APT Charities Announces Grants to The Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture, GuideStar, and Liberty’s Promise
Washington, D.C. (PRWEB) January 28, 2016 -- APT Charities announced today that three recipients have been selected for grants to promote using data to make better decisions in the non-profit space. Two nonprofits – The Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture and GuideStar – received $15,000 each for their new programs expanding their on-going data gathering and usage. A stimulus award of $5,000 was granted to Liberty’s Promise to support their burgeoning data collection efforts. APT Charities has given one grant previously; the growth in grants this cycle was spurred by a desire to increase the impact of APT Charities and is supported by donations from members and from APT.
The Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture received one of the grant awards for $15,000 for its Farmer’s Register program. This custom-built mobile point-of-sale system captures every purchase made at a farm stand, including at Arcadia’s own 19 Mobile Market stops, which sell fresh, affordable food in underserved DC-area neighborhoods. Each transaction is recorded down to the variety of fruit or vegetable purchased and the tender used by the customer, providing unparalleled insights into healthy food consumption patterns. The Farmer's Register can account for nine forms of tender, including SNAP (food stamps). The Federal government has earmarked $100 million over 5 years to incentivize SNAP customers to use their benefits to buy fruits and vegetables at farmers markets across the country. The Farmer's Register captures exactly how customers use those benefits to improve the health of their diets.
“There is a strong desire to increase the impact of federal and local nutrition programs. But you can’t improve what you can't measure. The grant from APT Charities will enable us to use the Farmers Register to capture and analyze healthy food purchasing data and develop a database to make that information publicly accessible,” said Pamela Hess, executive director of Arcadia.
APT Charities was excited about the impact of getting better food to lower income consumers. “Arcadia was a clear candidate for a grant with APT Charities, given their data-driven nature. Our members voted and agreed that their initiatives had broad impact and were deserving of support,” said Renee Grebe — a member of APT Charities and vice president at APT.
GuideStar received one of the APT Charities grant awards for $15,000 for its GuideStar Platinum project. GuideStar is a national nonprofit organization that aims “to revolutionize philanthropy by providing information that advances transparency, enables users to make better decisions, and encourages charitable giving.” GuideStar Platinum will be a new level of a nonprofit’s GuideStar Nonprofit Profile that will allow the organization to display their impact across a series of core metrics. Among other goals, GuideStar will use this new level of online profile to develop common metrics for use across organizations that will help nonprofits counter the perception that they have large overhead costs as well as assist donors and foundations in identifying the impact of nonprofits’ work. GuideStar plans to use the grant to expand outreach to get 6,000 organizations in the program this year.
“We are excited to continue working to measure nonprofits’ impact and to put that information into donors’ hands. The grant from APT Charities will help us to get more nonprofit participation in GuideStar Platinum, which will ultimately help donors direct resources to truly impactful organizations,” said Jacob Harold, President and CEO of GuideStar.
APT Charities was excited about the opportunity to contribute to an organization that is committed to data-driven measurement of nonprofit impact. “As the largest source of data on nonprofits, GuideStar is an ideal recipient for an APT Charities grant. Their commitment to understanding the true impact of nonprofits is something that the members wanted to support,” said Greg Ulrich, member of APT Charities and Senior Vice President at APT.
Liberty’s Promise has received APT Charities’ inaugural stimulus award, which is intended for organizations that are just starting their data-driven, decision-making processes and would like to invest more in collecting, validating, and analyzing their data. Liberty’s Promise serves the Washington D.C. metropolitan area by encouraging young, low-income immigrants to be active and conscientious American citizens. “We are excited to receive this grant from APT Charities to jumpstart our data-driven efforts,” said Dr. Robert M. Ponichtera, Executive Director and Founder of Liberty’s Promise. “The proceeds from this grant will be used to better understand educational, career, and other prescriptive characteristics of past participants to identify opportunities to improve the program for future years.”
APT Charities has given out one previous grant in 2015, to DC Central Kitchen. As they look ahead, the outlook is positive. “Our membership has increased, and the engagement of our members has grown,” said Corinne Walters, the APT Charities board chair. APT, the company that formed APT Charities, is contributing again in 2016. Walters adds, “In the coming year, we’ll be continuing our advocacy and support for using data in a charitable capacity.”
About APT Charities
APT Charities was founded on the principle that data can help everyone. We believe that decisions should be validated by collecting and analyzing evidence. As an organization, it is our hope to aid those in the non-profit sector by providing grants to collect, organize, and sift through it, as well as make impactful changes based on that evidence. In short, our mission is to give gifts directly to organizations that have a demonstrated need and specific goal for funds, including those who engage in or could benefit from data-driven solutions. APT Charities was initially funded by a $50,000 donation from Applied Predictive Technologies. Members also contribute and are encouraged to find organizations to apply, as well as vote on the grant recipient. Visit http://www.aptcharities.org to learn more.
About Arcadia
Since its establishment in 2010, Arcadia's mission has been to improve the health of our community, support the viability of local farmers, and preserve the environment for future generations.
Through our programs, we:
- Work to address issues of food access and food justice
- Raise awareness about healthy food and its sources
- Establish innovative connections between local, sustainable farms and consumers
Arcadia Farm is located on the historic grounds of Woodlawn Estate in Alexandria, Virginia, thanks to a landmark partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the support and vision of Arcadia’s Founder and Chairman, Michael Babin.
About Guidestar
GuideStar, http://www.guidestar.org, is the largest source of nonprofit information, connecting people and organizations with information on more than 2.0 million IRS-recognized nonprofits. Some 7 million people, including individual donors, nonprofit leaders, grantmakers, government officials, academic researchers, and the media, use GuideStar's data every year to make intelligent decisions about the social sector. A 501(c)(3) nonprofit, GuideStar collects its information from the IRS, directly from nonprofits, and other partners in the nonprofit sector.
About Liberty’s Promise
Liberty’s Promise is a 501(c)(3) servicing the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area by encouraging young immigrants in need to be active and conscientious American citizens. Liberty’s Promise runs 18 after-school programs and also places participating youth in summer internships in local businesses, non-profits, and government agencies to help encourage civic engagement. Approximately 99 percent of the youth who attend Liberty's Promise programs go on to graduate high school or earn a GED, and more than 68 percent have some college education, figures that far exceed the national average for low-income students in an urban environment.
About APT
APT, a MasterCard Company, is a leading cloud-based analytics software company that enables organizations to rapidly and precisely measure cause-and-effect relationships between business initiatives and outcomes to generate economic value. Our intuitive and proprietary Test & Learn® software utilizes sophisticated algorithms to analyze large amounts of data, enabling business leaders to conduct experiments and allowing them to make optimal decisions and implement business initiatives at scale. APT also offers products that support decision-making for specific business needs including transaction analysis, space planning, promotion design, category management and location selection. APT’s client portfolio features some of the world’s best known brands, including Walmart, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Victoria’s Secret, American Family, Hilton Worldwide, SUBWAY, TD Bank, T-Mobile, and others. APT has offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, London, Bentonville, Taipei, Tokyo, Sydney, and Chicago. Visit http://www.predictivetechnologies.com to learn more.
Cathy Baker, Applied Predictive Technologies, http://www.predictivetechnologies.com, +1 703.875.7748, [email protected]
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