, as well as connecting them to a nationwide network of employers that are increasingly in need of skilled, diverse talent.

Bennett Goodman said: “Our foundation’s primary mission is to improve social mobility. Matching diverse talent to opportunity is the quickest path to sharing economic prosperity. Connecting more young adults to impactful jobs builds careers and communities.”

“We are grateful for Meg and Bennett’s generous support of our mission to close the Opportunity Divide in this nation. Their gift will allow us to serve thousands more young adults who deserve access to opportunity and economic mobility,” said Gerald Chertavian, the Year Up Founder and CEO. “This transformative gift will make a difference across the nation for years to come as we continue building and improving our organization, while helping to build inclusive and diverse pipelines of talent to the nation’s leading employers.”

The gift includes two parts: a $15 million grant to fund innovative pilot programs allowing Year Up to be more flexible, responsive, and sustainable; and $10 million that will be endowed in perpetuity in honor of former Year Up President and current Board Member Garrett Moran. The “Garrett Moran Scholars” initiative will provide funding for 40 young adults selected annually who have shown significant leadership potential.

In May 2022, the federally sponsored Pathways for Advancing Careers and Education (PACE) evaluation of Year Up showed that $1 spent on Year Up produced a $2.46 return to society. The study found that over a seven-year study period, young adults assigned to Year Up earned $8,000 more per year compared with a control group — the largest sustained impact on earnings reported to date for a workforce program tested in a randomized controlled trial.