SAN JOSE, Calif. – November 13, 2018 – Silicon Valley Children’s Fund and TeenForce announced today their new brand, Pivotal.  With the new name and brand, comes a new vision for success. Pivotal – a name chosen to highlight its role in the lives of the foster youth it serves - has its eyes set on meeting the educational and employment needs of at least 80% of the foster youth in Silicon Valley by 2023.

Its ‘This is Pivotal’ online campaign, which was launched on the same day as the new brand, is designed to raise public awareness for foster youth, and give a nod to the sense of urgency with which its dedicated staff works to provides services to young people during the most critical – or pivotal – time in their lives.

As Elise Cutini, Pivotal CEO explained, “Pivotal is so much more than just a new name and logo. It represents where we are as an organization after our 2017 merger of Silicon Valley Children’s Fund and Teenforce. We’ve reached a pivotal time in our agency’s ability to provide direct service and lead systems reform, and we can now really deepen our work and scale our impact.”

While there are many nonprofits operating in Silicon Valley, Pivotal is unique in the niche it fills. Currently, it’s the the only agency in the area that focuses exclusively on education and employment support for high school and college age foster youth. This strong combination of support includes 1:1 coaching support, college scholarships, tutoring, summer internships, and professional development training. The new brand also uses a more dynamic approach to engaging the community. “Launching this new brand means we can share our impact and the success stories of our scholars more directly with people in our community,” says Cutini.

The agency hopes to bring in new supporters, advocates, and donors on board to help it achieve its strategy and vision of providing every young person in foster care with the education, career and life they want.  "We’re looking to Silicon Valley to provide us with strong business partnerships that open doors to life-changing education & work opportunities for our scholars.  It's a win-win for everyone, because these companies will acquire a talented pool of future-focused and motivated employees now and in the future. The truth is that when we work together, we are all pivotal.”  

Pivotal’s New Strategic Goals

As part of the launch, Pivotal has announced its key strategic goals.

  1. Deepen the levels of education and employment support services currently offered to approximately 550 foster youth in Silicon Valley.

  2. Lead reform on a new collective impact initiative which is co-chaired by the Department of Family and Children’s Services and the County Office of Education. The initiative is designed to bring community advocates and leaders together to disrupt the status quo and improve life outcomes for foster youth.

  3. Build out the structure needed to serve more than 800 foster youth (or 80%) by 2023.

 

ABOUT PIVOTAL

Pivotal is a leading Silicon Valley non-profit that provides young people in foster care with scholarships, tutoring, internships, job placements and coaching from experts in trauma and foster care. Young people in foster care face significant obstacles to success and have been shown to improve their chances for success when they work with professional coaches who help them navigate the critical years from high school to college and into the workforce. Pivotal programs help youth build the skills and confidence they need to determine their own education and employment paths. Since 1997, Pivotal has awarded over $3M in college scholarships and helped hundreds of foster youth defy the odds stacked against them. The agency graduates high school and college foster students at higher rates than the local and national foster youth averages.