NewsPod Special Series: BDOG #3 Improve Your Tomorrow's Michael Lynch Explains Health Equity in Education.

Michael Lynch, the visionary co-founder and CEO of Improve Your Tomorrow (IYT), brings his compelling insights on bridging education and health equity for young men of color. We explore how IYT provides robust support from seventh grade through college to close the college opportunity gap. Michael shares inspiring stories like that of Oscar, a former student turned board member, showcasing IYT's transformational impact on breaking cycles of poverty and unhealthy habits. This narrative underscores the critical importance of fostering a sense of belonging and motivation, which are essential for educational success and health awareness.

The episode also shines a light on the pivotal role played by the Sacramento Region Community Foundation's Impact Fund, supported generously by the Keller Family Pathway Fund. We discuss how such strategic philanthropy enables impactful contributions toward health equity initiatives. With the foundation's guidance, individuals and businesses can navigate charitable giving to effectively address pressing community needs. These efforts not only help create more connected communities but also ensure environments where individuals can thrive both academically and personally.

To contribute visit BIGDAYOFGIVING.

To learn more about the Sacramento Region Community Foundation, visit the website HERE.

Hear Barry Keller's story of support for the Impact Fund HERE.

Learn more about Improve Your Tomorrow HERE.

Thank you so much for listening! We appreciate you. Please visit the website to sign up for our email updates. https://www.nonprofpod.com/ And if you like, leave me a voicemail to comment on the program, leave a question for us to ask in the future or a message for me, Jeff Holden. I may even use your voice mail message in a future episode. https://www.nonprofpod.com/voicemail. Thanks again for your support in listening, commenting and sharing the great work our local nonprofits are accomplishing.

Transcript

00:08 - Jeff Holden (Host)
This nonprofit news pod is part of a special four-part series being brought to you by the Keller Family Pathway Fund. Each of the four episodes will feature a topic of interest relative to the Sacramento Region Community Foundation's Big Day of Giving coming up on May 1st. My guest this episode is Michael Lynch, co-founder and CEO of Improve your Tomorrow. Michael, welcome to the program. 

00:32 - Michael Lynch (Guest)
Yes, I'm happy to be here and looking forward to a great conversation. 

00:35 - Jeff Holden (Host)
And we are looking forward to it as well. Before we get into the topic of the program, which is health equity, give us a brief overview of your organization. Improve your Tomorrow. 

00:45 - Michael Lynch (Guest)
We're looking to be able to close the college opportunity gap for young men of color by providing wraparound support services from seventh grade through college completion, all with the goal to get them to graduate college and enter their career and to end generational cycles of poverty and trauma. 

01:04 - Jeff Holden (Host)
In addressing health equity before we get into the relationship to the organization, how would you explain your perspective on what health equity is? 

01:15 - Michael Lynch (Guest)
Think about for a minute what health equity means and all of what health encompasses. If you think about the social determinants of health, of income, of education, like a neighborhood, you think about a community. Let's go like Valley High School. Or let's go by the community Valley High, like in Meadowview, where you have a lot of poverty saturation, gang saturation. You're also right next to the freeway, so you have higher amounts of asthma and all these other different factors of it. 

01:43
When you think about health equity and the nexus the work that IYT does a lot of, what is based in health is your standard of living, and your standard of living is often determined by your income and your income is often determined by your education. So for IYT and what we're trying to do, we know that this group of young people who are at the bottom of almost every positive academic indicator young men of color least likely to graduate high school, least likely to attend college, most likely to get involved in the criminal justice system IYT wants to disrupt it by giving them the full opportunity to a college education. 

02:23 - Jeff Holden (Host)
I was going to ask you why it matters, but you answered it all beautifully in that response. We can see why it matters. It's significant in all the facets of really somebody's life, from education to health, to career, to family. Education across the board, starting in grammar school all the way through college, requires an awareness of health and that awareness could instigate an interest in understanding what it is about me, about my personal health and well-being. We see systemic barriers all play into this topic as students move through academia, and certainly in the underserved and underprivileged even more significantly so, and certainly in the underserved and underprivileged even more significantly. So what are you seeing regarding this issue as it relates to your goal of higher education and moving that awareness up, not only about the education but the health education. 

03:16 - Michael Lynch (Guest)
Awareness and identity are so important in your ability to feel confident in self. 

03:23
People with a strong identity and who have a good connection both to family and friends and community are less likely to do things that they're not supposed to do right Violent crimes, all the stuff that sort of have like the part of like negative externalities of life. 

03:38
So awareness and identity are important in being able to shape who a young person is. And if you're a young person, person living in a community where there's a lot of trauma, you hear sirens at night, gun violence, single-parent home, food insecurity, economic insecurity all those things help to challenge your identity Because your connection, or your positive connection to community may not be as strong as you can. So IYT, we're really trying to build a stronger identity. A big part of what we do is build a brotherhood positive friends who are making good decisions. When adults aren't looking, you know, on a Friday night, a Saturday night, they have these positive cohorts of young people who are like sports teams or like fraternities. They're going to be there for each other but to ensure that they can help to be on the positive side of health equity. 

04:34 - Jeff Holden (Host)
You know, michael, as all that work is being done, you know we have had this category of health equity. You've got 13 years now with the organization, if I'm not mistaken correct Correct 13. What would you say in terms of impact? How are you seeing that impact in the general population that you serve, and predominantly here in Sacramento? 

04:57 - Michael Lynch (Guest)
I mean, I'm seeing it every day. Jeff, you know one of our board members, oscar. Oscar came to us as a freshman Valley High School 1.67 GPA, and Oscar didn't want to do much of it. 

05:10 - Jeff Holden (Host)
He was a smart kid, but he just wasn't motivated. 

05:13 - Michael Lynch (Guest)
He didn't see the nexus between what school could provide and the life you want to create. Oscar got connected in IYT, started coming to the study halls, got connected. I was his mentor, so I was mentoring him. I went on the college trips and did all the things. He went from a 1.67 GPA to a 4.3, like three semesters, graduated from UC Davis in 2020, and now is now serving on our board as one of my bosses, but he's a marketing manager at a real estate company and then he just last year got his master's degree in marketing from University of Santa Clara. So all from a kid who had a 1.67 GPA as a freshman. So, and like that's you know, that's one of only more than 10,000 that we have served. So we're seeing. We're seeing the positive correlations to when a young person feels like they belong in school. They feel motivated in school and then now, right, they're seeking higher education. Oscar first in his family, to get a college degree. He has two little brothers Now it's the expectation. 

06:32 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Now it's the expectation Think about what that does, jeff right to a generation of eating, diabetes awareness, sugars and smoking and exercise. All those things come into play typically as you learn more and become educated in general, breaking that cycle of those unhealthy habits in the household as well. 

06:57 - Michael Lynch (Guest)
It's so important. Unhealthy habits in the household as well, it's so important. I mean, like your ability to successfully navigate life is dependent on so many things and just like who you are as a person or how hard you work, like those health equity as far as access to food, access to transportation, access to job, access to healthcare all those things play. But the more that you can be able to give someone a positive self-identity through education and through positive extracurricular activities, it does help to shape their decisions around stuff that's not good for their health Smoking, drugs, the abuse of alcohol, all those things that we're seeing a skyrocket amongst young people, especially amongst boys all those negative factors. You know, when you do have an increased focus around awareness, identity and motivation, you will see positive influences of what it means for it to be health equitable. 

07:49 - Jeff Holden (Host)
It just amazes me the generational impact, as you mentioned, that that will have going forward to breaking that cycle of you know whether it be poverty, lack of education, health issues, everything. It's just such a much better community member who is educated. 

08:08 - Michael Lynch (Guest)
Yeah, that's what we want. I mean, we want communities to be able to thrive. But in order for all communities to thrive, opportunity has to be tied to it. You know, like the young people we serve aren't often aren't given the best opportunity in life, you know they may have parents of a mixed documentation status, or parents who are incarcerated, or parents who have severe, undiagnosed like mental health, and then, as a result, it impacts the kids' health and the kids' ability to be able to thrive. So if you want a thriving community, you have to ensure those who are furthest from opportunity get the opportunity to be able to thrive. 

08:44 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Very well stated. The Sacramento Region Community Foundation's impact fund is focused on health equity and that's a big deal, obviously, as we're talking. But even more significantly, it's unrestricted funds, and I know that makes every nonprofit smile when we speak about that opportunity to have the unrestricted funding. How do you think it will benefit organizations like yours, Big Day of Giving, having that fund and health equity with unrestricted funds how did those go to use for you guys? 

09:16 - Michael Lynch (Guest)
I mean like. To me that is trust-based philanthropy. That is the model of how it should go. Nonprofits are really tough business models. Imagine having 38 different buckets of restricted dollars. You can only buy yellow pins here, you can only buy Cheez-Its here. So the business model is very difficult to be able to not only do good work but to sustain and grow. So the ideal for nonprofits is the trust-based philosophy Give us the money to be able and then we're going to be able to hold accountable to an outcome, but give us the ability to spend it strategically in a way where it can be of highest, best use to the student, to the young person, to the user. So that's ideal. You are right, jeff. I'm smiling right now because it gets me excited when you get unrestricted dollars, because it gives us, as nonprofit leaders, the ability to do what we think is best for the person that we're serving in a specific area, but you need the operations to manage the grant in order to manage the program that the grant is for, and sometimes that's a struggle. 

10:31 - Jeff Holden (Host)
So getting these unrestricted funds, whether they come from straight big day of giving or through the Impact Foundries, now Health Equity Fund, that makes all the difference in the world for some organizations and certainly everything for some who are on the smaller side of things. 

10:45 - Michael Lynch (Guest)
And think about this too. If you're serving in a school and you have a contract with a school, you're required to have insurance. You're required to have like a $5 million insurance policy, multiple different parts of it and that's often not is not what's included within a direct grant, Whereas a funder may just only want to fund a mentor or food or transportation. There are all of the backend that has to happen. If you're running payroll, there's a payroll cost. 

11:11 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Right. 

11:13 - Michael Lynch (Guest)
So the trust-based philanthropy helping to fund operations is key for nonprofits like Improving Tomorrow to do good work. 

11:20 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Well, michael, I can't thank you enough taking the time and sharing the story, how it impacts your organization For many others to hear how this health equity is going to be beneficial to their organizations as well. What you do in the community is so significant. The impact that you're making 13 years later 5,000 young men and the stick-to-itiveness of the people that go through your organization the young men that stay, as I've heard is incredible. So obviously what you're doing is making an impact and it's giving them that ability then to pay it forward and continue to keep the momentum of Improve your Tomorrow going. Continued success to you. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you. 

12:08 - Michael Lynch (Guest)
Thank you, Jeff. Thank you for the opportunity. 

12:10 - Jeff Holden (Host)
Big Day of Giving is only weeks away and we're happy to bring you these topical conversations related to the Community Foundation's Impact Fund focused on health equity, this program was supported by the Keller Family Pathway Fund. Barry and Linda Keller proudly support the Sacramento Region Community Foundation's Big Day of Giving through their Keller Family Pathway Fund. Why? They believe giving is an emotional experience, often making the choice of where to give a difficult one. With expertise, experience and deep understanding of the philanthropic environment, the Sacramento Region Community Foundation team is uniquely skilled in vetting organizations their greatest needs and helping local people and businesses give back most effectively. The Kellers trust the Sacramento Region Community Foundation and invest in its impact fund, ensuring their contributions will be used wisely. Thank you, barry and Linda, for your gracious support of the Sacramento Region Community Foundation's Big Day of Giving.