Red Hook Initiative, Inc.
Creating change from within
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
RHI primarily serves youth and residents who live in the NYC Housing Authority Red Hook Houses – Brooklyn’s largest public housing complex. Red Hook youth grow up facing multiple forms of oppression, systemic inequities, geographic isolation, disproportionate involvement with criminal justice system, and a lack of access to basic resources. Red Hook residents are 47% Latino and 42% African American. Over 33% of the community is under the age of 19. Over 40% of households earn less than $10,000 per year with the median household income at $16,000. Over half of families with a child under the age of 18 live in poverty. In Red Hook, the high school graduation rate was last documented at 43%. Sixty percent of residents age 18 and older are unemployed. The unemployment rate among 18-24 year olds is 75%.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Youth Development
RHI is a local stronghold and a nationally recognized model for youth and community development and community hiring -- a practice which provides employment, professional development and leadership opportunities for residents of Red Hook. This year, over 5,000 Red Hook residents will take part in efforts to improve Red Hook’s future, including 450 young people, ages 11 – 24, who will participate in safe and enriching opportunities to: learn and grow; develop positive relationships; gain academic, leadership and employability skills and work experience; create and execute post-secondary plans; and build resiliency.
Where we work
Awards
Union Square Award 2007
Union Square Awards
Building Brooklyn Award 2012
Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce
Spark Prize 2018
Brooklyn Community Foundation
External reviews
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Average number of service recipients per month
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Age groups, People of African descent, People of Latin American descent, Multiracial people, People of East Asian descent
Related Program
Youth Development
Type of Metric
Context - describing the issue we work on
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
RHI serves the residents of Brooklyn's largest public housing campus, the Red Hook Houses, through a year-round community-driven approach to youth development, community building and local hiring.
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?
Youth development, community building and community hiring are at the core of RHI’s nationally recognized model and approach to strengthening Red Hook’s future. In our youth empowerment pipeline, which runs from middle school through young adulthood, we endeavor to collaboratively interrupt cycles of injustice and to build hope. RHI has formal and informal strategic approaches to youth development and community building that incorporates the field’s best practices as well as elements unique to our own model.
Research has shown that residents have better outcomes when they live in neighborhoods where individuals and organizations come together to respond to local challenges. Neighborhoods with this ability to unite can respond better to shocks and setbacks and can also better support individual outcomes for residents than those without this capacity. RHI seeks to use this knowledge to foster such an environment in Red Hook.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
RHI is an active community center in the heart of the neighborhood. Youth development, community building, and community hiring are at the core of RHI's approach to strengthening Red Hook's future.
RHI's Youth Development Program supports young people through their middle school, high school, and young adult years. With long-term support, youth earn a high school diploma, a college degree or acceptance into a job training program, and a self-determined career path. A youth who enrolls with RHI in 6th grade is offered year round programming until age 24, providing opportunities and confronting the critical challenges at each stage of his/her development. The Middle School program focuses intensely on academic enrichment, life skills, and leadership. High School youth are offered paid training and employment from 9th grade through graduation; individual coaching, weekly work study sessions, and regular college and career explorations ensure that each teenager creates self-determined life plan. Our Young Adult program offers individualized support around college, employment, and job training/professional development. RHI's Digital Stewards program offers an intensive training with pathways into tech careers. RHI enrolls over 400 Red Hook youth in this pipeline.
Community Building focuses on building a healthy and sustainable Red Hook community. At each stage on the pipeline, youth are not only seen as recipients of services, they self-identify as leaders and change agents who contribute to the positive growth of their community. RHI's Community Building program works toward: cultivating a community sense of empowerment, creating positive institutional change in Red Hook, and facilitating authentic participation/leadership in community life. We achieve these goals through youth-led social change projects, community-led initiatives, and organizing and advocacy projects. Our community building work engages over 5,000 residents annually. Research has shown that residents have better outcomes when they live in neighborhoods where individuals and organizations come together to respond to local challenges. Neighborhoods with the ability to unite respond better to setbacks and support individual outcomes for residents.
Community Hiring is central to RHI's approach. We believe that our neighborhood has the ability to change from within. Over 90% of our staff is from or lives in Red Hook. Each year, over $1M in salaries are paid back to Red Hook residents. We have recently launched RHI Institute — a comprehensive professional development training program that will give staff the time and training necessary to advance within the organization. Our community hiring model has a shown its effectiveness time and time again; in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, strong ties in the community (a result of our model of community hiring) made it possible for us to become a hub for relief and rebuilding work in Red Hook.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
Red Hook Initiative (RHI) believes that social change to overcome systemic inequities begins with empowered youth. In partnership with community adults, we nurture young people in Red Hook to be inspired, resilient, and healthy, and to envision themselves as co-creators of their lives, community and society. We envision a Red Hook where all young people can pursue their dreams and grow into independent adults who contribute to their families and community. In 2002, we began as the Red Hook Health Initiative, a community health project of a local hospital, in response to the severity of health and social issues in Red Hook. In 2006 we formed the Red Hook Initiative (RHI), an independent 501(c)3, in order to expand our scope to better meet community needs. As we increased our youth programming and our roots in the community deepened, RHI's vision and mission clearly emerged as youth development, supported by community building efforts.
In 2012, RHI was awarded the New York Community Trust – New York Magazine Excellence in Nonprofit Management Gold Medal. RHI's Board of Directors was a finalist in the 2013 Brooke Mahoney Award for Board Leadership. In 2014, Jill Eisenhard was named to Crain's New York 40 Under 40 and was a City & State Above and Beyond honoree. RHI has also been recognized and received significant media attention for serving as the epicenter of post-hurricane Sandy relief and rebuilding work in Red Hook, as well as for its efforts to bridge the digital divide by training young people to build a free wireless network throughout the neighborhood. In 2018, RHI was named a Brooklyn Community Foundation Spark Prize Winner.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
RHI has inspired positive social change for the past 15 years:
Since 2013, we have annually paid over $1M back into the community through staff salaries. RHI has engaged youth in participatory action research projects to spur community-led advocacy around sanitation (2011), access to education (2015), pedestrian safety (2016), mold in public housing (2016), and violence (2017). 450 Red Hook youth per year now participate in tailored, in-depth programming working toward high school graduation (85 - 90% per year), college access and retention (70 youth in or applying to college this year), and employment training and job placement (70% for young adults).
Highlights from our work with 6,500+ Red Hook residents over this extraordinary year:
- RHI led an emergency COVID-19 response that: facilitated access to care; advocated for public housing residents; connected food-insecure households to emergency food; and supported Red Hook youth.
- RHI paid $1.2M in salaries to Red Hook residents, including $480,000 earned by youth.
- RHI assisted 8,830 residents to complete the 2020 US Census, a record self-response rate of 68%.
- 85% of high school seniors graduated in June; 65 RHI College Scholars are enrolled in college.
- 102 young adults secured employment, started college or enrolled in vocational training within 6 months of completing RHI’s workforce development program.
- Red Hook Farms harvested 24,412 pounds of produce, employed 21 youth farmers and distributed 7,853 free emergency food boxes to food-insecure and medically-fragile households.
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, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
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 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, We tell the people who gave us feedback how we acted on their feedback
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
It is difficult to get the people we serve to respond to requests for feedback, It is difficult to find the ongoing funding to support feedback collection, Staff find it hard to prioritize feedback collection and review due to lack of time
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
- 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.
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.
Red Hook Initiative, Inc.
Board of directorsas of 10/16/2023
Mr. Chris Cardona
Ford Foundation
Term: 2019 -
Millicent Comrie
Maimonides Medical Center
Janice McGuire
Nonprofit Consultant
Eden Wurmfeld
Film & TV Producer
Jennifer Wheary
Maria Mottola
New York Foundation
Andrew Strauss
Skinder-Strauss LLC
Gregg Bishop
NYC Department of Small Business Services
Brandon Holley
Everywear
Rebecca Katz
New Deal Strategies
Nanda Prabhakar
New York City Mission Society
Thomas McMahon
TLM Associates
Amanda Sue Nichols
Michael Lee
George Suttles
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? No
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
Disability
Equity strategies
Last updated: 01/05/2023GuideStar 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 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 use a vetting process to identify vendors and partners that share our commitment to race equity.
- 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.