OUR WORK
The YTFG network provides a unique space for diverse funders to come together to explore cross-cutting issues affecting all young people, with a focus on young people who have experienced systems. Our members’ interests and expertise span a wide range of content areas, including education, workforce development, child welfare, juvenile and youth justice, housing, health and mental health. We seek to expand beyond narrow and often siloed dialogue by highlighting critical overlaps and intersections of youth- serving systems and identifying creative approaches to design cross-system strategies and solutions.
Learning Series
These multi-session virtual learning opportunities provide members with opportunities to delve deeply into a topic affecting all young people transitioning to adulthood. These series are intentionally intersectional and cross-cutting in design. Check out the Events page for the latest information on upcoming sessions!
2024 Learning Series:
State of Economic Well-Being
This annual three-part series focuses on the national landscape of education, employment and economic justice investments, policies, and practices supporting young people farthest from opportunity, highlighting cutting-edge and emerging field developments.
2024 Learning SERIES:
Community-Led Solutions to Support Well-Being
Supporting community in creating and leading solutions to support young people is a powerful investment strategy to advance well-being and to prevent systems involvement. Building off of the valuable series from 2023, the Community-Led Solutions to Support Well-Being Learning Series will continue to identify cross-cutting prevention work in (1) community designed solutions, (2) community-systems partnerships, and (3) systems-led efforts by highlighting compelling examples drawn from our network. This series will identify core components of community-led efforts, along with investment strategies to support them, to be shared in a YTFG brief.
2024 Learning SERIES:
Narrative Change Strategies
Reality is socially constructed through narratives. The stories and narratives about young people create powerful impacts on policy and practice. The Narrative Change Strategies Learning Series will examine approaches for countering harmful narratives about youth and young adults as well as in crafting positive narratives to proactively support related goals. Each session will focus on skills building and sharing concrete tools and approaches for supporting narrative change in YTFG member’s work.
Action Tables
Members seeking to engage with colleagues around specific strategies can join or form an action table. These action tables include co-investment opportunities, like our current FES group, as well as opportunities for influence and collective strategy through our Policy Action Table and Direct Cash Transfers Action Table.
Fund for the education success of Students Experiencing Homelessness, Child Welfare, and Juvenile Justice (FES)
FES aims to radically improve the education stability and success of students in the US who experience systems-involvement, high mobility, and homelessness, by investing in actors and activities that improve policy, increase public funding, elevate and spread what works, and prioritize these students at the federal, state, and local levels. FES is a joint table with Grantmakers for Thriving Youth.
Policy action table
The Policy Action Table explores member interest in ways to collectively inform and influence policy for systems transformation at the national, state and local levels while deepening our impact as a network and as individual grant making organizations. The Policy Action Table offers a regular space for members to learn about policy developments; explore creative ways the network can engage and invest in the full range of policy advocacy; and leverage potential opportunities for collective action.
Direct Cash Transfers and Financial Assistance Action Table
Supporting basic needs through cash and benefits assistance is a rapidly-growing strategy to support overall well-being and equity and to prevent systems-involvement. Our Direct Cash Transfers and Financial Assistance Action Table will provide opportunities throughout the year to collectively explore direct cash transfers and other financial solutions for youth farthest from opportunity. This work may include research and analysis of existing efforts, peer learning and sharing, and presentations from field leaders to help identify principles and opportunities for investment and collective action.
Work Groups
In addition to our cross-systems focus, YTFG operates three dedicated work groups for members wanting to connect with colleagues on system-specific strategies and issues. Our work groups include opportunities for deep dive conversations related to foster care, youth justice and economic well-being.
The Foster Care Work Group works to ensure that all young people impacted by the foster care system have the relationships, family connections, and opportunities needed to make a successful transition to adulthood. We explore investments that hold promise for helping young people achieve well being in all domains of their lives, provide them with opportunities to co-design program and policy solutions to improve well-being outcomes, and transform child welfare systems into ones that support young people and their families to prevent family separation.
The Pathways to Economic Well-Being Work Group is focused on ensuring young people transition into adulthood with the education, employment, and economic supports they need to experience economic well-being. Numerous factors help or hurt a young person's economic stability and growth, including education, job training and employment, access to social and financial capital, housing stability, and more. Because of this, our work group takes a holistic approach to understanding intersecting variables, bringing together funders who work across a range of issue areas with a shared goal: equity and justice in young people’s current and future economic opportunities, stability, and prosperity.
The Youth Justice Work Group (YJWG) of the Youth Transition Funders Group (YTFG) envisions a youth justice system that fosters the healthy development and well-being of all children and youth by building upon their strengths, cultivating their relationships with caring adults, supporting their families and communities, and offering them age-appropriate opportunities for future success. We are committed to partnering with the broader community to promote restorative justice, safety, opportunity and positive outcomes for all young people. In order to achieve our vision, and in alignment with YTFG’s Youth Well-Being Framework, we recommend 10 Tenets for Youth Justice Reform, outlined in A Blueprint for Youth Justice Reform.