St. Nicks Alliance, a 40 year old North Brooklyn based community organization, seeks to transform lives of low and moderate income people through employment, education, housing, and health care, delivering impactful services with measurable outcomes to children, adults, and the elderly. As a civic anchor St. Nicks carries out their mission within the context of building a sustainable community for all people through the arts, environmental advocacy, and urban planning.

St. Nicks Alliance launched NABE 3.0, an initiative that integrates the organization’s outcomes-driven strategies in housing, employment and education through one-on-one transformational coaching for residents of North Brooklyn, in an effort to reduce homelessness and poverty. In its first year, St. Nicks Alliance utilized its partnerships with schools, CBOs, government agencies and local providers to coordinate services, create service plans, and develop policies for consistently capturing data, resulting in first year impacts in employment, improved education levels, and homelessness prevention. Transformational coaches work collaboratively to review client service plans, troubleshoot bottlenecks and inspire/motivate clients to reach their goals and outcomes.

With funding and technical support from Change Capital Fund, St. Nicks Alliance developed a public benefit rationale illustrating the cost benefit of just one of their programs:

Download the PDF

Michael’s story

Michael is a single parent living with his daughter in Brooklyn. For four years, he worked as a security guard at a Brooklyn museum until August 2014, when he lost his job due to downsizing. He immediately began to look for work.

Then in mid-September of that year, Michael attended a “Take Your Father to School Day” at PS 18, his daughter’s school. The school is a partner in St. Nick’s CCF-funded initiative, NABE 3.0, which provides wraparound services to families in workforce, housing and education.

During the event, St. Nick’s gave a presentation about its two-week Fatherhood program. The program combines job readiness – which includes everything from resume-building to interview preparation – with parenting skills. Michael also enrolled in a two-week Skills Training Commercial Drivers License program.  

“My daughter was in St. Nick’s afterschool program until she graduated fifth grade, but I didn’t know they had all these programs,” Michael said.

Michael passed the exam and received his CDL. St. Nick’s then connected him with employers they partner with in the community, and he got a job in January 2015. He has been employed ever since.

“The people at St. Nick’s really helped us out,” he said. “It was a great experience being there.”