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History

Able Works focuses on the underlying issues causing economic injustice in California, and our goal has always been for youth and young adults to gain a vision for their future and the knowledge, skills, and confidence to pursue opportunities that lead them toward that vision. We are perpetually committed to providing culturally relevant programs that meet the community's changing needs and help identify and utilize existing assets and resources, which means our programming constantly evolves in response to our participants and their needs. To this end, Able Works has provided various financial and life empowerment programs over the last 20 years.

East Palo Alto, CA, was a formerly redlined, marginalized, working-class community centered in wealthy Silicon Valley. Its residents struggled to access the wealth and opportunities that surrounded them. Further, the city had limited mainstream banking services, including checking, savings, and loans. Marc Prioleau and John Liotti co-founded Northern California Urban Development, now Able Works, to work alongside under-resourced and marginalized neighborhoods in the East Palo Alto area to offer impactful economic justice to those who need it and, ultimately, break the cycles of generational and systemic poverty. 

History of Our Programs

Marc and John’s efforts led to the establishment of East Palo Alto’s first community-centered financial institution in 2007—a singular achievement, which, unfortunately, was followed by the most severe worldwide economic crisis since the Great Depression. During this time, 2,200 of the 6,600 families who owned homes in East Palo Alto lost their homes to foreclosure. Through foreclosure prevention counseling, Able Works helped more than 1,500 families find solutions, with a higher than 30% success rate; over 550 families were able to stay in their homes as a result, and others were able to land softer.

With the idea of having a nonprofit connected to a functioning lending institution, Marc and John launched FutureProfits, which would become the agency’s flagship program. FutureProfits provides vital information to high school students at a time in their lives when they start to become targets of predatory lending, high interest credit cards, and other financially exploitative practices. Our comprehensive curriculum empowers high school-age students to deepen their financial knowledge, build healthy money habits, and harness a greater vision for their future as they forge their own paths toward economic freedom.

When FutureProfits was established, it used existing financial education curricula, most of which take blanket approaches that do not consider the unique cultural, financial, and time-based hurdles faced by students from communities that have been marginalized/oppressed due to race, education, and/or income level. Able Works launched its own life economics curriculum, also called FutureProfits, in 2010. The curriculum was carefully developed with deep empathy and understanding of our target communities to address their specific issues and common obstacles. Lessons are delivered directly in the classroom by relatable coaches from the same communities as our students, who speak the same language(s) and have faced similar hardships. This is designed to ensure that genuine relationships built on trust, care, and respect form the core of our programming.

Between 2013 and 2022, Able Works’ LiveAble cohort program for single mothers helped to create a positive, encouraging space for over 250 families in East Palo Alto and nearby communities. LiveAble outcomes included building healthy financial habits (opening checking/savings accounts, building credit, creating emergency savings, budgeting, paying down debt), attaining education to increase earnings, improving personal well-being, and acquiring stable, affordable, safe housing. Able Works honed our focus in 2022 to serve a younger population, to help to prevent undesirable financial outcomes rather than provide solutions after the fact. 

From 2019 to 2022, the Edna McDonald Clark Foundation and Sobrato Foundation provided funding that enabled Able Works to participate in the PropelNext Northern California 2021 Cohort. It elevated us as an organization to ask (and address) the difficult question most nonprofits are uncomfortable asking: Are we actually making an impact in the community we serve? From this program, Able Works redesigned our data collection processes, refined our Theory of Change, and developed a database to track classroom data. Through our evaluation process, we listen to the students and teachers in our target communities to develop our program models to align with our Theory of Change, as well as regularly adjust/update our program content to ensure that students are learning what is most helpful to them. In this way, we can be certain that our programs are improving the lives of the students we serve, as well as their families.

Created in 2019 to provide a continuum of support for former FutureProfits students, AchieveAble is a two year cohort-based program that provides recent high school graduates with peer support, academic advising, and individualized coaching as they transition from high school to community college and/or a four-year university. It affords participants with shared experience and accountability that keeps them on track to meet their goals. The support AchieveAble provides for these mostly first-generation college students is instrumental to their ongoing success along their educational and occupational journeys. 

Throughout our history, Able Works has periodically pivoted and/or supplemented our services to best serve our communities in times of crisis and uncertainty. During COVID, we created the Together We Rise initiative for our LiveAble and AchieveAble participants to provide 1:1 care management services and connect them to emergency intervention resources. The initiative also provided social support, access to mental health counseling, and resources to help families re-engage in the post-COVID economy after many had lost their jobs.

In 2021, Able Works participated in an 18-month program called Listen4Good, with the goal of developing high-quality listening strategies from our participants and equity-driven feedback practices. We continue to incorporate participant feedback into our reflection, analysis, and program improvement efforts. 

With the intention of enabling our students to graduate from college debt-free, each year Able Works provides the Dr. John M. and Vera Mae Perkins Scholarship to AchieveAble students who actively engage and successfully meet their goal of transferring to a four-year college. This renewable scholarship can be up to $5,000 per student per year and is meant to close any unmet need gap in their financial aid package. 

Since most of our students (74%) identify as Hispanic or LatinX, Able Works offers its two programs in both English and Spanish. 

History of Our Organization

Led by co-founder and CEO John Liotti, Able Works has grown to almost 20 full- and part-time staff members. The agency now serves students across the Bay Area, Central Valley, and Southern California. Since Able Works volunteers and staff serve our students directly in their schools and communities, we have no physical headquarters but rent coworking offices and employ a hybrid work model with limited in-person office visits. This keeps overhead costs low, just 5% of the budget; the rest goes directly towards programming and personnel. Able Works is primarily funded by individual gifts, foundation, and government grants.

During the 23-24 school year, we served 1,650 students across California. We expect that number to grow to well over 2,000 in the coming years.

 

Our Future

In June, Governor Newsom signed AB 2927, legislation requiring that a semester-long personal finance education course will be available for all California high school students by the 2027-28 school year and make personal finance a graduation requirement starting with the 2030-31 graduating class. Able Works is taking this opportunity to expand our programs to serve non-traditional populations that fit into our target demographic (i.e. justice-involved youth).

Those living in under-resourced communities were disproportionately affected by the pandemic and are slower to recover in its wake. The overall poverty rate continues to rise. Latines currently make up about half of Californians living in poverty despite being 39.7% of the population. By comparison, about 10% of White Californians live in poverty. We expect that in the coming years, the need for Able Works’ services will only grow in under-resourced communities. We are dedicated to adapting in whatever ways necessary to meet that need. To elevate the economic well-being of this population and in particular our target demographic, Able Works is focused on innovation and making a lasting impact on the financial lives and futures of marginalized communities.

Our goals for the next three years include:

  1.  Becoming the premier state organization serving marginalized young adults aged 16 to 25 with innovative and effective programs that create real and lasting impact on their financial lives and futures;
  2. Expanding our services to nontraditional students in California; 
  3. Developing a FutureProfits 2.0 curriculum.