Local nonprofits Child Poverty Action Lab (CPAL) and The Commit Partnership have teamed up to align on a shared vision to cut in half the number of children living in poverty in Dallas County, while doubling the number of young adults attaining a living wage by 2040.
Together, they launched an innovative community investment plan, Opportunity 2040, to increase economic mobility, leveraging philanthropy to unlock significant public funding to accelerate positive outcomes via systemic change in support of young people across Dallas County.
Central to the Opportunity 2040 plan are the use of robust data insights, human-centered design principles, community engagement, systems-level thinking, and targeted, sustained philanthropic support to improve the impact of public programs and funding, particularly for the region’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods and students.
“We’re tackling this issue with the intentionality, endurance, and seriousness it deserves,” said Alan Cohen, founder and CEO of CPAL. “To achieve our goal of putting 150,000 local youth on a path to economic mobility, we recognized up front that this work requires creating a stack of reinforcing supports at the same time, for a long time. And it will take each of us, from the neighborhood level to the institution level, working together to make it happen.”
The effort will be co-managed by Commit and CPAL, and has received $120 million in commitments so far toward its $170 million five-year goal, including $50 million from Blue Meridian Partners, a national philanthropic collaborative, and a $2 million grant over five years from CFT’s W.W. Caruth, Jr. Fund. CFT is committed to making additional aligned grant investments of up to $8 million over the same time horizon to nonprofit partners in support of Opportunity 2040’s goals.
“This collaboration aligns with our Caruth Fund’s priority areas of education, health, and public safety. It was important that we come alongside as a partner,” said Wende Burton, CFT’s chief philanthropy officer.
“This is a collective, comprehensive effort to create both strong schools and strong communities across Dallas County. Our challenges with economic mobility are far too big for any one of us to solve alone. We believe that with both robust data continually guiding our actions and strong partnership at the center, Dallas County can deliver the broad opportunity that every one of our children deserves.”
– TODD WILLIAMS
CEO, THE COMMIT PARTNERSHIP
This story was originally featured in our 2023 annual report. For additional details and content, click here.
