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.
2025 Learning SERIES:
The Role of Philanthropy in Promoting Engagement of Lived Expertise
This series will explore best practices for supporting and promoting engagement of individuals with lived expertise through a variety of approaches, including informing policymaking, advocacy efforts and in grant making. The series will conclude the creation of a toolkit for working in partnership with young adults with lived expertise.
2025 Learning SERIES:
Narrative Change Strategies
YTFG is partnering with expert narrative change practitioners from the Pop Culture Collab to offer this deep dive into narrative change strategy, tailored for our members' unique role working in philanthropy. This learning experience will be a cohort model that will take place over the course of six months, in order to offer a more intensive and impactful learning journey. Members who join the cohort will participate in a mix of facilitated and self-directed learning. Our journey kicks off at our Spring Meeting and will be followed by a 4-part series covering the following topics:
narrative oceans and narrative systems
case study on transforming public perception
narrative infrastructure and how funders can invest in it
narrative impact evaluation
A final in-person session will coincide with YTFG’s Fall Convening, where we will discuss practical applications and next steps for YTFG as a network. Visit our events page for the latest information!
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 and Well-Being Community of Practice, as well as opportunities for influence and collective strategy through our Policy Action Table and Direct Cash Transfers Action Table.
Policy action table
The Policy Action Table will continue to deepen member engagement in policy work and establish YTFG as a presence in federal policymaking spaces. Early 2025 activities will include working to flesh out policy priorities for the network and seeking opportunities to engage members in related opportunities. Activities could include a briefing or some other educational, in-person activity, particularly if the fall meeting lands in DC.Programming will include a focus on emerging policy issues, including: reproductive rights; challenges for immigrants and young who are LGBTGIA+; and the potential impacts of shifting Medicaid from an entitlement to a block grant.
Direct Cash Transfers Action Table
In year two of the Direct Cash Transfers Action Table, the group will focus on the development and dissemination of a public investment blueprint, which includes input from fellows and field leaders focused on this topic.
Well-Being Community of Practice
To support the operationalization of our framework, YTFG is planning to convene practitioners and system leaders who are implementing YTFG’s well-being framework, create opportunities for peer learning, and potentially provide customized technical assistance for a selection of sites. This table would be supported by members seeking to partner with a local site to implement the well-being framework. Contact Barbara Langford for more information!
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.
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.