There are currently 6.7 million opportunity youth – defined as young people between the ages of 16 – 24 who are neither enrolled in school nor participating in the labor market – who represent enormous potential for our nation’s economy, as well as a powerful case and need for the advancement of future generations of low income children and families. The successful reconnection of these young people requires community collaborations that effectively remove barriers, connect the many systems that touch their lives, and build and deepen education and employment pathways.  To this end, the Aspen Forum for Community Solutions and Opportunity Youth Incentive Fund was launched in July 2012 at the Aspen Institute. The Aspen Forum for Community Solutions is under the leadership of Melody C. Barnes, former Director of the Domestic Policy Council and Senior Advisor to President Obama. Stephen Patrick, who previously led disconnected youth work at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, serves as the Executive Director of the Aspen Forum.

The mission of the Aspen Forum for Community Solutions is to support community collaboration - including collective impact - that enables communities to effectively address their most pressing challenges. The Forum works to accomplish this mission by pursuing four complementary strategies including: 1) building awareness by documenting and lifting up successful strategies and stories of success; 2) mobilizing stakeholders through knowledge and network development; 3) removing barriers by advocating for effective policy; and, 4) catalyzing investment by encouraging funder partnerships. The Opportunity Youth Incentive Fund is the first funding collaborative being developed and led by The Aspen Forum for Community Solutions.

The goal of the Opportunity Youth Incentive Fund is two-fold: 1) to build strong evidence of success for utilizing the collective impact community collaboration strategy to build and deepen pathways that achieve better outcomes in education and employment for Opportunity Youth, and 2) to make the case for increased adoption of the collective impact and community collaboration as an effective model for community change. To accomplish these goals, the Opportunity Youth Incentive Fund was designed with adoption and scale in mind from inception, and will demonstrate the following initial and intermediate progress toward outcomes:

• Make 8-14 grants to communities – with a 1:1 match requirement – to support strong existing community collaboratives/backbone organizations focused on building and deepening education and employment pathways for opportunity youth
• Design a learning agenda and implement a learning community across grantees
• Provide site specific training and technical assistance to grantees
• Engage in a rigorous 3rd party evaluation
• Generate and lift-up case studies of collective impact that are demonstrating positive outcomes for opportunity youth
• Develop a finance study to highlight strategies that leverage and/or repurpose public resources to sustain and scale effective reconnecting pathways for opportunity youth
• Produce white papers and other tools to inform the field and encourage adoption of the collective impact/community collaborative approach in other communities;
• Create a communications strategy that leverages the Aspen Institute brand and engages key stakeholders, high-level leaders, and core constituencies;
• Shape an advocacy agenda and policy priorities focused on local, state and national system alignment and change to generate better outcomes for opportunity youth

Over the next five years the Opportunity Youth Incentive Fund will work toward the following ultimate outcomes including: 1) demonstrating lower rates of disconnection to education and employment among opportunity youth and future generations; 2) catalyzing adoption of effective approaches in education and career attainment leading to family-sustaining careers; and, 3) leveraging systems and policy changes at local, state and national levels to enable increased adoption, replication and the scaling up of these approaches, including the provision of tools and strategies for communities and the field.

Collectively, the Opportunity Youth Incentive Fund will build evidence, share success, and promote the increased adoption of strategies that dramatically improve outcomes while providing communities with the knowledge and tools necessary for success. As a long-term strategy for community change, these outcomes are meant to broaden and deepen connections to education and employment for opportunity youth and future generations of low income children and families.