Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership and vision and global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's exchanges and clearing houses around the world. And now welcome Inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
Now I'm no great scholar of the classics, but in Homer's Odyssey Mentor was chosen by his friend, Odysseus, to take care of his son, Telemachus, when Odysseus goes off to fight in the Trojan War. It is from Mentor's guidance and his relationship with Telemachus that Latin, English and other languages have all adopted the term mentor as it's known today, someone who inspires and shares knowledge or wisdom with someone younger or less experienced.
I'm reminded of that too, having just finished the first season of The Last of Us on HBO, based on the wildly popular video game from Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment. That's NYSE ticket symbol S-O-N-Y. Now in the game and also in the show the Orphan girl, Ellie, comes under the wing of this big brother figure, Joel, as they make their way from Boston to Wyoming, with their relationship blossoming through their harrowing journey out west, and as they reach their ultimate destination we're left to wonder really who's benefited more from the mentorship, Ellie or Joel?
It falls in line with the philosophy espoused by our guest today, Artis Stevens, President and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, who was recently my guest on the podium of the New York Stock Exchange to ring the closing bell. As Artis has said, a young person ends up making more of an impact on mentors' lives. Now, anyone who's been a mentor is familiar with this. It's sort of a form of reverse mentoring.
While mentorship has its roots in ancient Greek mythology, the idea of reverse mentoring is relatively new, where someone younger or less experienced mentors someone more senior. Mentoring or reverse mentoring, it's a two-way relationship. Organic or inorganic; regardless, mentoring benefits everyone involved. Today we're lucky to have Artis here to tell us how mentoring can positively impact the mentor, the mentee, their communities, and the world beyond. Our conversation with Artis Stevens on his unexpected career path and the role the largest mentoring organization in the country is playing, that's all coming up right after this.
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Josh King:
Our guest today, Artis Stevens, is the President and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. Prior to his current role, Artis served as Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of the National 4H Council. Before that, spent 13 years at the Boys and Girls Clubs of America in various roles, including National Vice President, marketing strategy and operations, education and program planning. Artis began his career at the Brunswick and Atlanta Housing Authorities as Director of Marketing and Community Relations. Welcome, Artis, Inside the ICE House.
Artis King:
Josh, thank you so much. It's great to be here. Great to talk with you again as well.
Josh King:
So as we mentioned in the introduction, you and I were both at the New York Stock Exchange earlier this year to celebrate National Mentoring Month. How did it feel to be up there in the podium, ringing the closing bell?
Artis King:
Wow, Josh. It was surreal. There are very few things I've experienced like that, this moment of being at the nexus of this economy, what's happening in our world, the leading companies and businesses in the world and the impact that they're making in so many different ways. And to see our mission and see our brand and the work that we do, the connection point of that, it was incredible to experience myself, but it was also incredible to have some of our young people right there ringing the bell with me and some of our littles, what we call our young people that we serve, right there ringing the bell and their first experience being on the sock exchange floor. And I was also just proud to have my family, my wife and my two girls, there as well. So it was a moment for me, my friend.
Josh King:
Littles on either side of us, including your family, Artis. What kind of feedback did you get after it?
Artis King:
They want to do it again. Yeah, and that said something right? I remember my youngest daughter, she tells me, she said, "This won't be my last time up here." That just stuck with me, because just as you talked about with your story when you first started off talking about this segment, is that the idea of mentorship, how powerful is that exposure, you expose a young person to something really incredible. We're really exciting. Something that gives them a new look or an affirmed look on life, and then hopefully what happens from that is there's this ripple effect that happens in their life to say, Hey, I can do it. I can be it, and then I can contribute that as well. So to hear my daughter say that it's a reflection of what we do in this organization and what Big Brothers Big Sisters is all about.
Josh King:
As I said that day, and bears repeating for our listeners, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, really over a century old. Can you tell us about how the organization got its start and how it's transformed over the years? It really did start right here in New York City, didn't it?
Artis King:
That's right. So it started in New York City 119 years ago actually. And the reason it started... This is really important for your listeners because it says so much about this country. It started because there was this court clerk... There were kids being sent through the juvenile justice system and a court clerk, guy named Ernest Coder at the time in New York City said there has to be a better way than kids coming through the court system. And then he came with this idea what if we connected kids with positive adults in their lives and gave them stewardship?
Now most of these kids, Josh, were kids who were homeless. They were in street gangs. Many of them were immigrants, coming into the country for the first time. So this was innovation, this was innovation, and it wasn't innovation that just happened alone by Ernest's idea, but it was about communities coming together.
So the reason why this program has grown over a century to be the largest mission driven mentoring organization in the country is because of corporations, because of academia, because of government. But everyone's saying we got skin in the game, that we have to build partnerships, because when we do it well it not only impacts kids, but kids then go on to contribute to society and contribute in productive ways. So that's why when you think about mentorship in this country today, why it's so important, our history tells us that when we come together and do amazing things that we not only change kids lives, but we can change the direction of our country.
Josh King:
Yeah, changing the direction of the country and also changing the direction of these individual people, including it's leader. Let's talk about your own origin story, Artis. You talk about often your childhood growing up in Brunswick, Georgia. From a young age did you think that you'd follow in your father's and grandfather's footsteps and actually become a preacher?
Artis King:
That's a really great question. My dad is a preacher, as you just stated, and my granddad. So I had this line going on. It was like, man, do I have to be a preacher like you guys as well? And I came from a large family and I always remember, because my mom and dad used to always say... We didn't have a lot of means growing up, but we were rich in relationships. That was the context, that was the fabric of our society ecosystem and the people around us.
And I remember going to my dad and I said, "Hey, do I need to be a preacher like you?" And I'll never forget what my dad said because it's been really the guiding principle in my life that everyone has their ministry in this world and you have to find yours. And that gave me this sense of empowerment to find and follow my own direction, still following the ministry, but not in the same way that he did.
But what was the real key component to every step of my life and growing up was this community of people that was around me and they were family. But they were not all related to me by blood, but they were family. And they helped me to be the first in my family to go to school and go to college and graduate. It was the people who gave me the nudge that I needed in terms of making really critical decisions in my life. And that's what we all need. Sometimes it can be taken from granted, the people in your life and the support system in your life, but it's unfortunately what too many kids don't have this access, this opportunity, this connection to these types of relationships that can really be meaningful and impactful to their direction.
Josh King:
Did any of the siblings follow in the family business?
Artis King:
Well, my oldest brother ended up becoming a musician in the church, so he was a minister of music, if you will. But yeah, I was the youngest of a really large family. All of us had some level of different talent. Mine certainly wasn't in that type of ministry, or where a lot of my siblings went in terms of singing and musical careers. I had none of that talent at all. I just happened to have a lot of good people around me to push me, and I was excited to do the work in terms of empowering young people in this country.
Josh King:
Beyond mom and dad, beyond siblings, who were some of the mentors that really were impactful on you growing up outside of the home?
Artis King:
One was my middle school grade teacher. His name was Mr. Arrington. I'll never forget Mr. Arrington, because he was one of the smartest people... Acctually my dad was one of the smartest people I knew, but my dad never went to college, so I didn't have anyone in my life that was that model for me of higher education. Mr. Arrington was the first person that I met that was a man of color who had went to college, and it was my embodiment of, okay, I hadn't seen this before. So he told me something.
He had a lot of friends, there were a lot of things going on in our community at the time, and he said the most powerful thing that a man can hold in his hand is not a gun, but a book. It was the power of knowledge, and the understanding of knowledge, and using knowledge as this positive weapon to create positive change in society, and those types of things stuck with me.
I also say when I graduated from college I thought I was going to law school, so you could have been talking to me, Josh, here as a lawyer. But what happens, when I graduated I went back home and I did some interviews just to have some fun doing some practice interviews, and I met who became a mentor, a man who became a mentor in my life, and he took me to a public housing community in the interview and he said, "What do you know about this playground in the public housing community?"
And I smiled and I laughed and I said, "This is the playground that I played in as a kid when I was growing up." He said, "You can always go to law school, son, but you can't always come back home and change your community," and it stuck with me, and that was my first job. My first job was working in public housing. The public housing community that I played in as a kid, I had the opportunity to come back home and then help to transform that community. That's mentorship, that's the circle, what we all see and we see in our lives, and the powerful change that happens.
Josh King:
When you did get out of the University of Georgia and you did come back to Brunswick and you looked around what was happening at the Brunswick Housing Authority, what were the major issues back then? What were the Its biggest challenges?
Artis King:
A lot of it was economic, right? So the idea of you had a lot of families who were struggling, and back then the perception was it's public housing and people are not doing well, not doing what they need to do. There was a lot of families just working hard but just didn't have access, didn't have opportunities, didn't have the connection that they needed, and it was coming into those types of places that sort of get a leg back up, sometimes what we need in this country.
And this becomes really full circle, to even the conversation, what we're talking about on the Stock Exchange floor, that what I was able to do at that point in time, and it taught me so much, was to bring together two communities, one community where all of these hardworking families who were looking for jobs, who were looking for ways to give their kids exposure, opportunity, much more success in life, and then the business community, who were looking for a pipeline, a workforce, people to do certain things.
And you had all these families who just didn't have the avenue, the connection, sometimes the training and the development. Well, my first job was helping to bring those two communities together. And I'll never forget sitting at a table and having on one side of the table all of these families who were hardworking families, but just needed an opportunity but was living in poverty in a lot of cases, and on the other side, employers, bankers, finance people, other industries, hotel, tourism, and then all these people coming together to talk about how can we design programs that help give people a step up, not a handout, but a step up in opportunity. And that really shaped and framed my perspective and my career going forward.
Josh King:
And yet you didn't stay out of the classroom forever, Artis. You didn't go end up going to law school, but you did go to Valdosta State to study public administration. What prompted you to go back and get that second degree?
Artis King:
It was the sense that to continue to grow, to continue to excel, to continue to be everything that I know my parents won and all of the people that had helped me to continue this journey and thrive in my life, it was to continue to get better. I've always been curious. It's back to that story I shared about my middle school teacher, about the power of the book. Always been curious to know more, to learn more, to understand more, and I felt that urge to go back and to get more education, to better myself, to strengthen myself. I felt like I needed stronger executive skills as well, and that was a really key part.
It wasn't just the idea of doing and executing, but it was like how do I become a better executive, decision making, judgments, understanding, reading and understanding things logistically, budgets? it's things that you don't always get the type of training even sometimes at your basic level of college, that you need more refined training. And then what getting my masters allowed me to do, and particularly while I was working, was apply it at the same time. So I wasn't just in the school setting, I was in the working career session setting. So then I was able to connect that to what I was learning in school and apply vice versa to things that I was learning both in my career while I was also getting my education for public administration.
Josh King:
So you had this experience at the Brunswick Housing Authority under your belt, you got your masters at Valdosta State, then you're coming out, and when did you first become aware of what the Boys and Girls Clubs of America were doing, and how did you start working for that organization?
Artis King:
So Josh, I tell people this all the time. The only real interview, meaning that I actually... And I'll say I say this sort of jokingly, but it's actually there's truth in it. The only real interview that I've ever done, meaning actually submit myself from my own initiative, submitted for a job interview in my entire career was that first job, the only one.
And the reason why I say that is not to brag on myself, it's really to say the power of mentorship, the power of relationships. So the reason why I moved on to Boys and Girls Clubs was because at the Brunswick Housing Authority. And then when I moved on to the Housing Authority through a relationship, someone who saw me at the Brunswick Housing Authority made a connection, I ended up moving there because they recruited me and reached out. I ended up generating a multimillion dollar investment in Atlanta public housing communities through youth programs, so Boys and Girls Clubs and those types of things.
And it was a person at Boys and Girls Clubs who said, "Hey, we're going to stay connected with you, and at some point I'm going to call you about an opportunity." And he did. He ended up calling me about an opportunity and I said, "Yeah, I'm interested what kind of marketing, fundraising, public/private partnership roles that you have," and he said, "None." I said, "What?" He said, "The role that I have is program". I said, "I mean I grew up in youth programs, but that's not where my education, my background and experience," and then he said, "Listen, to ultimately market, promote and sell this program you got to understand it. You got to understand about working it right."
And I will tell you that it was five to six years of the best time of my career, because I learned things that pushed me, that stretched me, that I was not comfortable about at all, and it helped me to grow and understand how do you form national programs, education programs, outcomes and measurements. And then another little small thing happened, is while I was there in that program department I met my wife as well, so there was a lot that came out, some really incredible outcomes from that experience.
Josh King:
What is the void, Artis, that's inside our country's homes that makes Boys and Girls Clubs, 4H and Big Brothers Big Sisters so vital? What are their unique niches that they do differently from one another to solve the problems that we can't solve at home?
Artis King:
Yeah. Well, if you think about what's happening in our country, you have about the 50 million school-age kids, you have about a third of those kids who don't have access to afterschool programs, who are sometimes considered that term latchkey kids, would go home... and it's not always because the parent doesn't want to be there, it's because the parent may be working or it may be a single led family household, so mom or dad or grandpa or grandma are leading the family, but they can't be all places at one time and they can't afford a childcare system.
So one of the most powerful things about our country is we always have had that type of social net to support communities, to support families, and that's why these organizations are all important, were are all founded around the same time, because of that social net in the earliest part of the 20th century. So if you think about Boys and Girls Clubs, it's a building, it's a actual facility that provides after school programming for kids to create safe and productive environments.
If you think about 4H, 4H has always been anchored on serving kids, even though it reaches a lot of kids in a lot of communities, but a lot of kids who don't get access and reach a lot of services in rural communities, rural and smaller size communities, and 4H has been that agricultural rural program for a number of years.
And then when you think about the organization that I'm at, Big Brothers Big Sisters, the idea that there is 15 million kids in this country who don't have access to a positive mentor in their life, 15 million kids in this country that don't have access to a positive mentor outside of their family in their life, that's something that I believe every kid deserves, not just from my personal story, but we know if there's one fundamental thing in humankind that has helped us to continue to grow, thrive, and develop it's been the idea of teaching, teaching from one generation to the next. That's who we are as human beings.
So to me mentoring is not this sort of, hey, it's a good thing to have. It's a necessity to our lives in the same way that we eat, we breathe, we do different things. We need that to feed ourselves, to feed our growth, and to feed our development. So I not only see ourselves as a youth empowerment organization, I see ourselves as a vital organization to human development.
Josh King:
Before we go to the break, what kind of communication, what kind of a relationship can a mentor have to a mentee that a father or mother can't have to a kid? What kind of things can they say, can they do, can they act on?
Artis King:
A lot of it's being supportive and sometimes it's affirmation. It's affirmation, because in a lot of cases what we see in what we call bigs and littles... So bigs for us are positive adults. The littles are the young people that are connected in our relationship. In a lot of cases it's affirmation. A lot of times you see that sometimes kids want an affirmation from someone outside the home, and that's important to have in their life.
Sometimes it is because kids feel like they can't have certain conversations inside the home, and we've all experienced that. There's certain things your kids are going to tell you and there are other things that your kids are not going to tell you. So the mentor becomes sort of an outlet to be a positive support in that way, and particularly for some of the communities that we serve.
When you think about that we serve a number of kids that are in the LGBTQ+ community. We know that 50% of the kids that we serve in the LGBTQ+ community come out to their big and haven't come out to their parent. That says something. That says something about the power of the mission and the work that we do, because it's important. That signals trust, and the trust of those relationships, that a kid who feels very vulnerable in terms of expressing something about themselves to their family feels more comfortable about expressing it to a mentor in their life.
That's the power of the program, the importance that we have, and those are the relationships that continue to be established. And I'll say this to sort of put a bow on this, Josh, is that the other thing I think is really important is that whatever we do that's never the idea of replacing a parent. A mentor is not intended to replace a parent. That's the primary relationship in a child's life.
What we hopefully will do is provide another avenue for kids that have a supportive avenue because we believe in the concept of a village. And that's when I talk about the ecosystem. So many of us remember that we were not... We don't just look to one person. So many of us who've had success, who've had positive and healthy development, we can look to a community of people, different mentors, different people in our lives, and we believe that every single young person deserves a community of people in their lives, and that's why we believe the service and the work that we do is so important.
Josh King:
Mentors in your lives. After the break Artis Stevens, the President and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, and I are going to dive into BBBS and how he's making history at the helm. That's all coming up right after this.
Speaker 3:
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Josh King:
Welcome back. Before the break, I was talking to Artis Stevens, the President and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, about his early beginnings and his career leading up to his current role. So Artis, as I mentioned, you made history about two years ago by becoming the first Black CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America really just as the world was in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. How did the pandemic impact your role, the organization, and it's programming? It's really harder to mentor when you're wearing a mask, isn't it?
Artis King:
Yeah, it's harder to mentor when you're wearing a mask, and it's harder to mentor when you are socially isolated. That's what I came into when I started in the organization in early 2021. So it was at the height of the pandemic. It was January 2021 when I started, and what I remember is as a leader it was challenging, because you had a few things that were going on. One, social isolation. You had schools that were closed down, so when schools closed down a lot of our services, of course, were affected. So we couldn't operate, we couldn't directly provide services to young people and to kids and families in the way that they needed it at the time. As a leader coming into the organization, I could meet with the staff that I was intended to lead, both nationally, but also because we have 230 local affiliates on the ground in communities that serve 5,000 communities, I couldn't meet with any of them. So all of my interactions were via a video screen. It was via Zoom. And that was challenging. It was challenging both professionally, but it was also challenging personally for me, because I wanted to be connected, coming into a job and leading into a job and understanding the mission, understanding the organization more effectively.
So there were a number of different dynamics that were going on. But most importantly, the dynamic was that kids were facing struggles and facing issues, mental health challenges, academic challenges. We were seeing that probably more than typical groups and organizations because of the populations we serve. So 55% of the kids that we serve live in poverty. Another 60% are led by a single family household. We have about 20% of the kids that we serve have a family member that's incarcerated or on parole. And when I tell people all the time none of numbers define who they are, but what often defines them or challenges them is the context that they find themselves in their environments.
And what often helps support them is the relationships in their lives. So part of what we needed to do is to say how do we help young people who already were facing challenges before the pandemic and the pandemic did nothing but exasperate those challenges, so how do we provide services? We had to pivot. We had to pivot most organizations during that time.
So when we couldn't go face-to-face what did we do? we said that we were still going to help kids with things like homework help, still be mentoring, so we were in front yards. We were six feet apart in front yards with mask, with our volunteers and our staff and young people and their families, talking. We delivered food. That's something we had never done before, but we said, you know what? We have volunteers, we got staff, we got cars, and our families need to eat. So we delivered food and we became a food distribution network. So we understood the assignment being we had to help kids and we had to help families in any way that we could. We helped set up wifi in certain communities with mobile wifi systems so that kids could pick up wifi. It was really being present and showing up for our families in ways that we needed to show up.
And then the last thing I'll say to your question that may lead to a question down the road here is it also made us think about during all this time how important it was for us to think about our services, how important it was for us to think about how we delivered services, and not just being in a pandemic, but even beyond the pandemic, how we needed to make sure that our services was truly meeting kids and families where they were and not the other way around, so that we could be more adaptable and more flexible in how we were able to impact kids and impact the communities we serve.
Josh King:
When you joined as CEO, Artis, in addition to all that you created something called the Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, or JEDI to use the acronym, Advisory Council. What inspired that move?
Artis King:
Yeah, it goes back to our founding, when I had mentioned to you about Ernest Coder and being founded from the juvenile justice system. We had always been an organization that had a very centered view around justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. I tell people this all the time. We were founded from the justice system, the juvenile justice system, with the very focus of creating more equity in the kids' lives that we serve, and particularly kids who were most marginalized at the time that I had mentioned earlier.
The way we grew was through diverse communities coming together. It was the church, it was businesses, it was academia, it was government, but it was diverse communities from every walk of life, every background, every demographic, who said we're going to come together in smaller communities, larger communities, and we're going to help to create Big Brothers Big Sisters, and that's how we scaled over a number of years. The entire emphasis of that work and that focus was always about kids feeling included and having a sense of inclusion and belonging so that they had a pathway to be successful in life.
You put all those things together, justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, JEDI, that's why we call ourselves a Jedi focused youth empowerment organization, not to grab onto a new headline or to the latest thing that's out or being said today, but because it's 119 years of our DNA and who we are as an organization and who will continue to be in terms of serving the kids who need us the most, and making sure that we're providing positive relationships that create connection in their lives.
Josh King:
At the core I guess, Artis, still is that basic human connection between two people. For people who have heard of Big Brothers Big Sisters, maybe they know someone who serves as a big or they know a little who could use a big, what's the process like to match a big with a little? How long does the process take? What resources are required?
Artis King:
So most of it is first of all a potential big, a volunteer, raising their hand and saying that I want to want to be a big, and that that's important. I can't stress how important that is, Josh. Right now we got 30,000 kids on our waiting list. You didn't hear that number wrong. That's right, 30,000 kids.
Josh King:
A lot of kids.
Artis King:
It's a lot of people. 30,000 kids on our waiting list. We need more people raising their hands to become mentors. Most of those kids on our waiting list are boys, and we need certainly all walks of life, all people, but we certainly need more men coming to the table. Typically what happens is someone raises their hands and says I want to be become involved in the program. We take them through a process. That process, it really depends on the mentor and how engaged they are in the process. I t can take you anywhere from a month, a couple of months to just go through things like background checks, getting references.
I will tell you we're very intentional about this process, and the reason we are is because you're talking about the safety of young people. You're talking about also the safety of our volunteers. We want everyone to feel like they came into the right experience. So we want that connection, what we call the match. So that one-to-one connection or one-to-group connection to really be powerful and to really be sustainable. We go through a lot of process, so the one thing we're going to do is we're going to understand more about you, we're going to understand more about the family that we would connect you with so that connection feels right and it feels authentic.
You typically will meet with a little two times a month. I will tell you that every single one of our bigs comes into this and says, "Yeah, two times a month, that seems about right." And then they come back to us and say, "I want to meet more." So it always starts that way. It's basically two hours. You're saying an hour each visit and it turns into these really spectacular, incredible relationships.
One thing that we do is our program is really robust in terms of what we call support, match support. That means if, Josh, you came into our program and we match you with a little, we're not going to leave you. We're going to be that match support for you when you have questions, or here's resources, or you're looking for things that are conversations to have, like here's how you start a conversation, but most of the time the little drives it.
So they get together a big and a little, and they create what we call a youth development plan. So they'll create a plan together, and it's the young person leading the way, the big asking questions, but the young person leads and talks about what they want to achieve out of relationship. The big does the same thing. And then all of a sudden magic happens. These magic relationships formally typically happen. It lasts about three and a half years formally. And I say formally because a lot of times it goes up to the age of 18. What we see though is that these relationships are 30, 40 years. You have littles and bigs who end up being,... The big ends up being in the little's wedding. It's so long and so tenured because of the real nature of family and extended family connection that it has.
Josh King:
A lot of littles have gone on to do great things. What are some of the sort of really emblematic stories that you hear of how a relationship resulted in life changing opportunity for a little?
Artis King:
Yeah. So we have tons of them. I'll tell you some of the ones that really speak to me. So we have what we call an alumni hall of fame, where we bring some of our most prominent alumni, whether you were a little or whether you were a big, together and to engage. And one of the most powerful ones that I heard was from a judge.
So this judge, and he said he was a little at the time and his mentor made an incredible difference in his life. And the mentor took him basically across a river, and it was a river that was frozen at the time. I don't know how safe that was at the time, but people did it often at the time he was a kid. And what was so powerful about that story is he linked it back to the history of this family. And what he didn't know was that that was part of the story historically of how a lot of slaves at the time escaped, going through a frozen river. They'll walk over that river to help to get to their freedom.
And it was so powerful hearing that story, because he remembers it, now being a judge, he remembers it as an idea of why it helped to expose him to this idea of justice, this idea of freedom. And even now in his career, what he does in his career was so emblematic to the sense of how that relationship helped his life to unfold. And I share that example because it is such a symbol of what these relationships truly aspire to.
They aspire to the sense of exposure to young people to see things and to become exposed to things. We know about 90% of our kids get a career exposure because of our program, a career exposure they hadn't had before because of our program. We know that about 86% of our kids are on track to graduate and attend college because of the relationship that they have with their mentorship that is supportive in the school environment as well. That's not by accident. That's by intention of this mission and the program and the work that thousands of volunteers do locally in the community in connection with kids. That's really critical and important for life.
Josh King:
What are the metrics you use to signal to yourself that this relationship is working? More importantly, how do you know when a relationship isn't working with 230 agencies operating across the country in all locales creating standards? So what do you do about it when you see that maybe this match is not quite right?
Artis King:
Yeah. In terms of when we know it is working, the relationship, one of the things that we do, we believe a lot in measurement, so we're an evidence-based program. We've done 119 years, we have 119 years of anecdotal outcomes, but also just measurement and research, right? Evaluation studies. We've been an organization that's been one of the gold standards in terms of evaluation and impact of our program and our outcomes, and we are continuously in that focus in the work. And we have a measurement program directly to young people, to families, to the volunteers as well, so that in real time we see how the relationship is going and we're able to evaluate the relationship.
Here's what we look at. We look at what we call intensity of a relationship, meaning is there a level of engagement activity that's going on. The tenure of the relationship? Is the relationship lasting? Are our people meeting? Are there milestones or things that are happening that way? That's why the match support that we provide is so important and engaging. Are we listening to what young people are telling us and hearing their voice? Are they feeling good, emotionally connected? And are we seeing outcomes?
So we look at really some core outcomes. One, academic success and how young people are doing academically. We're not the only answer to that, but are the mentoring relationship being supportive to their academic success? Are we asking questions? Are we being supportive in environment? Their mental health is another area that we look at. Are they not getting involved in and using proactive and pro-social supportive activities and choices? So positive decisions. Not getting involved in things that would be risky behaviors is another key of course. And then do they have the sense of emotional connection to the environment and communities around them, contributing service, those types of things?
So we look at those kind of models. Here's, Josh, when we know it's not working. We hear directly from young people or our volunteers that the level of engagement is not there. When we see that in the sense of the relationship there are ebbs and flows. Sometimes there's movement that happens in a relationship, either from a big or a little, where they're transitioning to another location, geography, which sometimes causes relationships not to last as long as we like.
But what I will tell you is that we are really good at intervening when we see those types of things, to try to self-correct those types of things with the relationship. And if there is a challenge what we typically do is we come in, we help to basically provide support to a transition to another relationship. That is a rare situation in our model, and it's not because of anything that I do. It's because of the incredible work of our local staff and agencies on the ground, who are experts at this work, who do a lot of good intense work in background, because the last thing we want to happen is an adult get into a young person's life and then that adult, whatever reason, leaves that young person's life, particularly when they hadn't had it in the first place. So that's why the upfront work of what we do and then the constant support, the match support, is so important in these relationships.
Josh King:
About a year ago MacKenzie Scott really stepped up with a donation of more than $120 million to Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. Now a lot has been written about her unique approach to philanthropy and how she's doing it, but what does a donation of that size really mean to your organization and how do you put it to use?
Artis King:
Yeah, $122.6 million.
Josh King:
Amazing.
Artis King:
Yeah.
Josh King:
I didn't mention the 2.6, but every dollar counts, man.
Artis King:
Every dollar, my friend. So it's an infusion into our network. It's an infusion. 30 local agencies got funding from that amount in addition to our national office. What's really important about that is here's why that... And I love to talk about this, because here's why that money is so important. I just got finished telling you and your listeners about how our program operates and works. What I didn't share with you, which is really important, is that the families we serve, they don't pay a penny for our program. We don't charge them a cent. It's 100% free for our families, because they couldn't access this program if they were charged for it.
So to be able to serve and provide free services, all the things that I've told you about, the background checks, the technology that it takes to do matches, the support, the capacity on the ground, the training for staff, those things cost money, and those are not always the things that you find investment funds from people, because a lot of times you want to fund the... Here's the great scholarship, or the program, or a specific thing, but not always the things are under the hood that helps organizations to thrive and grow.
We call it unrestricted funding, which means it allows us to take money and use it in a way that best fits and serves the organization. It's trust based philanthropy. That's what Ms. MacKenzie Scott did for us. It allowed that trust, allowed us to invest in places where our organization needs opportunity and needs growth, and that's what we're hoping to continue to build in the type of work that we're doing.
So where's that money being invested now? We basically took the money that she invested in us nationally, and our 30 agencies said we want to raise our hands to reinvest back nationally as well, so that not only 30 agencies get impact from this, but 230 agencies get impact from this. So we created a fund that's now allowing us to deploy our strategic plan to build better and stronger training, to bring more volunteers into our network. So now we're launching a comprehensive volunteer experience program that helps to train our staff on the ground and help to train and support volunteers to come into our network.
We're going to be able to build a larger alumni network. So we got 20 million alumni, 20 million that's out there. Our challenge is that we don't know all their names, and we need help in terms of getting people to identify, to say, "Hey, I was a big," "I was a little," or "My child was in the program," or "I supported the program in this way." We want to bring those people back into our communities to help us to raise money, to help us to advocate, to help us support the work that we're doing. So that's going to be critical to what we do and how we grow and move forward.
And then that's the third thing, growth, growth to reach more kids. And one of the things that we're seeing right now is that we're growing in a lot of different ways in our program. We traditionally serve five to 18, and we're going to continue to go deep in serving kids five to 18 with a lot of different programs in technology, in education, in any types of mentorship. But our fastest growing population that we're serving since the pandemic is 18 to 25 young adults, and that's because these kids are staying longer in our program because they're asking us the question what's next? How do I navigate to get a job? How do I fill out a FAFSA form to go to college? What's the process for enlistment? Oh, I have this idea about entrepreneurship, but I don't know where to start.
They're looking for mentorship and connection, and what we're doing is saying how do we now implement programs along with people in corporate America to say can we engage and be a pipeline for both what young people and families need in terms of skill development, access and opportunities, and at the same time, for companies and corporations who are saying we want to reach young people, we want to reach certain communities, we want to reach them at a younger age, and we want to get our employees engaged in a very effective way in, and can you help us do whatever that is?
Josh King:
Artis, at the very beginning of a relationship, let's just say a little is starting or a biggest starting, you've been part of the fabric of this community for a long time, whether it's at Big Brothers, or 4H, or now Big Brothers Big Sisters. What's the top advice you give to a little beginning this process, and what's the advice you give to a big, your personal dos and don'ts?
Artis King:
Yeah. The advice that I give to a little is to say be yourself, be your authentic self. That's what these relationships are about, that they're safe, that you can feel to use your voice, that you can feel empowered, that we want you to step out, to feel comfortable, to share, to talk, to engage, but to be your authentic self in the relationship. We know those in those type of environments that's the best way that our littles grow. I think that's really important for our families, for young people, for anyone who's thinking about a young person getting involved in our program, is to know that it's authentic. It's about being their authentic self, and we're going to help to empower them through the connection of a relationship.
The bigs who volunteer as adults, what I would say is, and I've said this previously, is that you don't have to be perfect to be a mentor. You just have to be present and persistent. So many times people look at the idea of mentorship, and I always say that you have these concepts of mentors that sometimes we see in popular culture, that they have to be these sort of the Mr. Miyagis, that they're these dynamic wisdom throwing and all those different things that you see, when in reality they just want people who show up, that's going to listen, that's going to be a sounding board, that's going to be present in their lives, that's going to push productively and positively, that's going to listen to them, and also that's going to exhibit vulnerability.
Not being perfect is actually a good thing, that you can tell and share with the kid what your experience has been like on something, where you failed, where you made a mistake, and how you learnd from it and how you develop.
So I'll always say to people to have that level of sensibility about working with kids, have a sense of vulnerability, and have a sense of empathy. And I'll say that on both sides, the idea of empathy, putting yourself in someone else's shoes. So I think that's important for kids to do in the relationships they have. I think that's important for adults to do in the relationships they have, and that's what we find so often through Big Brothers Big Sisters.
Because what I will share with you, it's so many... About 70% of our relationships are formed through different cultures, people from different backgrounds, different demographics, so kids have different demographics than the volunteers who they're with. And what we traditionally find, and we find this through research, is that it opens up the perspective of both individuals. The kids get access to opportunities to a different world, but in the same way the adults, their worlds expand. They see much more culturally, they get much more connected to their community. And that's why I think this is an organization that makes society better, it makes our communities better, and it makes our country better.
Josh King:
Well, Artis, two years in the seat, a long runway ahead, a little bit of a tailwind from $122.6 million from MacKenzie Scott, so much ahead for you guys. Come back to the New York Stock Exchange. Ring the bell again. We'd love to have you back. Thanks so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.
Artis King:
Thank you, my friend. Take care, Josh.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Artis Stevens, President and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. If you like what you heard please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us, and if you've got a comment or a question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show email us at [email protected] or tweet at icehouse podcast. Our show is produced by Lauren Sullivan and Pete Ash, sound engineering and editing Ian Wolf. I'm Josh King, your host, signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
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