More Than Words
More Than Words is a nonprofit social enterprise that empowers young adults who are in the foster care system, court-involved, homeless, or out of school to take charge of their lives by taking charge of a business.
We believe that when system-involved youth are empowered with authentic and increasing responsibilities in a business setting, and are given high expectations and a culture of support, they can and will address personal barriers to success, create concrete action plans, and become contributing members of society who live, love and own their futures.
Our system has many tools to help case managers ensure that we move youth through the model and hold the expectations high. What makes Zach a superstar is how effectively he uses these systems and the results of this effort. Examples include: using the weekly ‘Intake Pipeline Report’ to move youth from application to interview, interviewing the most youth of any employee in the past year.
Zach always monitors and completes his Key Performance Indicator targets for contact, collateral support, and supporting youth outside the model to return--leading to fewer drop-outs than his peers and more re-engagement from youth who lost their jobs!
Zach also uses a monthly-emailed report called the ‘3-4-5 Month Report’ to ensure that youth make it to partner in a timely fashion, which leads to more promotions through our model. Finally, Zach thoughtfully uses the ‘Performance Review Report’ with youth regularly (not just at the time of their performance reviews) to give youth directional data of their performance.
While all of our Youth Development Managers have access to these tools, Zach is unique in his consistency of using them, his thoughtfulness in how he applies them with his youth, and his thoroughness in ensuring he meets all program quality targets.
