YouthFund
We take our impact seriously. So we measure it honestly.
YouthFund is young. Here is what we are building, the community behind it, and how we will hold ourselves accountable as we grow.
Five commitments.
Equity at heart: an accelerator with the gate removed
Selection tends to reward students who already had coaching. So we start without it. No fee, no track record, no screening on background or location. Hero Talks and our community-building programs are open to every high school student who signs up, and funding asks for a plan, not a résumé. The program adapts to the student, not the reverse. Excellence, we believe, can be grown rather than filtered for.
A community that stays: our promise to you
A different Ivy Plus hero every month, all year, each session moderated by our founder or a board member, and around them a community that stays with you for years. Our founder stays with the cohort through the whole year, and so does the peer cohort you build alongside. Come back as a hero for the next cohort, and the ecosystem is working.
Students as founders
We fund the nonprofits and social-impact ventures students start themselves. A sixteen-year-old who has run a real organization with a real budget arrives at college, and at citizenship, as a more whole person. This is civic education by doing.
Youth for youth
Run by high schoolers, for high schoolers. Our student executive committee makes the day-to-day decisions, and every initiative we fund is student-founded and student-led. We want every student, including immigrant and first-generation teenagers, to see themselves as people who start things, not only people who get into things.
Lean by design
No compensated executives. A board and advisors who serve pro bono. Operations kept deliberately small, so the money we raise goes to young founders' own projects.
What we will report.
Beginning with our first cohort, we will publish each year how many students joined our Hero Talks, how many initiatives applied and were funded, how much was granted and to what, and what those founders built. Small numbers included. That is what taking impact seriously means.
Founded in 2026 in New York · A 501(c)(3) nonprofit