Q1 2020 Texas CEO Magazine

IF WE CAN MAKE OUT-OF-SCHOOL
LEARNING A POSITIVE EXPERIENCE
FOR YOUNG PEOPLE, THAT’S GOING TO BE
COPIED BY THE REST OF THE COUNTRY.
When the Andy Roddick Foundation
contacted me many years later, I had
lived in Washington, DC, for 27 years,
doing educational lobbying, running a
middle school academic program, and
doing nonprofit consulting. I’d only been
to Austin twice prior to coming here
for this job. It was March 2013 when
they showed me around. I remember
it because everything was so green.
Right—you were probably picturing
West Texas and tumbleweeds. That’s
right. When I met with the staff and
the board, I was really impressed—with
them, with Andy, with the city. I said I
could move in summer, which probably
was the wrong thing to say. When I
left the airport, it was 106 degrees.
We have a lot of companies moving to
Texas. As someone who came here from
DC, what would you tell somebody who’s
thinking about relocating to Texas? I
was surprised by the open-mindedness
here. Prior to moving to Texas, I’d
always had this understanding that
Texas is conservative and Republican.
Having lived in DC for 27 years, a town
that’s 98 percent Democrat, I really had
hesitation. “Am I going to fit in there?”
But the number-one thing that surprised
me is, whether you’re a Democrat or
Republican in Austin, you’re still openminded
about things. You still care about
what happens in your neighborhood
and community. People really want
their schools to be great. They have
different ideas of what level of investment
there should be, and how to make that
investment, but at the core of it, they
really care about the children and the
community. It’s the same for health,
education, workforce development. I
thought everybody here was like, “No
government spending. No taxes. Nothing.”
The second thing that surprised me was
the level of diversity. Everybody was
telling me, “Oh, it’s not diverse. As a
Filipino, you’re going to stand out.” But
in my neighborhood, I live across from
an Indian couple, two doors down is a
Chinese family, next door is a Korean
family. It’s become more diverse in the
past decade. I still go to places where
I’m the only person of color. That still
happens. But the diversity is becoming
more pronounced, especially in more
affordable pockets of Central Texas.
As we address housing affordability
and as more companies move here, I
think that the diversity will increase.
Are there any special challenges working
in nonprofit education in Texas? The
burden on Texas is that we are actually
more diverse in some key ways. California
may have more kids—they have eight
million—but we have a bigger ruralurban
divide, and our kids are speaking
more languages. Thanks to our size,
whatever we do in this state is going to
be the barometer of what the country has
appetite for. So if we can make out-ofschool
learning a positive experience
for young people, that’s going to be
copied by the rest of the country. We’re
beginning to convene all of these folks
and explore how we make sure that
there is learning support for the 5.4
million kids in our schools. We have
the second-largest school population in
the country. One of every 10 students
in the country attend a Texas school.
When you talk to donors, how do you
convince them that making a donation
to the Andy Roddick Foundation is
worthwhile? There’s a lot of good
nonprofit organizations out there. But
I can tell you three things the Andy
Roddick Foundation is set up to do.
The first is that we pay close attention
to where the need is. It’s not about what
we want to do; it’s about what we need
to do. I’ll tell you a story. Andre Agassi,
Andy’s mentor, built a foundation focused
on charter schools, and Andy wanted
to do the same thing. During that first
board meeting I attended, Andy was
talking about this charter school. It just
so happened that KIPP was right next
door to our donated space. I said, “Andy,
just look outside the window. There’s
a charter school right there. Why build
something when you can just give money
to that one?” I used my newness as the
chip. I told them I didn’t know Austin, but
that we should explore opportunities like
that. For the rest of 2013, we did nothing
but talk to families and other foundations
about their needs and where the gaps
were. That’s when we found out summer
learning was a great need, especially
in East Austin, and why we designed
our own summer learning program.
For afterschool, rather than just
duplicate programs, we spend hundreds
of thousands supporting other
organizations that are aligned with us.
That’s how we scale kids’ opportunity
to be exposed to high-quality programs.
We bring these partners into the fold
and expand our reach that way.
The second thing is that we know how we
are making a difference. I’m the research
guy. I want data. I want to see that the
needle is moving. We count everything
from the level of family engagement in
our programs to how often the kids come
to our program on a daily basis. We can
tell you our six-week retention rate during
the summer, our daily attendance rates,
the academic skills we start with and
the academic skills we end up with. We
publish an annual report showing how our
kids are doing in schools participating
in our program in comparison to kids
who have the same profile but don’t
participate in our programs. The
school district helps us with that.
I was the same way when I was running
Higher Achievement. I raised $3.2
62 Texas CEO Magazine Q1 2020