Ignite’s Next Chapter: A Nonprofit
Build Around Young People
For nearly three decades, Ignite has worked alongside schools and communities with one belief at the center of everything we do:
Every young person deserves the interpersonal skills, relationships, and opportunities needed to thrive in life.
Today, that belief is carrying us into a new chapter.
Ignite is officially a nonprofit organization.
On paper, that represents a change in structure. To us, though, it feels much more like a continuation of the purpose that has shaped this work from the beginning.
Ignite has always been about students.
It has always been about the freshman walking into a new school wondering where they fit. The student mentor discovering that someone younger is looking up to them. The quiet student realizing their voice carries influence. The educator who sees something in a young person before that student sees it in themselves.
It is about giving young people meaningful opportunities to build relationships, solve problems, support one another, develop confidence, prepare for what comes next, and contribute to the communities around them.
And increasingly, we have found ourselves asking a bigger question:
How do we make sure more young people have access to those opportunities, regardless of the resources available to their school or community?
The Purpose Has Always Come First
Ignite began with a simple idea: young people can become one of the greatest resources within a school when they are intentionally trained, supported, and trusted to lead.
Over the years, that idea has grown into mentoring systems, student leadership experiences, curriculum, career and life readiness opportunities, training, certifications, and partnerships reaching students across the country.
But growth has never simply meant reaching more schools. It has meant learning.
Listening to educators. Watching students lead. Building new lessons because students needed them. Improving training because advisors asked better questions. Developing new tools because schools needed more sustainable ways to carry the work forward.
Throughout Ignite’s history, resources generated through our work have continually been reinvested into that purpose: developing curriculum, improving training, creating new student experiences, supporting educators, and finding better ways to equip young people.
Becoming a nonprofit gives us an opportunity to build an organizational structure that more fully reflects that purpose. And, importantly, it gives us new ways to invite others into it.
From a School Partnership to a Community Investment
Schools will always be at the heart of Ignite. Our teachers, advisors, counselors, administrators, and district partners have helped build this work alongside us. They have trusted us with their students, challenged us to improve, shared what works, and helped shape Ignite into what it is today. But schools cannot, and should not, have to do this work alone.
Young people belong to communities.
Their futures matter to local businesses that will someday employ them. They matter to colleges and universities preparing the next generation. They matter to foundations investing in stronger communities. They matter to families, alumni, civic organizations, philanthropists, and neighbors who want young people to have meaningful opportunities to succeed.
For years, our work has depended on people coming together around students. Our nonprofit structure gives us more ways to make that happen.
Through grants, philanthropy, corporate sponsorships, university partnerships, individual giving, and community investment, we can begin creating pathways that help schools access mentoring and leadership development even when traditional budgets cannot make it possible.
Because we have met too many educators with a powerful vision for their students who have had to follow that vision with: “We just don’t have the funding.”
We want to help change that conversation.
Introducing the Ignite Forward Initiative
As part of this next chapter, we are launching the Ignite Forward Initiative, our commitment to expanding access to mentoring, leadership development, and student support systems for schools and communities facing financial barriers.
At the heart of that work is the Ignite Impact Fund, dedicated funding designed to help make student training, mentoring systems, leadership opportunities, curriculum, certification, and other experiences possible where resources might otherwise stand in the way.
We envision a future where a local business can help sponsor a student, school, or even regional mentoring system in its community. Where a foundation can invest in leadership development across a group of schools. Where an individual can help create an opportunity for a student they may never personally meet. Where universities, youth organizations, schools, and community partners can work together to build pathways connecting leadership today with college, career, and life tomorrow. And where an educator can come to us with a great idea for their students before they have figured out exactly how to pay for it.
Past, Present, and Future
Becoming a nonprofit also gives us an opportunity to think differently about who makes up the Ignite community.
Because Ignite has never belonged to one person, one team, or one generation of students.
It belongs to the thousands of educators who have opened their classrooms and schools to this work. It belongs to the mentors who stood in front of freshmen for the first time with shaky hands and eventually discovered they could lead. It belongs to the mentees who became mentors themselves. It belongs to administrators who believed students could be part of the solution. And it belongs to the people who founded this work with the belief that young people were capable of far more than we sometimes ask of them.
Some of the most exciting people in Ignite’s future may be the students who were part of its past. As we grow, we want to create more opportunities for former mentors, student ambassadors, alumni educators, families, businesses, and community partners to reconnect with Ignite and invest in the young people coming behind them.
Maybe that means mentoring. Maybe it means opening a door to a career experience. Maybe it means introducing Ignite to a school or organization in your community. Maybe it means sponsoring students, sharing expertise, supporting the Ignite Impact Fund, or simply telling the story of what someone once saw in you.
Leadership shouldn’t end when a student graduates. It should multiply.
What this Means for Our Schools
For the educators and administrators who have been part of the Ignite family, there is something we especially want you to know:
We’re still here to serve alongside you.
Becoming a nonprofit does not change our commitment to building practical, sustainable systems with schools. If anything, it expands how we can approach that work.
Bring us the challenge you’re trying to solve.
Maybe freshmen need stronger connections during the transition into high school. Maybe you want students more engaged in their school community. Maybe you’re building a Portrait of a Graduate, expanding college and career readiness, strengthening belonging, developing a peer mentoring system, or looking for meaningful ways for students to practice leadership rather than simply learn about it.
Bring us the idea, even if the funding isn’t figured out yet.
We can explore what is possible together, from program design and implementation to potential grants, sponsorships, community partners, and other funding opportunities.
Sometimes that may begin with a formal planning conversation. Sometimes we would just like to sit down over coffee, hear about your community, and ask:
What do your young people need right now?
An Invitation to Invest in Young People
And if you’re reading this from outside a school, we have a question for you, too.
What role could you play?
Our next chapter requires more than Ignite. It requires communities willing to invest in their own young people.
Businesses can sponsor opportunities and connect students to the world beyond school. Foundations and philanthropic partners can help bring proven mentoring and leadership structures to communities where funding is limited. Universities can help create meaningful bridges into postsecondary education. Alumni can return as mentors, advocates, and examples of what is possible. Individuals can give, introduce, volunteer, share, and open doors.
For nearly three decades, Ignite has believed young people become stronger when they know they are surrounded by people invested in their success. Our nonprofit chapter gives us the opportunity to build that same kind of community around the schools and organizations serving them.
Moving Ignite Forward, Together
There is a lot about Ignite that will continue to evolve.
We’ll develop new curriculum. Train new mentors. Build new partnerships. Enter new communities. Learn from our students. Learn from our mistakes. Find new ways to prepare young people for college, career, and life.
But the reason behind the work remains remarkably simple.
We believe in young people.
We believe they deserve people who know their names and notice when they’re missing. We believe they deserve opportunities to contribute before someone decides they are “ready.” We believe they can support one another. We believe leadership can be learned through experience. And we believe a young person’s access to those experiences should not be determined by geography, circumstance, or the size of a school budget.
Becoming a nonprofit gives us another way to act on those beliefs.
This chapter may have a new organizational structure behind it, but its purpose has been nearly three decades in the making.
Now, we’re inviting more people to help us carry it forward.
Whether you’re an educator with an idea, an administrator trying to solve a challenge, an Ignite alum ready to reconnect, a business looking to invest locally, a foundation seeking meaningful youth impact, or simply someone who believes in the capacity of young people, we’d love to have you in the conversation.
Explore the Ignite Forward Initiative. Support the Ignite Impact Fund. Or come sit down with us and tell us about your community.
Because when we invest in young people, we’re not only preparing them for what comes next.
We’re trusting them to help shape it.