YOUTH WELL-BEING POOLED FUND
A comprehensive strategy to transform the nation by activating and improving the well-being of young people
“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive…” — Maya Angelou
The wellbeing of a nation’s children is the best indicator of the health of the nation. Our youth are our country’s present and future. They bring the innovation, inclusive values, and intellectual capacity to strengthen and transform our economy, civic life, and social infrastructure.
Yet today we must face the reality that the children are not well. While many of them struggle to simply survive, very few feel they are in a position to thrive. Many young people feel they are unprepared to live, work with and learn from the technology that will determine their futures and face severe gaps in health and economic outcomes based on who they are.
As a result, far too many young people are disengaged from civic life, experiencing challenges to their mental and physical health, and facing dire economic prospects. The children unserved by the institutions and systems of our democracy will grow to be the young adults who do not believe in them. We must act to address the wellbeing of our young people if we truly want to save our democracy.
Gaps in civic engagement, tech literacy, educational attainment, economic mobility and life expectancy already exist and will only worsen without immediate institutional and systemic reform. At a time when programs are being terminated, funding is being cut, data is being lost, and kids’ mental and physical wellbeing are poor, the time to act is now. It is our responsibility to support their efforts to address their life matters to show them that their lives matter.
The Youth Well-Being Pooled Fund Synopsis
The Youth Well-Being Pooled Fund is a youth power-building philanthropic strategy to invest in activating youth organizations and individuals (16-25) to engage in the civic practices and systemic change campaigns to improve the well-being of young people. The objective is to achieve these outcomes while accelerating youth power building by resourcing their leadership and increased participation driving the transformative changes which restore their faith and engagement in the civic and social institutions meant to serve them.
We measure the wellbeing of our youth by their civic engagement, health and wellness, AI and Tech literacy, education outcomes and economic mobility. The Youth Well-Being Pooled Fund is an opportunity to act at scale and invest in youth power building capable of improving the well-being of young people. By pooling funds, we create the potential for bigger and bolder investments, minimize the risk to each funder, and introduce the opportunity for donors to learn from one another. We seek to build a reality in which young people are healthy, engaged, powerful and thriving.
The Fund’s Approach:
The Fund’s approach is three-fold:
1. Investing in Youth-led State and local systemic change campaigns and power building efforts
The fund centers young people as agents, not just recipients, so that they experience connection to one another, their civic institutions, schools and communities in shaping policy and their future reality. The fund seeks to primarily support the youth-led systemic campaigns and narratives which influence well-being factors such as increased access and utilization of mental health supports, tech literacy, increased graduation and post-secondary certification rates and fair share tax revenue policies. The Fund connects national, regional, and local donors across issue areas (Health and Wellness, Civic Life, Tech, Education, Research, Youth Power Building) to improve the well-being of young people.
2. Engaging, Strengthening and Aligning National Advocacy Capacity (Thrive)
The fund is investing and managing a strategy to map and align the economic security, education, health and wellness and AI Tech literacy investments of high-capacity national membership-based social and advocacy organizations (i.e. YMCA, NAACP. Black Greek Letter Fraternities and Sororities, etc.) under a common “THRIVE” banner designed to improve the well-being of young people. Collectively, the groups possess national advocacy capacity and tentacles in over 100 cities, 100 college campuses 50 states with over 5 million members combined. Aligning and activating this national capacity is essential in the context of federal efforts to shift the national tone away from equity and claw back much needed federal funding to improve the life outcomes and well-being of young people.
3. Building and Managing Strategies to Engage More Diverse Donor Pools to Support Youth Well-Being Campaigns
(e.g. high wealth individual donors, for-profit revenue streams, etc.)
Institutional Foundations alone are incapable of sustaining the resource generation and public-will momentum necessary for consistent progress increasing the well-bring of young people across several impact areas. Schott is working with partners like Well Position Media, Association of Black Foundation Executives, JP Morgan and the Social Impact Exchange to invest in strategies that would yield new revenue streams. For example, Morgan Stanley has a track record for raising funds from their ultra-high-net worth clients in support of targeted social causes. The Morgan Stanley team leverages their platform to annually mobilize their massive community of major donors, including a $9 billion donor advised fund. Schott is working with Social Impact Exchange, which has a long-standing relationship with the firm and more than 10 years of experience working with donors and funders to drive and lead systemic change. The strategy would place a fund on the Morgan Stanley donor platform that would yield resources for the Youth Well-Being Pooled Fund.
The Fund seeks to work across philanthropic siloes to leverage multiple sources of new and traditional philanthropy for capital. One of the Fund’s unique core functions will be its effort to coalesce high-wealth individual donors (through community foundations and donor advised funds) who share a desire to improve the engagement and well-being of young people in their own communities.
The Fund will act as an accelerant (not as an organization) supporting the scaling up of existing state and local initiatives by taking advantage of strategic opportunities to impact the national norm with transformative campaigns, models, or ideas that prove to be the most productive and effective. The fund invests in existing work to shape a new vision and act as a catalyst to build the momentum and impact of this work from the local to regional to national levels. Recognizing philanthropic giving will not be sufficient to accomplish this goal, the fund will resource work to motivate the demand for these essential changes by influencing governments and other capable actors.
The Fund’s Five Youth Well-Being Indicators:
1. Civic Engagement
Too many young people are disenchanted with our public institutions and opting out of participating in meaningful democratic processes.
The Fund will prioritize investing in opportunities for young people to the access critical information, tools and supports necessary to meaningfully participate in every aspect of our democratic process.
2. Tech and AI Literacy
The scale of opportunities and threats presented by technology and artificial intelligence makes it impossible to ignore their impact on the well-being of young people. If all young people don’t have the access and literacy to ensure the responsible development and use and equitable participation in new technology, it could create a host of new inequities in education, health, and civic participation.
The Fund will support equipping young people with the campaign tools and partnerships to keep their “Eyes on AI” in their communities, schools and within the tech sector to ensure the responsible and equitable integration of tech and AI in key well-being impact areas (health, education, civic engagement, economic mobility).
3. Health and Wellness
Physical and mental health and wellness are threatened by individual, social, and environmental factors, many of which can be addressed if they are identified and the proper interventions put into place. Ultimately, too many young people are dying well before their time. Some low-income and minority youth face life-expectancy gaps of up to 10 years. Life matters to ensure our economy and civic and social structure thrive.
The Fund will support young people to engage in systemic change campaigns which address the impact levers which improve the mental health, physical health, and overall life expectancy of young people.
4. Education
Increasing high school graduation rates and post-secondary certification is essential to youth well-being. This requires promoting the systemic changes which advance these outcomes (i.e., school funding equity, dual enrollment access) while eliminating the practices which serve as barriers to these outcomes (i.e., over-use of out of school suspensions, banning books, etc.).
The Fund will support young people to engage in campaigns to increase their opportunity to learn and to thrive.
5. Economic Security and Mobility
Having the right skills and training to access opportunities is essential to economic mobility. However, gaps in skills and training are persistent, and those who already lack resources and opportunities are facing even greater barriers to advancement.
The Fund will support youth in advocating for critical resources and career opportunities to thrive economically.
The Fund’s Investment Impact Levers
The Fund seeks to catalyze and accelerate the adoption of state and local systemic transformations that improve the well-being of young people.
The Youth Well-Being Pooled Fund invests in:
- Power Building for young people so that they are the agents of this effort, not just the recipients, and are civically engaged while advocating for the policy and system reforms that will improve the quality of their lives.
- Organizing and Advocacy as we invest in policy and systems reform at the local level that can be replicated until they become the norm that will improve the educational and economic outcomes of children nationwide, including finding new revenue sources to sustain our public education system.
- Tech and AI Literacy and young people’s participation in the process of technological integration in their communities, schools, health systems, workforce, and civic processes, in order to ensure this integration occurs responsibly and to the benefit of all young people.
- Data and Research Protection and Promulgation so we know how our young people are doing, especially at this time where federal data is being eliminated and states ban disaggregation of data to avoid the acknowledgment of deep structural inequities by identity that remain.
- Narrative Promotion to draw the connection between the wellbeing of our children and their belief in our country, and to create urgency for systemic reforms to the institutions that serve them.
- Collaborative Governance to take advantage of where like-minded local officials are working in deep partnership with advocates and experts to make bold reforms but are in need of catalytic investments to advance the pilot programs and policies that become systems change.
Our Premises:
We must act now.
Factors like health, civic engagement, education, tech literacy, economic security and life expectancy are mutually reinforcing and contribute to quality of life and the progress of our nation. For example, without tech literacy, people will be left behind educationally and economically as the importance of technology in school and work increases. Without civic engagement, people cannot use their knowledge, experience, and voices to advocate for their needs. Gaps in these wellbeing indicators already exist and will only worsen without immediate attention.
Schools with greater wealth and expertise will train their youth in tech literacy and will employ AI, while others without the funding or expertise will not. Communities empowered by data and civic participation will be able to point to problems, develop solutions, and advocate for themselves, while underfunded and disenfranchised communities will not. The current system and its institutions are leaving many young people behind, and this is a crisis that can only be addressed by major institutional and systemic reform.
We must act at scale.
To us, scale means the opportunity to make systemic reforms at the local and regional levels that become the norm nationally. We will seek to invest in local and state systemic reforms that move the lever on key well-being indicators like civic engagement, mental health, life expectancy, tech literacy, and economic security, and we will support the growth of these reforms beyond the local to produce widespread institutional change.
Improving the wellbeing of young people requires addressing them holistically and prioritizing their participation in developing solutions to strengthen our institutions and systems.
We must center their leadership and agency.
Too many of America’s young people are disenchanted with government, politics, and the institutions meant to improve their holistic well-being. We firmly believe that the best way to restore a new generation’s faith in civic engagement and public institutions is to empower them with opportunities to exercise their voices and influence for measures that will improve their well-being. Their participation in producing the policies, programs, data collection, and research that serve them makes for better and smarter interventions and works to restore their faith in the capacity of institutional actors and systems to value their lives.
We will invest where the outcome is to build the power of young people to transform their futures in education, health, and economic security and reinforce their belief in our country’s civic sphere as they have the power to shape it.
The Capital Raise
In May 2025, the Schott Foundation (one of the few Black-led philanthropic intermediaries) agreed to manage the Youth Well-Being Pooled Fund. The Fund seeks to coalesce capital from institutions and individuals who are concerned about the well-being of our young people and want to leverage bold investments to support the necessary shifts in our civic sphere that increases the likelihood that future generations of young people thrive.
The Fund’s launching partners include Nellie Mae Foundation, Hewlett Foundation and the Kapor Foundation. Over the next 12 months, we seek a $10 million capital raise to support the Fund’s annual strategic investments.
