We are building a world where every student in foster care gets a good education, believes in their ability and potential, and is connected to people who support their dreams.
“We can’t do anything alone that’s worth it. Everything worthwhile is done with other people.”
- Mariame Kaba
To At the Table’s staff, students, and supporters:
In June, we did something we’d never done before in the history of At the Table: we held an in-person event with our students. When we first envisioned At the Table, we never imagined that it would be four years before we met our students face-to-face, but when we opened in Fall 2020 in the height of the COVID pandemic, we did so virtually, and we’ve done our tutoring sessions over Zoom and Google Meet ever since.
Virtual tutoring has a lot of advantages, allowing us to reach more students and to assign tutors based on their personality and academic match with each student rather than geography. With digital whiteboards and shared documents on the cloud, we’ve learned to make virtual tutoring feel engaging and collaborative. We’re proud of the relationships we’ve built and grateful to our students for sharing their hopes and goals and struggles with us through the video chat.
Even so, seeing so many of our students in person at our first-ever Student Celebration in June, and getting to meet their friends and family members and watch their little kids (and my own little kid, who was also in attendance) chase each other around with balloons, was a revelation. It was the culmination of all of the time we’d spent getting to know one another online; it made us feel like the real community that we’ve really always been. And when students asked us at the end of the event when the “next one,” was going to be, it made us realize how important it was for them, too. We all needed it.
We always need community, but in hard times, we instinctively reach for it. One of my first productive reactions to the November election was that At the Table has got to finally get a proper office. Although Jen, our wonderful board secretary, still lets our staff squeeze around her increasingly overcrowded kitchen table, an office would give us capacities that we don’t currently have. It would be a gathering space for staff and students to check in with each other, to find sanctuary, relief, or perhaps a measure of joy and lightness. A place where our students can go and find us when they need us.
The sense of safety and refuge that comes from a healthy community is not just a feeling; it’s an active promise. It’s an acknowledgment that we are all bound together and so we must matter to one another, and if we really truly matter to each other, then we had better not abandon each other, so we keep trying, even at the point when things seem the hardest. This year we found a thousand different ways to keep that promise, whether we were helping someone fix their housing situation so they could think about going back to school, coming up with clever new ways to explain algebra to someone who thought they’d never learn it, reaching out to and reconnecting with students we hadn’t heard from in years, and welcoming those students back to our program.
Next year, we’ll find a thousand more ways to show care, because that, to us, is what the work is about. And we’ll continue to be humbled by the ways so many of our students show care back - whether they’re advocating for the organization, alerting us to resources and grant opportunities, sharing their successes, or sending us words of encouragement and appreciation. It means more to us than we can say.
As you read this report, I hope you feel some measure of connection to the unique and wonderful community we’ve created here. And I hope to see you soon, whether at an event, or at the office, or somewhere in between.
All my best, Mike
3,373 tutoring sessions
1,212 content/advising contacts
185 students 81% college persistence rate
>60% projected graduation rat e 67% course pass rate $43,695 for student emergencies
Student Celebration
In June 2024, we hosted our first-ever Student Celebration, attended by 36 At the Table students, along with their friends, family, and children.
Tutors and students already meet for study in virtual rooms, but sharing physical space in this way offers us a sense of community that’s hard to replicate online.
The event wasn’t just about celebrating academic milestones; we also highlighted personal achievements identified by both students and At the Table.
Tutors recognized their students’ accomplishments with personalized certificates, presenting them out loud to students who were open to being honored in community.
The day was filled with joyful hugs, good conversation, and of course, catered food from our friends at City Beet Kitchens that brought everyone together.
Tutoring & Advising
“Best opportunity of my life. I wish so many more students outside the system could have the opportunity to work with At the Table. They are life-changing on so many levels I don’t know where I would be without them.”
- Mckeema W.
This past year, we held 3,373 tutoring and advising sessions with 185 different students.
In those 3,373 sessions, we’ve helped students write code for their computer science class, practice how to roll their Rs in Spanish, and interpret the works of French philosopher Michel Foucault. Those 3,373 sessions represent academic rigor, but just as importantly, they represent 3,373 opportunities to be cheerleaders for our students, to understand what they value in the world, to provide the support they need when challenges arise. They represent 3,373 opportunities to build community. Each session has been more than just book work—they’ve been a chance to connect and create a space where learning is not just about mastering content. This year, we’ve really dug into what it means to be a community of support for students and have pushed ourselves to show up in ways that really matter.
Tutoring & Advising
Lydia
Lydia first started with At the Table in October 2020. It was the height of the pandemic and her first semester of college. She was trying her best to adjust to virtual classes, but it wasn’t easy. She was also growing increasingly frustrated with her school. They were sending her requests, again and again, for financial aid documents that she’d already submitted several times, and school administrators never answered the phone when she and her educational specialist from her foster care agency called to resolve the issue. Lydia ended up withdrawing from all of her classes that semester, and a few months later, her educational specialist let us know she had plans to move out the country. We thought we might never hear from her again.
In January 2024, we sent a mass email to students with whom we lost contact to remind them that they were always welcome to return if they wanted support with their academic journey. Almost immediately, Lydia replied to that email letting us know that she was re-enrolled in school and eager to get started with tutoring. She sent along her new phone number, and within the week, she was connected to a tutor. She finished that semester with 12 credits and a 3.1 GPA, then took two summer classes and earned A’s in both.
Because of our emphasis on long-term commitments to students, we were able to pick back up where we left off, even though she’d taken some time away from school. Lydia’s story shows us that community means not abandoning people when things don’t go to plan, but instead leaving the door open for when they’re ready.
“I [took] five classes again this semester and, of course, me and Jaclyn [have] a system where we put together what’s due for the midterm and final term paper. She is the best. I got 4 A’s and a B, something we worked on this semester to help boost my chances in the Mental Health program at John Jay.
Thank you, Jaclyn.”
- Charisma K.
Tutoring & Advising
“[My
tutor] adapted to my schedule…she was so understanding that I had a lot of extracurricular activities throughout the day. I forever thank her for that and hope to continue working with her when I am in college.”
- Symba A.
Bella
We’ve also seen that community means stepping up and filling in the gaps. When Bella was about a year away from graduating with her Associate degree, she found herself caught in a series of frustrating delays. Since the beginning of her college journey, she had been approved for accommodations by the school because of her visual impairment, which meant that she needed course content and assignments read out loud to her. This could usually be done with a screen reading device, but this device was no match for the charts and graphs in her required Pre-Calculus class, and the first time she tried to take the class, the professor told her he could not accommodate her and she had to withdraw.
Bella did not give up. She re-enrolled in a different class with a different professor, and we supported her in advocating for the accommodations she needed, including a personal reader for tests. She met with her tutor, Samrin, 48 times that semester alone, matching her incredible spatial memory with Samrin’s thorough descriptions of concepts like Poisson distributions, t-tests, and correlation coefficients. And when the school’s designated reader wasn’t available to assist with her three-hour final (they had a final of their own), three members of our tutoring team sought and received permission to serve as exam readers for her, working in one-hour shifts to narrate the positions of lines and numbers so she could do the work in her mind’s eye.
Bella earned an A- in statistics and one year later, in the summer of 2024, Samrin attended her graduation from community college. When Bella started with us, she had a 2.5 GPA and thought she was going to get an Associate degree and stop. But ever since she passed her Statistics class, Bella has earned nothing but straight A’s, including in the first semester of her Bachelor’s/Master’s dual degree program in Public Administration.
After her graduation, Bella gave a speech at her former foster care agency’s annual gala. “Don’t have sympathy,” she told the attendees, “Just be in awe.”
Student Emergency Fund
In FY2024, At the Table disbursed $43,694.69 from our Emergency Fund to directly support over 50 students (nearly a third of our overall students served) in overcoming critical financial barriers, like tuition debts that blocked their college course registration, or rental arrears, utility bills, and food needs that could have forced them to put their educational plans on hold. For many of these students, this fund is a lifeline, stepping in when no other resources are available.
We work hard to keep our funding request process simple and respond to requests promptly, recognizing that timely lowbarrier financial assistance can be the difference between stagnation and success.
We also see an emergency fund request as an opportunity to address the root causes of challenges: as of this year, the fund is co-led by our College Access Advisor, who connects students to situation-specific resources (e.g. federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance benefits when a student is struggling to pay for food), and our Community Development Coordinator, who identifies partnerships to address the recurring needs our students bring to us.
Through these efforts, we hope to turn moments of crisis into memories of times when students had their needs met with trust and support.
Our Results
In FY2024, our students had more tutoring sessions than ever, reached exciting new highs in college persistence, and continued to progress toward graduation at an unprecedented rate.
Intake and Sessions Held
In FY24, we held 3,373 tutoring sessions (UP from 1,987 in FY23) and 1,212 content/advising contacts1 (UP from 875 in FY23) with 185 students for a total of 3,340 hours of tutoring.
Students stayed very connected with their tutors; those who were in the program for both semesters had about 29 total sessions and contacts on average over the course of the year.
We continued to successfully engage a strong majority of students who expressed interest in receiving services from At the Table. 54/73 (74%) of eligible students who filled out our interest form in FY24 ended up having at least 2 tutoring sessions by October 1st 2024, with a median time to first session of 24 days after the student filled out the interest form.
Of the 73 eligible students who filled out our interest form in FY24 (67 in FY23):
• 53% were no longer in foster care at the time of referral (up from 40% in FY23)
• 62% were currently enrolled in college at the time of referral (up from 57% in FY23)
• 58% of the college-enrolled students were in 2-year college programs (58% in FY23)
• Average age of new students was 20.6 in FY24, (up from 19.6 in FY23).
1 Content/advising contacts are briefer meetings or asynchronous advisement given by a tutor to a student: for instance, detailed support with an admissions process over a series of text messages, or essay help. We used to refer to these as “advising sessions”.
Our Results
Persistence
College persistence measures the percentage of enrolled college students served by At the Table in Fall 2023 who were registered for classes as of the start of the Fall 2024 semester.
Our college persistence rate has increased 6% from last year’s 77%. This year’s 81% represents our highest persistence rate yet.
Overall, 81% (69/85) of At the Table’s college students who were enrolled in college in Fall 2023 continued in college in Fall 2024 (excluding graduates). This number was increased from FY23, where 77% of students persisted, and represents our highest persistence rate yet.
We are hopeful that this increase in college persistence is at least partly a result of At the Table’s vastly expanded efforts to support students with challenges outside the classroom, whether it’s paying bills via our emergency fund or helping students access and navigate benefits. These efforts lead to fewer students having to put their education on hold because of financial challenges or personal or family crises. We will be carefully tracking college persistence in future years to see whether this hypothesis holds up.
“[At the Table] was extremely useful in accessing 1-on-1 advising for college or after graduation plans. I was able to plan how to financially prepare for college, advocate for myself, and know my rights.”
- Natalia M.
Our Results
Grades and Credit Attainment
Over the course of the year, At the Table students passed approximately two-thirds of their classes while averaging a 2.65 (B-) GPA. This is well above the 2.0 threshold needed to maintain financial aid and exceeds the 2.5 GPA requirement to transfer to many competitive senior colleges in the CUNY and SUNY systems.
Below are results for college-enrolled At the Table students in Fall 2023 and Spring 2024:
Summer Courses
While most At the Table students do not take winter classes, summer courses play a major role in the academic stories of our students: in Summer 2024, about half of At the Table’s students took at least one summer course, passing over 80% and earning a GPA of 3.3.
Including summer and winter credits, At the Table’s students (including part-time students) earned 18 credits per year in FY24, putting them on track to complete a bachelor’s degree in 6.7 years on average.
Supporting Academic Bounce-backs
Over the four-year history of At the Table, 29 students have completed at least one semester with us after starting off with a preAt the Table GPA below a 2.0 at their current institution.
The average GPA change for this group after joining At the Table was +1.33 grade points, which is the equivalent of going from a D+ to a B-. 72% of this group improved their GPAs above a 2.0!
Our Results
Graduation
At the Table’s students sign up for our services because they want to graduate from college, and the rate at which they eventually complete their degrees is the single most expressive measure of our success.
Over 60% of our students in our first two cohorts (2020 and 2021) are projected to graduate.
We know that graduation rates for students with lived experience of foster care do not come close to what our students desire and deserve. A study from Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago found that in three Midwestern states, students with foster care experience who enrolled in college (n = 329) had a six-year degree completion rate of 12%. Another Chapin Hall study found that only 8% of community college students with foster care backgrounds (n = 1,664) graduated with a certificate or a degree.
At
the Table’s students are on track to graduate college at 5 to 7 times the usual rate for college students with foster care experience.
At the Table’s students have already graduated at rates that vastly exceed this baseline. In our 2023 annual report, we shared the exciting news that over 40% of students from our initial Fall 2020 cohort had already graduated from the 2-year or 4-year program they were attending as of their enrollment with At the Table. As of this writing, 50% of college-enrolled students from our Fall 2020 cohort have earned degrees, and several more are enrolled and still making progress.
50% our Fall 2020 cohort have already earned degrees and several more are enrolled and making progress toward graduation.
Our Results
Graduation
2020-21 & 2021-22 Cohorts
(N = 79)
2-Year
“At the Table help[ed] me keep moving forward in college, even when I wanted to give up.”
- At the Table student
This year, we expanded our graduation report to include any college student who joined At the Table in the 2020-21 or 2021-2022 academic years, whether they joined us in Spring or Fall, and what we found was profoundly encouraging.
Of these students, 43% have graduated already, and 27% are still working with At the Table to pursue their degree. The remaining 30% are no longer active in At the Table’s program, though some of these students may still be in college or planning to return in the future.
Combining the At the Table students who have already graduated with our estimate of the graduation chances for the students who are still pursuing their degrees (around two-thirds of whom are more than halfway done with their program), we project that the college graduation rate for our students will ultimately exceed 60%. This is five times the rate predicted by the available baseline data.
This would be a remarkable outcome, a testament to both the high aspirations of our students and the utter necessity of connecting them to the support they deserve. There is more work and research still, but we are taking inspiration from these early results.
Our Results
“At the Table [has] always been an exceptional support [for me] from the moment I enrolled in college. I feel comfortable and relie[ved] knowing they are there for me when I need them. I receive support/resources for both my personal and academic life when issues arise. At the Table [has] always been there to provide endless support. I appreciate and am grateful for all they have done and continue to do.”
- Eshwire M.
Student Survey Results
Each year, At the Table emails a confidential survey to every student who received at least 2 tutoring sessions in the prior academic year. In FY24, 155 students received the survey and 36 students responded, for an overall response rate of 26%. For future surveys, we will be working on increasing this response rate.
Of 36 respondents, 35 said they were “extremely satisfied” and 1 said they were “somewhat satisfied” with the program. 100% (36/36) said they would recommend At the Table to other students.
Students also had useful feedback on program areas for growth. Individual students requested:
• More scholarships for older students (aged 30+)
• More in-person interactions
• “I don’t recommend anything. You guys are great!”
In FY 2024, At the Table spent $1.01M and took in $1.03M, recording a surplus of $20k and setting us up for our first-ever mandatory audit. The growth in our expenditures resulted from hiring our two-person operations team, onboarding a new tutor to expand our capacity to 145 students, and continuing to expand our emergency fund and student supplies fund, which are our main non-personnel expenditures. We received new grants from the Ichigo Foundation, the Carvel Foundation, and others, and we are proud to announce that we will be SparkYouth grantees starting in 2025!
We are focused on growing sustainably in FY 2025 and beyond, and this means raising new grant commitments while continuing to grow our individual donation base, which expanded by $15,000 in FY 2024, and plays a crucial role in allowing us to respond to student and organizational needs in a flexible and fiscally responsible way.
Fiscal Year 2024 Statement of Activity
July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024
Giving Thanks
“They always have resources for me. They are easy to talk to and communicate with. They are available, supportive, and just having them as a resource makes me feel more confident in myself.”
- Nikolas V.
At the Table’s work would be impossible without our remarkable community of staff, students, nonprofit partners, and supporters. This year, we would particularly like to recognize the following members of our community:
As we’ve expanded our live events for students and supporters, we’ve appreciated working with a mission-driven nonprofit caterer in City Beet Kitchens, which employs and provides culinary training for low-income, formerlyincarcerated, and formerly-homeless New Yorkers and consistently produces beautiful, delicious food.
We are grateful to the countless CUNY professors and administrators who have looked out for our students in various ways over the years, and in particular Wilda Chan (BMCC) and Ana Latony Ramirez (LGCC), outstanding and empathetic college bursars who helped us resolve registration holds and past-due tuition balances so students can return to college. We owe a debt of gratitude also to Elizabeth Romain (CUNY Welcome Center) for her advice and connections within the world of CUNY admissions.
We would like to shout-out the education / college support team at Children’s Aid: Dr. Brenda Triplett, Carole Singleton, Megan Grunlund, and Lloyd Brown, for their tireless collaboration and staunch advocacy on behalf of college students currently or formerly in foster care.
Several of At the Table’s funders not only provided us with the financial resources we need to sustain our work, but also advised and connected us in ways that helped us grow: Arbor Rising, which provided voluminous free consultation that helped us make immense strides in our internal data systems, and New Yorkers for Children and their consultants at New Tomorrow, which held a series of useful and illuminating workshops from which we consistently came away with new partnerships and resources.
Giving Thanks
We deeply appreciate the individuals & foundations that made financial contributions this year.
Your donations allow us to put tangible resources, like laptops and textbooks, in the hands of our students, help pay off their bills and tuition balances, and surround them with tutors and advocates dedicated to breaking down barriers and building bridges toward their dreams. We could not do this work without you.
Below are some of our supporters who played a critical role in helping us achieve our goals.
American Eagle Outfitters Foundation
Arbor Rising
Brad Hargreaves and Amanda Moskowitz
Callon Family Fund
Caroline Farr
Center for Fair Futures
Colman Lynch
Conrad N. Hilton Foundation
Dianne de la Veaux
DJ McManus Foundation
Hannah Sandt
Harman Family Foundation
Ichigo Foundation
Jeffrey Zink
Jessica Goodman
Joseph Charlet
K Anderson
Lily Auchincloss Foundation
M and D Kent
Mary J. Hutchins Foundation
Meoh Foundation
Michael Corriero and Mary Ellen Raftery
Middletown Honda
Owen Breck
Paulette and Stephan de la Veaux
Peter Robbins and Page Sargisson
Pinkerton Foundation
Robin and Robert Zink
Rose Schapiro
Summerfield Foundation
SJ Stamm
The Thomas and Agnes Carvel Foundation
The Warner Fund
Ticket to Dream/Famous Footwear
Tiger Foundation
What's Next
“All of the people I have met at At the Table have been incredibly kind and understanding. There have been other programs I went to that did not feel as welcoming as At the Table. My tutor(s) have reached out to me (even if I took a break from school) and gave me the utmost support I needed.”
- Leslie G.
As we write this, At the Table feels like a profoundly different organization than we were two years ago. We’ve gotten bigger, certainly - we’re now a 14-person team capable of serving 160 students at a time - but that’s only part of it.
Today, guided by our values and thanks to the creative freedom given to us by a thoughtful group of funders, we have built new dimensions in our program that we didn’t anticipate when we founded At the Table: community events, an emergency fund, and comprehensive resource navigation and crisis planning support. We’ve secured housing vouchers for students. We’ve helped students pay off tuition debts and get back in school. We’ve partnered with students to qualify for SNAP benefits, fix Medicaid, get safe after intimate partner violence, and even reunify with a child taken by ACS.
As a result of these capabilities, and the care and curiosity with which our team wields them, we are able to support students whose educational plans would otherwise have been delayed or disrupted by life circumstances. More At the Table students are persisting in college than ever before, and their long-term outlooks defy the typical statistics: as we shared in the Results section, we project that more than 60% of our college-enrolled students will go on to graduate, five times the rate predicted by the best available study on college degree outcomes for students with foster care backgrounds. These results have us believing more than ever in our students, our values, and ourselves.
What's Next
Even as we celebrate our progress, we recognize that there is still much work left to be done. In the years to come, we will need to expand our program if we are to meet the rising demand for our services: 12 new students are filling out our interest form every month, and we already have a substantial waitlist for the Spring 2025 semester. In the summer of 2025, we hope to add at least two new staff to our team, including at least one science-focused tutor able to support the many aspiring healthcare professionals who come through At the Table’s virtual doors. Within the coming year, we hope to collaborate with our staff, board, and students to make a plan for how we can grow further while continuing to hold on to what makes At the Table special.
We are also living through a time of upheaval for our country, one that is particularly stressful for the students we serve, many of whom hold identities that are being targeted by those in power. We will not abandon the people in our community, whether they are trans, undocumented, Muslim, seeking reproductive care, or facing cuts to government benefits on which they depend. As of this writing, we are beginning to organize with peer NGOs to anticipate the impacts of the new political reality on our students, while also raising money to build the resilience of our emergency fund to more thoroughly address the diverse needs that may arise. These are the first of many steps we must take in order to meet this moment.
Our work thus far has been an education in the power of human connection, of community and solidarity, to help us overcome experiences that make us feel hopeless and systems that alienate us from one another. As we navigate the coming years, the people next to us will be more important than they ever have been - our friends and neighbors, our coworkers, partners, and supporters. We are glad you’re here with us.
