Getting Out and Staying Out Inc
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Justice-involved youth have the highest rate of recidivism, with 67% of the population being re-arrested. These individuals often cycle in and out of the justice system throughout their twenties and early thirties—a pivotal time in life when most Americans launch and advance in their careers. Employment for justice-involved individuals is often perceived as the most influential factor in successfully reentering the community and their likelihood in resisting recidivism. A study conducted in New York City found that a criminal record reduced the likelihood of a callback or job offer by nearly 50%. A jobseeker’s race compounds this effect—the same study demonstrated that White applicants with criminal records are called back twice as often as Black applicants. Given the lack of employment, exacerbated by a combined 16% high school dropout rate among Black and Latinx students, and limited access to mental healthcare, justice-involved youth are at an extreme disadvantage.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
GOSO's Community Program
GOSO provides post-release transitional services at our facility in East Harlem. Our integrated post-release support program offers help in three key areas– education, employment, and mental health/social services.
GOSO on Rikers Island
Our discharge planning services help young men get out and stay out. GOSO Volunteers meet with young men who have enrolled in classes at East River Academy on Rikers Island to give them an opportunity to begin to explore their future options. Additional recruiters and social workers reach out to men who have been sentenced to complete their terms on Rikers Island.
GOSO provides life-affirming mentoring, supportive counseling, reentry planning and legal support services through letters of support, phone calls to lawyers and courtroom visits.
GOSO Upstate
Support and mentoring for GOSO participants sentenced to upstate facilities. GOSO has established a unique partnership with the NYS State Department of Correctional Services that enables us to provide continued support and mentoring through correspondence with GOSO participants who are sentenced to upstate facilities. We encourage participants to pursue their high school equivalency diploma, college level correspondence courses or vocational training while incarcerated, and we provide text books and study materials on request.
GOSO steps up contact and reentry planning with participants just prior to their release to better prepare them for their return to the community. Most important, we are able to reassure them that we are aware of the specific problems they will be facing when they return to the community and will be there to help them find solutions from the day they are released.
Where we work
External reviews
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
GOSO aims to empower young men to avoid involvement in the criminal justice system and to reshape their futures through educational achievement, meaningful employment, and financial independence. GOSO focuses on each participant’s developmental strengths and capacities as well as his practical needs. We promote personal, occupational, and intellectual growth through structured, goal-oriented programming, and social support services focusing on the three E’s—education, employment, and emotional well-being.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
According to a report by The Council of State Governments Justice Center (Integrated Reentry and Employment Strategies: Reducing Recidivism and Promoting Job Readiness), in order to reduce criminal behaviors and recidivism, employment service providers must address individuals’ antisocial attitudes and beliefs associated with crime, many of which also impact an individual’s ability to succeed in the workplace. GOSO’s holistic, client-centered approach emphasizes meeting these most pressing needs of our clients, which we call the “three E’s”: education, employment, and emotional well-being. GOSO’s strategies include:
• High School Equivalency Classes: Collaborating with the New York City Department of Education (DoE), GOSO has
established a high school equivalency (HSE) program that is operated out of our Education Center in East Harlem.
Classes are taught by DoE educators, and class sizes are kept small to ensure students receive individual attention.
• Job Readiness Curriculum: Ensuring participants’ successful completion of a rigorous two-week curriculum focused
on career exploration, resume writing, interview techniques, and appropriate workplace conduct.
• GOSOWorks: Placing and supporting participants in a three-month paid internship leading to permanent
employment. Approximately 70% of internships lead to full-time employment.
• Onsite Vocational Trainings: Offering onsite vocational trainings, including: General Industry OSHA Training, 30-Hour
OSHA Construction Training, 4-Hour Supported Scaffolding Training, and 16-Hour Security and Fireguard Training.
• Group Psychotherapy and Soft Skills-Building Sessions: Facilitating daily therapy sessions where participants openly
discuss family and parenting issues, harm reduction, career issues, and other concerns in order to increase their
capacity for positive self-expression, anger management, delayed gratification, and empathy.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
By hiring licensed social workers to develop and facilitate its holistic programming, GOSO expertly utilizes evidenced-based approaches, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Internal Family Systems, and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, which assist individuals in acquiring the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understanding and managing emotions; feeling and showing empathy for others; establishing and maintaining positive relationships; and setting and achieving practical and prosocial goals.
GOSO Case Workers, referred to as Career Managers, are trained to understand and respond to the fact that many justice-involved youth have experienced a significant amount of trauma during childhood and incarceration. GOSO clients often struggle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as well as other mental health issues as they attempt to improve their education and job readiness skills. Even for individuals without serious mental health diagnoses, many participants in our target population face significant emotional stressors in their daily life that they need help navigating, including economic and social barriers such as financial instability due to lack of meaningful employment, racial discrimination, and stigma surrounding their involvement with the justice system. GOSO's Career Managers have developed a continuum of programs, based on evidence-based practices, which address these issues and help our participants achieve the emotional stability needed to pursue their educational and career goals.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
In the 15 years since its founding, GOSO has served over 10,000 young men who have touchpoints with the criminal justice system, helping them to complete their education, obtain meaningful employment, and achieve emotional well-being. In each year since our founding, the recidivism rate for our active participants has been at or below 15%; our current recidivism rate for active participants is 3%.
GOSO launched Stand Against Violence East Harlem (SAVE) in 2015 at the request of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ). While SAVE works closely with GOSO in many ways, it has a separate staff and a tight focus on a distinct mission: SAVE is committed to preventing gun violence and building a culture of non-violence to bring peace and economic development to East Harlem. AVE was originally contracted by MOCJ to focus its violence prevention efforts in and around the Thomas Jefferson and James W. Johnson NYCHA Housing Developments. Due to their credibility within Jefferson and Johnson and their familiarity with the stakeholders at Wagner, SAVE was awarded an amendment to our current MOCJ contract to expand services to the Wagner houses. This increased support represents a decisive vote of confidence, and allows us to allocate skilled administrative staff and a clinical background to SAVE as we further professionalize the program.
GOSO has also hired staff whose focus is to help expand key programs, including a Housing and Benefits Coordinator to help centralize our efforts to connect participants to housing resources and benefits like SNAP and Medicaid. In doing so, we eliminate the weeks-long wait participants’ face by accessing outside care and we significantly decrease the unease with navigating an unfamiliar system.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We take steps to get feedback from marginalized or under-represented people, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We look for patterns in feedback based on demographics (e.g., race, age, gender, etc.), We look for patterns in feedback based on people’s interactions with us (e.g., site, frequency of service, etc.), We engage the people who provide feedback in looking for ways we can improve in response, We act on the feedback we receive, We tell the people who gave us feedback how we acted on their feedback
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
We don't have any major challenges to collecting feedback
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
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Getting Out and Staying Out Inc
Board of directorsas of 01/18/2024
Ms. Kimberly Till
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Yes
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Transgender Identity
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data
Equity strategies
Last updated: 08/11/2023GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We disaggregate data to adjust programming goals to keep pace with changing needs of the communities we support.
- We employ non-traditional ways of gathering feedback on programs and trainings, which may include interviews, roundtables, and external reviews with/by community stakeholders.
- We have long-term strategic plans and measurable goals for creating a culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.
- We use a vetting process to identify vendors and partners that share our commitment to race equity.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board.
- We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.