Minnesota Community Foundation & The Saint Paul Foundation: Two Foundations One Direction

Helping Students Succeed

Admission Possible makes college admission possible for promising low-income students by providing ACT and SAT test preparation services, and admissions and financial aid consulting.

Hugely successful in its first year, Admission Possible received a large grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service to expand its program from 40 students to 200. The organization knew it needed help and requested a grant from the Management Improvement Fund to boost its organizational effectiveness.

With the grant, Admission Possible was able to:

• address staffing needs;
• reorganize its financial models; and
• align, train and foster deeper engagement for its board of directors.

Admission Possible's results:

• exponential growth in its first eight years
• unprecedented success in the field of college access
• national recognition for its innovative model

Today, Admission Possible serves 1,300 low-income youth in 17 Twin Cities area high schools across five school districts and is considering expanding its program nationwide. In the fall of 2008, pilot programming for further expansion began in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Since its inception in 2000, 99 percent of Admission Possible students have earned admission to college.

Founder and CEO Jim McCorkell says, "The Management Improvement Fund has helped create the capacity for Admission Possible to continue to grow and evolve at crucial moments in our organizational history...Our success in perfecting our program model and our organization's operations would not have been possible without the investments of The Saint Paul Foundation's Management Improvement Fund."