Q&A with Elevate Youth Mentoring Founder Tiffany Reddick
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Tiffany Reddick has spent the majority of her career in education. From preschool all the way to high school, Reddick has continued to guide, mentor and prepare South Bend’s kids for success in college and in their future careers.
She launched Elevate Youth Mentoring to take her dedication to and passion for children and young adults even further. Drawing from her experience as a business teacher, in conjunction with her faith, Reddick provides Bible education, self awareness training, career guidance and resource utilization tutorials.
Reddick spoke with Inside INdiana Business on connecting with the South Bend Entrepreneurship and Adversity Program (SBEAP) at the University of Notre Dame and what her biggest challenge running a not-for-profit has been.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
When did you start Elevate Youth Mentoring?
So we started in 2018, just a couple of years before the pandemic, in my local church, which was actually in Chicago and I live in South Bend, Indiana. A group of us started doing work with the youth and in 2020, we responded to the pandemic by putting stuff online. We were able to get kids to participate through that. They weren’t just in the Chicago churches; they were in other churches around, in the fellowship of churches that we dealt with. At the same time, I’m a teacher in South Bend and I’m working with kids.
In 2023, I just decided that it made sense for me to continue doing the work that I was doing in Chicago with those young people as best I could, but I’m more connected in South Bend. I have more impact. I have more access to kids in South Bend. So I wanted to try to bring that work here and that was when I legally registered the organization and started working with the youth in South Bend. I teach entrepreneurship. I’m a facilitator for a girls leadership program and I also do Bible education at church. So I decided to keep those same conversations for Elevate Youth Mentoring, that’s how we got here.
How did you find out about the South Bend Entrepreneurship and Adversity Program?
Like I said, I teach entrepreneurship, so I am always looking around our community to find out what we have. When I was starting my program, I reached out to Dr. [Michael] Morris based off of the SBEAP flier. I was about to do a boot camp at the time and he helped me out, gave me some feedback and spent time with me. By the second year in my program, I started introducing my students to him, because I work in a district that is probably 76% free and reduced lunch. These are economically disadvantaged families.
We have lots of robust programming around entrepreneurship in our community, but SBEAP is a little bit different because it focuses on disadvantaged businesses and also from the standpoint of showing folks how to uplift themselves. Now, my students get to engage with his entrepreneurs, they draft social media plans for some of those entrepreneurs and they work with a marketing professional to execute the plan. Up until this year, that was my involvement with the program. But this year, my business went through the program, so it was even more special.
What was the biggest benefit you’ve gained from the program so far?
Because I went to school for business, I understand the language. The thing that’s been most valuable to me is the accountability that it gives me and the frameworks that it gave me for getting things accomplished. Dr. Morris has these 80 steps to make your business sustainable, so having that framework has been really important.
How are you able to create programming for the wide range of people you serve?
For age three up until about 11 years old, the main focus is providing quality Bible education. There’s three or four things that I really care about when it comes to Elevate and one of those things is making sure young people have access to quality Bible education and not just Bible stories, but understanding scriptures in the whole context.
We have Saturday and Sunday classes for kids 12-18. With them, I focus on mentoring for transitioning out of high school. I’m having conversations, building relationships, helping you prepare for college and career choices and opportunities.
For folks 18-25, it’s more one on one. I hired one of my entrepreneurship students as an assistant over the summer. Another one made shirts for me for an event; that’s another way I get to connect and stay up to date with them. Between here and Chicago, I would say our events tend to be around 50/60 people.
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced in the six years running the program?
One of my major challenges has been building a team, and that’s actually what I talked about last week at the mentoring session with the Mandela Washington Fellows. When you’re doing a nonprofit, you’re dealing with people that you’re either not paying them a lot or you’re not paying them at all; they’re volunteers. There’s a lot of moving parts. Having teachers for the classes has been a challenge, getting people to give up their Saturdays and Sundays when you’re not paying them. So one of the things that we have done to respond to that is switch over to a content model, where things are just made in the time that it makes sense for whoever’s on the team and made available to our families.
It’s also hard for them to consume the content on a schedule. During the pandemic, when everybody was at home, it was different. Everybody’s back to life now and you can’t just expect people to show up like that. The team continues to be a place where I have to constantly innovate and build value for them because I can’t pay them.
How have you been able to measure the impact and the success of your programs over the last six years?
In the beginning, we were just happy if people showed up and if it was valuable enough for them to come back over and over again. That let us know that we were doing something right. It comes down to the programming that we’ve done. So one of the programs that I just implemented here that ended in April, is our Goal Getters Program focused on getting middle and high school-aged kids, to the point where they are achieving their goals.
We approached it in a few different ways. We had character education, making sure that you are thinking the right things and doing the right things. We had mental health education. We wanted to make sure that they are identifying unhelpful thinking and unhelpful people. We also went through the academic side of things. We measured success based on how much they learned about themselves, because self awareness was a big part of what we were trying to accomplish. We measured how well they’re able to utilize their resources because we identified resource utilization was one of the problems for that age group. We also measured how they are taking control of the career path they’ve chosen.
Can you talk to me about the upcoming Elevate Youth Gathering and what it entails?
As part of the fellowship of churches that I deal with in Chicago, we host events specific to that fellowship. That’s what’s coming up this weekend in Chicago—getting their young people together and creating space for them to have a good time, because they don’t always get together in that way.
For South Bend, I’m partnering with other organizations around the community for a back-to-school event. We want to pray for the children and get them ready for school. Then we plan to run our Goal Getters Program again in the fall.
How have you been able to engage with the local community and foster partnerships?
There’s something I’m developing using the mentorship that I get from the SBEAP. One of my mentors is helping me connect to the right community organizations to get awareness out there, as well as helping me to figure out how to secure funding and things like that for different programs.
One partner that’s already been very helpful is South Bend Community Schools through their Gear Up program. Our partnership with them for the Goal Getters Program was super important. Our local Kroc Center is also a phenomenal partner; the kids love being there. The center donated summer memberships for some of the kids who would usually not be able to afford it.
How have you been able to stay motivated and inspired over the last six years building Elevate Youth Mentoring?
Part of that is that I feel I’m called to it. My heart is big for young people. I see them in the classroom, and I see their needs and I’m just motivated to try to meet those needs in any way that I can. Elevate is the way that I can meet those needs.
I am trying to do a better job managing my work and my time so that I don’t get burned out, because the schedule has a tendency to run me. Sometimes people come to me, wanting things from Elevate, wanting us to build things and I want to be available for that. But I need the mental capacity. I need to be in the right place with my faith for that to really go the way I want it to. So I can’t be rushed all the time. So I’m trying to do some things differently to try to make sure that that doesn’t happen.
What would your advice be to anyone who’s also looking to start like a nonprofit?
I dilly dallied for a while. I didn’t plan on making this official. I really didn’t. I’d say that when you come to the place where you understand why you need to make it official and not just a hobby or a passion thing that you do, just get to it, because it’s going to make your work easier.
What made me really feel like it needed to be registered was because I wanted to raise funds. I wanted to be able to create a greater impact. I wanted to do it in my home city and my church is not there. It didn’t make sense for me to be trying to go through some people in Chicago to try to figure out what needs to be done in South Bend.
Also, in terms of resources, being registered gets you a lot more credibility and can take you a lot further.