We Raise Foundation, in Partnership with Siebert Lutheran Foundation, Awards $300,000 GrantsPlus Grant to St. Marcus Lutheran School

We Raise Foundation, in Partnership with Siebert Lutheran Foundation, Awards $300,000 GrantsPlus Grant to St. Marcus Lutheran School

 In Education

Itasca, IL – We Raise Foundation, in partnership with Siebert Lutheran Foundation, Milwaukee, Wis., is excited to announce we recently awarded a $300,000 three-year GrantsPlus Grant to St. Marcus Lutheran School, Milwaukee.

St. Marcus recognizes that an excellent education addresses social, emotional, spiritual, and academic needs of students and is critical for future success in life. Oftentimes, however, it is not enough. Students’ performance in the classroom can be influenced by life events unrelated to school. A stable home, employment, and abundance of food all affect a child’s academics.

Through its “Building Stability and Prosperity for Community Transformation” project, St. Marcus will use the three geographically close campuses with over 1,500 students as a platform to support families more broadly and build a racially and economically diverse Harambee neighborhood where children and families thrive. The community will have access to quality education, safe affordable housing, home ownership opportunities, health promotion and disease prevention, and cradle to college programming.

“We Raise Foundation is pleased to partner with Siebert Lutheran Foundation to invest in the work being done at St. Marcus Lutheran School,” said Paul Miles, President and CEO of We Raise Foundation. “Under the extraordinary leadership of Henry Tyson and his team, St. Marcus sets the highest standards of academic performance and then creates innovative solutions to help its students meet them. We are proud to support their work and equally proud to being a leading voice for foundation partnerships like the one designed with Siebert. We believe we are stronger when we work together to create healthy communities and encourage other funders to consider how they could do more through partnerships.”

With the grant, St. Marcus will create one new staff position at the school and strengthen two existing positions that will provide services to school families that are designed to create stable household and productive learning environments. These include:

  • Financial literacy classes
  • One-on-one financial coaching/accountability
  • Homeownership workshops
  • Job networking
  • Peer-to-Peer Community Support
  • Crisis Stabilization (healthy food, supplies, shelter)

The community engagement specialist will further engage leaders and organizations in the community to build effective collaborations and partnerships internally and externally for the good of the whole community. These opportunities will give families the foundation for financial stability, independence, and prosperity and allow students to excel in the classroom.

“This collaborative grant to St. Marcus embodies the Siebert Lutheran Foundation’s core value of educating youth while sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And, the partnership with We Raise reflects our shared value of aligning resources to create additional collective impact,” said Charlotte John-Gomze, Siebert’s President. “We are grateful for the time and attention St. Marcus gave to developing its three-year vision for this program and are excited to see the positive impact it will have on the community for many years to come.”

We Raise GrantsPlus grants support new and innovative projects in Chicago, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Oakland/San Francisco working at the intersection of poverty, violence, and inequality. In addition to the grant award, We Raise will also provide St. Marcus Lutheran School with critical capacity building services, including a resource development assessment, incentivized crowdfunding campaign, and research to help strengthen and sustain their program.

About We Raise Foundation

Motivated by the belief that freedom is grace in action (Galatians 5:1a), We Raise Foundation partners with Christian nonprofit organizations and emerging leaders working at the intersection of poverty, violence, and inequality. We have a preference for funding solutions within the areas of education, workforce development, and criminal justice and employ a unique approach to our investing by coupling program funding with a variety of robust value-added services that empower our grantees to grow their solutions. As a result of these value-add services, every $1 that donors invest through We Raise multiplies into more than double the benefit to the organizations we support. To learn more, please visit weraise.org. You can also find We Raise on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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