Junior Achievement of Southern California, Inc.
ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT THROUGH EDUCATION
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Junior Achievement addresses the gaps in educational experiences that otherwise leave today's youth unprepared for the real world of work, financial responsibilities, leadership and innovation. School systems are under constant pressures to provide consistent, standardized and core academic curricula, reducing the practical opportunity for teachers to directly incorporate real world business and financial applications into their lessons. Students overwhelmingly report a lack of relevancy in their school work, and while drop-out rates have improved somewhat in Southern California, our four-year high school graduation rates remain lower than state and national averages. Students need exposure to basic financial education and career planning to understand the impact and importance of staying in school and learning how to empower their own economic futures and how to have an impact on the communities they live in.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
JA Finance Park
Students come to the JA Finance Park facility at our JA SoCal headquarters location in Los Angeles. Each student is assigned a JA Finance Park life scenario including a job, income level, educational history, marital status, children, debt load and credit score. Volunteers assist students in using JA table based budget experience software to create and manage a monthly budget based on their assigned life scenario. Students visit real-life branded storefronts within the park to research potential costs of items, and they make purchasing decisions.
JA Orange County Programming
JA provides in-classroom financial education enrichment programs throughout Orange County. JA trains volunteers from the professional sector to go into K-12 classrooms and teach nationally evaluated curriculum about financial competency, entrepreneurship and work readiness. All JA programs are activity-based, dynamic, interactive and based on real-world applications.
JA Los Angeles, Inland Empire and Coastal Programming
JA provides in-classroom financial education enrichment programs in Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Bernadino, Riverside and San Luis Obispo counties. JA trains volunteers from the professional sector to go into K-12 classrooms and teach nationally evaluated curriculum about financial competency, entrepreneurship and work readiness. All JA programs are activity-based, dynamic, interactive and based on real-world applications.
Where we work
External reviews
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of participants engaged in programs
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Children and youth
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Context Notes
During the year ended 06.30.2022 activities continued to return to pre-COVID levels with a shift back to in-person activities.
Hours of volunteer service
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Context Notes
Numerous unpaid volunteers and organizations have made significant contributions of their time to develop the Organization's programs, principally in instruction and student activities.
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
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?
Junior Achievement programs, designed by national experts in educational pedagogy, directly compliment standardized curriculum guidelines to provide age-appropriate exposure and inspiration to students from kindergarten through 12th grade around topics related to managing money, entrepreneurship and businesses innovation, and preparing for a lifetime of job preparedness. Our programs support local and state efforts to engage the next generation in building a solid economic foundation for growth, stability and competitive edge in a global financial arena. We serve predominantly schools with students from families that have very high rates of participation in free and school lunches, an indicator of serving low-income students. Our programs directly provide the education and encouragement to reduce inequalities in access to good jobs, access to financial markets, and access to business leadership through innovation and entrepreneurship.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Junior Achievement of Southern California trains volunteers from the local business community to go into classrooms and provide nationally evaluated financial and business education curriculum that inspires students and awakens them to the limitless possibilities before them if they are willing to try. JA serves elementary students grades kindergarten through 5th grade, providing fun, dynamic, activity based lessons that integrate concepts of civic engagement, planning for financial costs and responsibilities, and business and educational leadership in the community. At the junior high school and high school level, JA programs are more in-depth and volunteers are trained to provide more in-depth lessons and more sophisticated conceptual understanding to students through structured but exploratory and hands-on programming.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
We are capable of meeting our goals by managing a network of partnerships with over 300 local schools and over XX local businesses, giving us access to over 4,000 volunteers per year and reaching over 58,000 students in any given year, with XX hours of instructional programming. We are able to accomplish these goals with a lean staff of 22 employees.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Junior Achievement of Southern California has reached over 750,000 students in the Southern California region in the last 10 years, including programs at many of our elementary schools returning year after year to impact students not just once, but at each grade level with age-appropriate and cumulative lessons. Some of our standout programs include providing over 7,000 middle school and high school students with in-depth personal financial literacy programming including our “JA Finance Park” where students are challenged to establish a budget and follow it in a day-long simulation where they are assigned an imagined adult profile including career, salary, existing debt, existing family, and a multitude of real-world responsibilities. We also serve over 300 students with JA Company Program, walking them step by step through the process of establishing a new company, forecasting, marketing and managing sales, and evaluating and presenting their own success and learning to judges via a JA Student Entrepreneurship Competition. We also serve over 7,000 students a year with JA Job Shadow, exposing youth to the multi-faceted array of jobs available within any one business or industry, through partnerships with local companies, inspiring students to see beyond simple stereotypes and envision pathways for satisfying local employment and to prepare themselves academically to be able to compete and succeed in future careers. We currently have plans to increase our return programming at local schools and school districts so that even more of our students get year over year exposure to JA concepts and lessons, and to develop partnerships with innovative and cutting edge educational models that incorporate business and financial literacy within the fabric of the central curriculum itself.
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
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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
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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
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Junior Achievement of Southern California, Inc.
Board of directorsas of 12/14/2023
Frank McMahon
McMahon Consulting Services
Term: 2021 - 2023
John Tipton
Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis LLP
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Manatt Phelps & Phillips
Bill Glinski
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Paul Goldstein
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Scott Sauer
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Michael Shepherd
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Scott Sachs
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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: 07/10/2023GuideStar 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 review compensation data across the organization (and by staff levels) to identify disparities by race.
- We ask team members to identify racial disparities in their programs and / or portfolios.
- We analyze disaggregated data and root causes of race disparities that impact the organization's programs, portfolios, and the populations served.
- 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 disaggregate data by demographics, including race, in every policy and program measured.
- 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 have a promotion process that anticipates and mitigates implicit and explicit biases about people of color serving in leadership positions.
- 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.