Junior Achievement ramps up to serve Central New York

Junior Achievement (JA) of Central Upstate New York is reconnecting with Central New York businesses and professionals to bring its programs back to area schools.

After the CNY chapter of JA formally dissolved at the beginning of 2014, the Rochester chapter announced in February it had assumed responsibility of the CNY region. Now covering 25 counties, the organization serves the largest geographic area of any JA chapter in New York state.

JA’s mission is to work with volunteers in the community who go into classrooms to teach essential life skills focusing on financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and work readiness.

JA hired Steve Vonderweidt as executive director of the Syracuse region. He started on April 1 and currently operates from a small office in the Thruway Office Building in Salina. JA of Central Upstate New York is headquartered in Rochester and has another satellite office in Elmira to cover the Twin Tiers region.

The Rochester chapter started with six counties to cover, and then increased its territory in 2008 by merging with the Twin Tiers chapter, gaining Steuben, Schuyler, and Chemung counties.

Each region — Rochester, Twin Tiers, and Syracuse — has its own advisory board and focuses on raising funding and delivering programs in its respective counties. 

The organization has eight full-time employees, including Vonderweidt and Tammy Schoonover, executive director for the Twin Tiers region. JA relies heavily on volunteers to deliver its programs to students.

“We couldn’t deliver our mission without volunteers who bring the world of business into the classroom,” says Patricia Leva, president and CEO of Junior Achievement of Central Upstate New York, who is based in Rochester.

Volunteers are needed to teach classes for one hour a week for five to seven weeks, depending on the grade level. Prior to going into the classrooms, volunteers take a 90-minute training course to cover lesson plans, conduct in the classrooms, and key terms and concepts.

“Volunteers really do get to change lives. [They] open the children’s eyes to experiences they haven’t thought about,” says Vonderweidt. “Without volunteers, we can’t serve any more kids.”

JA programs, Vonderweidt says, can show students how to use the resources around them to start businesses, which the region needs.

Regional coverage
So far, Vonderweidt has been reaching out to schools in Onondaga, Madison, and Oneida counties to reestablish JA programs. A few Utica–area businesses and volunteers reached out to Vonderweidt, eager to bring JA programs back to their students.

With nearly 77,000 students enrolled in Onondaga County public schools alone, Vonderweidt estimates that, hypothetically, JA would need at least 3,000 volunteers to reach those students.

“There’s no way I can serve all of them by myself,” he quips. 

But growing the local office will happen slowly and strategically. The goal is to make sure every kid has an excellent experience and you can only do that by being strategic, Vonderweidt says.

He compares his strategic approach to that of a three-legged stool, with the legs representing fundraising, volunteers, and schools. Fundraising is needed to provide the material for the programs, volunteers are needed to teach, and schools are necessary for hosting JA programs.

“If you grow one of the legs too much or too little, the stool is going to fall over,” Vonderweidt says. “Every part of the stool is important.”

While the goal is to deliver services to as many students as possible in the JA regions, Leva says, “staffing [increases] will occur as it makes sense for our business model.”

In the Twin Tiers region, JA provided programs to almost 1,800 students in 58 classrooms in 18 different schools during the last school year. 

JA partners with the Greater Binghamton Education Outreach Program (GBEOP), a nonprofit affiliate organization of the Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce, to deliver its programs. JA is one of GBEOP’s four main programs. This past spring, more than 600 students in 32 elementary, middle school, and high school classrooms in Broome County participated in the JA program, according to the Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce’s July Chamber Report.

On Oct. 2, the Syracuse region JA was one of four area nonprofits to receive part of a $125,000 grant from First Niagara. Vonderweidt says that the grant money will go toward programming in Syracuse, Binghamton, Utica, and the area in between.

“We’ll be able to serve hundreds of kids with this grant,” says Vonderweidt. 

JA generates total gross revenue of about $800,000 annually. In the Syracuse region, the goal is to raise $150,000 to $200,000 for the year. The Twin Tiers has an annual goal to raise around $100,000 each year.

“We’re a fiscally stable entity,” says Leva.

For three years in a row (2011, 2012, and 2013), the JA of Rochester Area has received the Junior Achievement USA’s Peak Performance Award for demonstrating “a strong financial position and positive student growth.” Only 12 offices among all 115 JA offices nationwide receive the award, according to JA.

Coming home
A native of Ithaca with a professional background in nonprofit administration, Vonderweidt spent the last 10 years in Louisville, Ky. While there, he earned his MBA from the University of Louisville’s entrepreneurship business program. He was the director of Bridges for Hope Neighborhood Place, a regional service center in Louisville, prior to joining JA.

According to Leva, Vonderweidt had the experience the nonprofit was seeking in an executive director in Syracuse. He had experience running a nonprofit, managing a large board, and an entrepreneurial thought process that could help rebuild the JA brand in the area, says Leva.

JA also fit the bill of what Vonderweidt was looking for in a career — merging business entrepreneurship with helping people. Accepting this position also allowed him to accomplish another goal — moving back to the area with his wife and four children to be closer to family. “To quote Dorothy, ‘There’s no place like home,’” says Vonderweidt.   

Contact Collins at ncollins@cnybj.com

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Junior Achievement of Central Upstate New York 
Syracuse Region
290 Elwood Davis Road, Suite 290, #6
Liverpool, NY 13088
Phone: (315) 744-7934

Twin Tiers Region
1600 College Avenue
Elmira, NY 14901
Phone: (607) 734-0562

www.juniorachievement.org

Key Staff
President & CEOPatricia Leva, Junior Achievement of Rochester
President & CEO compensation from 06/30/2013 IRS Form 990 $87,070
Executive Director, Syracuse RegionSteve Vonderweidt
Executive Director, Twin Tiers RegionTammy Schoonover

Greater Syracuse Advisory Board of Directors
Chris Cartmill
Karen Dejarnette
Michael Dermody
Robert Ellis
Lisa Kerns
Michael Kroll
Mark Lesselroth
Evelyn Liddle
Jim O’Brien
Steve Vonderweidt
Zachary Zuckerman

Greater Twin Tiers Advisory Board of Directors
Charles Bright
Steve Burns
Kristine Dale
Mark Fife
Russ Heft
Karen Miner
Tammy Schoonover
David Stewart
Theresa Stewart
Kirk Vieselmeyer
Kristi Wead
Anne Welliver-Hartsing

Mission
To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy.

Programs & Services
More than 20 different programs that help prepare young people for the real world by showing them how to generate wealth and effectively manage it, how to create jobs which make their communities more robust, and how to apply entrepreneurial thinking to the workplace.