United Way of Salt Lake

Our goal is to transform the educational environment for Utah kids, eliminating disparities in education and ensuring that every child has an equal shot at success.

United Way of Salt Lake takes a "cradle-to-career" approach to improve educational outcomes for youth, aligning with partners to share, and deploy resources to improve the following outcomes:

• Early Childhood Education
• 3rd Grade Reading
• 8th Grade Math
• High School Graduation
• Postsecondary Completion
• Health and Financial Stability

United Way of Salt Lake's Promise Partnership takes a collective approach to community problem solving. To transform whole communities, we must think beyond individual programs or services and see ourselves as a united group sharing accountability for community-wide results. This is what it means to engage in rigorous collective impact.

Collective Impact requires that everyone work together in partnership – businesses, cities, government, schools, churches, foundations, and nonprofit organizations – to tackle our most pressing challenges and develop lasting solutions. By working this way, we all move towards the same clear goals.

Achieving system-wide change is a difficult undertaking, and many change efforts fail because they do not have the necessary support at every “level” with the system. For this reason, United Way of Salt Lake's Promise Partnership has built a multi-tiered structure to ensure support, leadership, and action at multiple layers within the education system.

Our partnership includes grassroots community engagement, full-service community schools, civic partnerships, outcome-focused networks, and a regional leadership table made up of leaders across the Wasatch Front. By coordinating action, communication, and influence across these layers, we believe we have the necessary ingredients to transform the educational landscape for Utah kids.

In early 2019, StriveTogether awarded UWSL's Promise Partnership its highest designation within the network, “Proof Point.” Of the sixty-eight partnerships in the network, only eleven have received this designation; and of these, the Promise Partnership is the only one to connect grassroots engagement, community schools, promise communities, outcomes-focused networks, and a regional leadership table into a coherent vehicle for social change.

To achieve Proof Point, a partnership must have 60% or more of their cradle to career outcomes trending in the right direction and must show maturity in a number of qualitative measures as well. Our recent data shows impacts in the following areas:

Kindergarten Readiness: In South Salt Lake, where a significant number of parents speak a language other than English, 70% of 0- to 5-year-old children are developmentally on track -- thanks, in part, to UWSL's grassroots initiative to engage parents of young children.

3rd Grade Reading: 3rd Grade Language Arts Proficiency has increased an average of 10.75% in Title I community schools, where UWSL works to help implement a multi-tiered strategic approach to early grade reading.

8th Grade Math: Math scores doubled from 2014-2017 for students of color at Granite Park Jr. High, with strategic alignment of resources and support from UWSL.

High School Graduation: Graduation rates at Cottonwood High School increased by 5% for all students, and 10% for English Language Learning students from 2014-2018.

Youth Development: UWSL has built strategic partnerships aimed at supporting more kids in and out of school, resulting in a 45% reduction in juvenile arrests in Kearns from 2014-2017, and a 29% reduction in juvenile arrests in South Salt Lake.