NPower (USA)

NPower is a national nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that provides technology skills to underserved young adults and veterans of the United States Armed Forces, mobilizing the tech community for social good through a network of over ten thousand volunteers. It provides K-12 programming as well in the form of coding clubs, mentoring events, mock interviews and corporate site visits. NPower's training program creates employment opportunities and workforce development for young adults and veterans through its Core IT Training, TechCareer Accelerator (TCA) as well as Cyber Security courses. It currently operates in New York City, Dallas, the San Francisco Bay Area, Baltimore, Toronto, and Jersey City, with plans to open a new location in St. Louis in early 2017.

NPower is supported by grants from a range of companies and foundations as well as through its own revenue-producing programs.[1] Some of the most notable grant making organizations that support NPower are the Fund II Foundation, Citibank, Morgan Stanley, and Symantec.

Programs and Services

NPower Volunteer Program

NPower's Volunteer Program fulfills half of its mission: to mobilize the tech community for social good. By partnering with nonprofits and schools, as well as leaders in the tech industry, NPower and its volunteers strive to close the gap in technology skills. The Volunteer Program provides a platform for these nonprofits and schools who have inadequate tech support by providing qualified volunteers.[2] NPower uses a combination of effective projects, ranging from coding clubs to tech challenges, from mentoring sessions to mock interviews in order to inspire and engage the next generation into a career of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

NPower's Volunteer Program counts almost 10,000 volunteers who have contributed over 90,000 hours of service working on over 6,400 projects in partnership with 3000 schools and nonprofits.[3]

NPower Core Program

NPower's Core program works with young adults as well as veterans of the United States Armed Forces to prepare them for careers in the field of information technology.[4] NPower provides free technical classes, mentoring from business leaders, paid internships, career development workshops at leading corporations and nonprofits, industry-recognized certifications, job placement services and access to a robust and growing alumni network. More than 80% of TSC alumni are employed or pursue higher education within one year of graduation from the program. Since its inception in 2002, students have on average seen their earnings more than double after completing the 22-week course.[5] The program was cited by the U.S. Jobs Council in 2012 as a great example of a successful program for displaced workers and under served populations.[6]

The Core program currently operates in New York City (Brooklyn and Harlem), New Jersey, North Texas, the San Francisco Bay Area, Baltimore, and Toronto, Canada.

Tech Career Accelerator

The Tech Career Accelerator (TCA) identifies the need for professionals who have experience with Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms, as this is one of the most in-demand type of technologist in the industry. TCA training offers the opportunity for graduates to begin an SaaS career by offering various services, including free training to learn fundamental administrative and configurative tasks to obtain ITIL and ServiceNow Admin certifications. In addition, Npower provides interviews with Fortune 500 employers as well as other leading employers in the industry, networking with industry professionals, and provides professional, career, and office skills training. Boasting a growing alumni network of over 1,400 students, NPower TCA graduates are currently employed at industry-leading companies such as Bank of America, CBS, Citibank, Deloitte, and the New York Times.

Currently, TCA operates in New York City, Jersey City, Alameda, and North Texas.

Symantec Cyber Career Connection

The Symantec Cyber Career Connection (SC3) combines Symantec's expertise in Cyber Security with NPower's model for teaching tech skills and growing underserved young adult's career opportunities. This partnership was announced in June 2014 at the Clinton Global Initiative America in Denver and was expanded in 2015 to reach veterans in North Texas and young adults in New York City as well as New Jersey.

History

Timeline

1998-2008

NPower was founded in 1999 as NPowerNY to help nonprofits in NYC with their basic tech needs including training and scheduled tech infrastructure support. At this time nonprofits had little to no technology and even less technology expertise. NPowerNY created Technology Service Corps (TSC) to address this problem and in 2002 graduated its first class of 4 students, all of whom interned at NPowerNY or its nonprofit clients. NPowerNY was one of a number of NPower affiliates founded by Microsoft. The affiliate network was run by NPower Seattle.

By 2006 NPowerNY had graduated x90 TSC alumni (all interning at nonprofits) and had developed IT Basic, an innovative managed service offering exclusively for nonprofits. NPowerNY had also begun to help nonprofits with their CRM and case management application development through an earned income consulting and solutions practice focused exclusively on nonprofit needs. In 2007 NPower Seattle transferred the NPower headquarters to NPowerNY, by then the largest of the 12 affiliates in the network.

Since the founding of the NPower network, tech needs of nonprofits had become increasingly sophisticated. No longer were NPOs just interested in basic training and scheduled maintenance of their IT infrastructure. Moreover, new cost effective alternatives (eg Google) had surfaced. NPowerNY’s primary funders were a few foundations funding TSC and 3 corporates funding overhead and the losses in the earned revenue businesses (ITBasic and Consulting & Solutions) – Microsoft, the original founder and largest sponsor (at a total level of almost $2MM in 2007), JPMC and Accenture. All agreed the current business model was not sustainable and Microsoft indicated their intent to significantly reduce their role and funding.

2009 – 2014

A new CEO, Stephanie Cuskley, was hired in 2009 to develop and launch a new NPower strategy focused on attracting new, sustainable funding and scaling NPower’s impact. NPowerNY immediately looked to develop national and international, “replicable”, sustainable, high impact offerings. The remaining NPower network affiliates determined to pursue differing strategies and change their brands. Of the original 12 affiliates (ex NPowerNY), only 4 remain - 501cTech in DC, TechImpact in Philadelphia, TechBridge in Atlanta, and Apparo in Charlotte.

FoundationConnect was built and launched as a product in late 2009 to address the needs by foundations to manage their grant-making process. Simultaneously NPower began reducing its consulting business. FoundationConnect was sold to roundCorner, Inc, in 2014.[7]

IT Basic continued to expand its customer base and focused on reducing costs by among other things outsourcing its help desk in order to try to achieve a breakeven financial position. Given competitive offerings NPower exited the business in late 2012 / early 2013.

TSC, now located in Brooklyn, improved and expanded its program, graduating 150 students per year and increasing engagement of corporate tech volunteers thru teaching, site visits and internships (over 40% of all internships are now with NPower’s corporate sponsors). In 2011 TSC opened a new location in Harlem and launched the TSC Advisory Council in 2013 to accelerate program improvement. In 2013 TSC expanded its efforts to Dallas-based veterans and launched plans for expansion to serve San Francisco veterans.

The Community Corps (TCC), a scalable, skilled tech volunteer matching portal was developed to increase corporate engagement and more sustainably serve NPO tech needs. TCC, launched in late 2010, was initially exclusively focused on matching nonprofits to skilled tech volunteers to help with NPO internal tech capacity building. In 2012 TCC began sourcing volunteers to help NPO’s deliver on their mission (eg NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Award judges) and in early 2013 TCC’s focus was formally expanded to include sourcing volunteers from the tech community to help with NPO mission delivery. TCC currently focuses on helping nonprofits source tech community volunteers for 3 primary causes – NPO Capacity Building (TCCs initial focus), Women in Tech (to increase the number of women and girls in the tech field), and Youth and Education (to increase the number of STEM students and improve teach through improved technology fluency and capacity.

Since 2009 NPower has built a board composed of leaders from its largest corporate sponsors. Through this board and its unique focus on engaging corporate tech volunteers and training disadvantaged youth and vets, NPower has grown its sponsor group, fundraising and NPower has broken even financially since 2010.

2014 – Present

Between 2015 and 2016, new CEO Bertina Ceccarelli oversaw the growth and expansion of NPower into new locations at Alameda and San Mateo in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as a new location in Baltimore, MD. Partnerships with colleges and universities in the areas, including the University of Maryland Biopark and the College of San Mateo drove growth in the main NPower projects, TCC and TSC.

In 2015, NPower began a new service called TechCareer Accelerator[8] that connects Software as a Service (SaaS) professionals to students who wish to obtain certifications in the field. TCA currently operates in New York, New Jersey, Alameda and North Texas.

At the Clinton Global Initiative conference in Denver in 2014, NPower announced a partnership with Symantec in offering the new service Symantec Cyber Career Connection (SC3). SC3 currently operates in New York, and in 2015 it was expanded to North Texas to reach veterans.

NPower expanded to New Jersey in 2015, opening a Corps class for under served young adults and then introducing a TechCareer Accelerator class during the summer. It graduated its first class in December 2015.

Events and Fundraisers

NPower hosts an annual fundraising Gala in Manhattan. The 2016 NPower Gala will be on September 8 at Pier Sixty, featuring keynote speaker Meg Whitman, the CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Other events include the annually NPower Jazz Concert which over the past years has included many outstanding musicians including Grammy award-winning trumpeter Terrence Blanchard in 2014, and St. Louis jazz vocalist Denise Thimes in 2013.

Leadership

Dan Petrozzo, Chairman and Co-Founder of NPower, is also a former Managing Director at Goldman Sachs and is now a Senior Vice President at Intralinks. Bertina Cecciarelli, the current Chief Executive Officer, is also an Executive Vice President of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Board of Directors

Key Staff

NPower Supporters

NPower is supported by corporations and grant making organizations around the country. Supporters donate grants to the organization and keep it running, providing the necessary funds for continued operation. Major supporters include:

Notes

  1. ↑ Feder, Barnaby J. (November 17, 2003). "MARKETING; Selling to Nonprofits Proves Not That Easy". The New York Times. New York City. Retrieved May 11, 2012.
  2. ↑ Levin, Doug (2014-03-08). "Technology Infrastructure in More than 20% of U.S. Public Schools Rated Inadequate". SETDA. Retrieved 2016-07-11.
  3. ↑ "Home - The Community Corps". The Community Corps. Retrieved 2016-07-05.
  4. ↑ Writer, Robin Wilkey (2012-05-25). "Veterans Tap An Unexpected Resource In Silicon Valley". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 2016-07-11.
  5. ↑ Maher, Kris (August 10, 2004). "Bridging a Digital Divide". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved May 11, 2012.
  6. ↑ "Presidents 2011 Year-end Job Report, pages 14-15" (PDF). Road Map to Renewal. Presidents Council on Jobs and Effectiveness. 2011-12-01. Retrieved 2012-09-09.
  7. ↑ "Foundation Connect". www.npower.org. Retrieved 2016-07-14.
  8. ↑ "Tech Career Accelerator". www.npower.org. Retrieved 2016-07-14.
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