For Funders
What YES is
Youth Experience Sponsorship is infrastructure: a reliable way to turn a check into a completed experience for a kid who already knows what they want to do and can’t afford it.
YES doesn’t run programs or hand out scholarships. It moves a motivated kid into a program that already exists, run by people who are good at it, and pays that program at the source. What you’re backing is a pipeline that works.
How the money works
Every request is vetted before it’s funded: we check that the partner organization is legitimate and the kid’s motivation is real.
We pay the program directly. The check goes to whoever runs the experience, not through the family and not through a third party.
Once a kid is enrolled, we check they take part. And we built our own tools to do all of this fast, because a small organization can’t carry a big back office. Lean, but thorough: it’s how a team this size backs more than 130 kids without proportionally adding staff, and it’s why the money reaches the kid and we can show that it did.
You are here
A funder is one of three inputs, not a source at the top of a chain. Community dollars come in, community input helps decide where they go, and the money is paid straight to a local program. YES runs none of those programs itself.
See the whole model →
Why it scales
The model is proven. Two years in, before any scaling technology existed, it already worked: partners vetted, programs paid directly, attendance verified, one kid at a time. That’s the part that isn’t a bet.
What YES is building now is the infrastructure to grow it, so it can serve more kids without the back office growing at the same rate. And it’s being built by someone who has scaled trustworthy systems before: Mike Glasser spent decades building fiduciary infrastructure before YES, for organizations that had to get money-handling right every time.
How kids find us
YES does not buy attention. Kids arrive through the people who already know them, and often through the institutions already serving them.
Capri sits on the committee of the Golden Gate Village Empowerment Fund, in Marin City:
“I first got to hear about YES through the Golden Gate Village Empowerment Fund. I serve as a committee member and they were one of the applicants who applied to reach underprivileged youth for athletics, and my daughter came to mind.”
— Capri, Brooklyn’s mother
That is the pattern. A coach, a teacher, a housing committee, a parent at the field. Funding YES funds a route that community organizations already trust and use.
Who’s behind it
A network of partner organizations runs the programs on the ground, in the sport or the classroom or the studio a kid chose. And a group of Champions, people who’ve put their own name behind YES, stand alongside Mike.
They are not a donor list. Jim LaFrance taught high school math for decades and won Teacher of the Year seven times, at a school serving many of the kids YES exists for. He knows exactly what cost does to a kid, and he put his name on this:
“If I’m not introduced to it at 5, and nurtured along the way, I’m a totally different person. I couldn’t imagine my life without those childhood experiences.”
— Jim LaFrance, Champion
Fifteen champions stand behind YES, spread across Marin, Sonoma, San Mateo, and Petaluma: educators, coaches, a college counselor, business owners, professional athletes.
What we measure, honestly
And here’s the limit we’re honest about: we don’t know which experience will change which kid’s life. Nobody does. What we can promise is the chance. More than 130 kids have gotten one, because the one thing standing between them and what they were reaching for got removed.
Ways in
Give. A one-time gift funds a kid’s next reach.
Grant. If you run a foundation or a fund, let’s talk about what a grant relationship with YES looks like.
Talk with Mike. See the model up close before you commit, or see how decisions get made on our Governance page.
See how decisions get made → Governance & Awards