Fair Chance works to build up community-based nonprofits helping local youth living in poverty

Local nonprofit Fair Chance builds up other community-based groups to achieve positive, life-changing results for local youth living in poverty, and it’s reviewing applications received by today’s deadline for its next set of partners.

“We’ve reached over 80,000 children in DC’s poorest neighborhoods,” said Benjamin Bradburn, director of development for Fair Chance.

One such nonprofit is the Dance Institute of Washington on 14th Street NW in Columbia Heights. Since mid-2018, Fair Chance has been working with the dance education organization’s executive director, Kahina Haynes, and its department of finance and development on grant applications, program design and evaluation, communication, human resources and other administrative business.

In doing so, Fair Chance’s work is already making a significant difference in the participating children’s lives, as well as putting the dance group on more solid footing for the future, Haynes said. “It helps us do our job better so that youth and families are rewarded with the very best of programming and so that DIW can thrive long-term,” she said.

In describing her group’s work, Haynes — who began her own training in ballet at the age of 3 — describes the trajectory of a young student who received a scholarship to the studio’s intensive training. The student — who didn’t want to be identified — overcame his shyness and ended up falling in love with ballet with the help of instructors like Sidney Hampton, a DC native who performs with the Dana Tai Burgess Dance Company and Bowen McCauley Dance.

“The student looked up to teachers like Mr. Hampton, who showed positive influence to him as an exemplary African-American male figure in the ballet world,” Haynes said. “The young dancer worked with Hampton and other teachers and quickly went from beginner to intermediate advanced in a few years.”

The student even got second place in the male category at the Youth America Grand Prix, the world’s largest international dance competition. He earned scholarships to dance intensives and college and is now a full-time college student at the University of Arizona.

Hampton, a graduate of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts and an alum of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, has taught at the Dance Institute since 2016. “He is incredibly invested in his students, particularly young men of color,” Haynes said.

The Dance Institute is just one of the many area nonprofits assisted by Fair Chance, which has 12 full-time staff members as well as AmeriCorps VISTA and Public Allies fellows. Located in neighborhoods of highly concentrated poverty, the selected groups all receive management assistance support, coaching and resources at no charge from Fair Chance. Two other DC groups joined the Dance Institute of Washington as 2018’s Praxis Program Partner organizations: DV LEAP, which works with survivors of domestic violence on legal issues, and the Wanda Alston Foundation, which provides transitional housing to homeless LGBTQ youth.

The application deadline for the next cohort of partnerships was Jan. 11, with the winning nonprofits to be selected later this spring.

Each of the groups receives customized services from one of Fair Chance’s experienced “capacity building specialists” for 12 months, as well as the opportunity to network with leaders of other partner and alumni organizations. Hogan Lovells, an international law firm headquartered in DC and London, provides present and past participants with free legal support and counsel, according to the Fair Chance website.

The nonprofit partners also become part of the “Network of Peers” — a group of more than 100 alumni nonprofits that have worked with Fair Chance since the organization’s inception in 2002 — so that they can continue to collaborate and share resources.

The Fair Chance partnership also gives executive directors of local nonprofits up to 350 hours of organizational development training, Bradburn said. The areas include leadership and board development, fundraising, financial management, strategic planning, program evaluation, human resources, outreach and communications.

Fair Chance asks potential partners how many children they serve and how much they raise annually to do so, and then tracks any changes over the next five years. Results show a median increase of 134 percent in revenue and a median increase of 163 percent in the number of children served.

Every autumn, Fair Chance holds its annual Butterfly Bash to raise money for the organization. Nearly half a million dollars was raised for Fair Chance last October.

In 2018, Fair Chance also received over $55,000 from the 40th annual Golf Classic charity event sponsored in June by the Irish pub The Dubliner on F Street NW, according to a press release from Linda Roth PR.

“It’s important for business owners who operate and benefit from great things in the city to give back,” said Gavin Coleman, co-owner of the pub along with his father, who established The Dubliner in March 1974.

Coleman has several personal connections to Fair Chance, with his brother Brendan serving on the group’s board of directors and his sister Stephanie Linnartz on its advisory board. Five years ago, Linnartz — who works at Marriott International Inc. — approached her brother with ideas for making his pub’s long-standing charity event more effective.

“She thought our golf tournament was a great idea and could raise a lot more money than we usually did,” Coleman said.

Previously, tournament proceeds were split among a variety of local organizations, but the cost of putting on the event meant that only between $5,000 and $7,000 ended up going to charity each year. Linnartz helped secure sponsors for the event and raised the tournament’s profile.

“We decided to put Fair Chance as our title charity as we grew and improved,” Coleman said.  

Since then, Fair Chance has received over $300,000 in golf tournament proceeds.

“We are grateful for the Dubliner team, our generous sponsors, and everyone who participated in that fun day on the links this summer,” Bradburn said.

This year’s event will be held June 24 at the Glenn Dale Golf Club in Prince George’s County. Proceeds will again benefit Fair Chance.

To get involved with Fair Chance, visit the group’s website or call 202-467-2428.

This post has been updated to specify that the Dance Institute of Washington, DV LEAP and the Wanda Alston Foundation are 2018’s Praxis Program Partner organizations and to reflect that the deadline for 2019’s partner organizations has now passed.