PEOS IN THE COMMUNITY:   JUSTWORKS: GRANTING CONFIDENCE TO NONPROFITS

If you’re familiar with Justworks, you know it subscribes to the mantra of doing well by doing good.

The New York-based technology company and PEO has made it its mission to level the playing field for small businesses and help them grow with confidence. And among its small business clients include more than 1,000 nonprofit organizations, many of whom do not have the same financial resources as for-profit businesses. With that in mind, company leadership pondered, how can we help these impactful nonprofits advance their respective missions in the communities they serve?

So in 2020, it began the Spring Forward Fund, an annual grant of now $50,000 awarded to a Justworks nonprofit customer that has best developed a project that creates more equitable access for an underrepresented population in the communities it serves.

“We launched the Spring Forward Fund to spotlight our community of impactful nonprofits and their missions, as well as accelerate their work with this grant,” said Layla Ramirez, Justworks’ director of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.

Open to Justworks nonprofit clients across the U.S., the annual contest receives scores of entries during the late summer submission period that are put before a series of judging panels that score the ideas on organizational overview, project focus, expected impact and management plan.

Entries are first judged by an internal sponsor judging panel, and those receiving the highest scores from the first round are then scored by an external group of judges. The five finalists with the highest overall scores are invited to a fall celebration gala, where the winner of a generous prize purse of $50,000 — doubled from the $25,000 amount before 2024 — is announced.

That 2024 winner was Step Up Tutoring, a Los Angeles nonprofit that provides virtual tutoring and mentorship to elementary and middle school students in LA’s underserved communities. With Justworks’ grant, the California nonprofit said it will provide a full year of virtual math and reading tutoring to more than 250 Black, Hispanic and low-income students, a percentage of whom are also English learners.

Justworks Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belong Layla Ramirez presents the 2024 Spring Forward Fund award to Gabriella Schneider, Step Up Tutoring’s development director and chief of staff. PHOTO CREDIT: Sam Popp.

What stood out to the program’s judges is that the organization has been integral in providing virtual tutoring services in the Los Angeles community, especially as the effects of the pandemic continue to impact childhood education, Ramirez said.

“They’re truly leveling the playing field for their community,” Ramirez said. “The project’s specificity and potential impact stood out to our committee.”

The Justworks grant is especially impactful for Step Up Tutoring, which serves the second-largest school district in the country that includes more than 250,000 economically disadvantaged students.

“We were thrilled to receive the [award] and especially enjoyed connecting with the Justworks team and the other finalists,” Gabriella Schneider, Step Up Tutoring’s development director and chief of staff, told PEO Insider. “These funds will help us expand our reach …. ensuring that a growing number of low-income second-to-sixth grade students have access to our one-on-one high-impact tutoring program.”

In October, Justworks held a gala in Manhattan to celebrate the Los Angeles nonprofit, as well as the other four finalists — a theater group for individuals with developmental disabilities, a career mentoring program for adults from under-resourced communities in New York and Washington, a New Orleans organization that provides community safety resources and a nonprofit that provides legal representation to New York’s undocumented immigrants. More than 100 attendees, including nonprofit leaders, local New York City community partners and Justworks executives were a part of the special evening.

Attendees gather at the 2024 Justworks Spring Forward Gala last October in New York City. PHOTO CREDIT: Sam Popp.

Though the Spring Forward Fund is a national initiative, Ramirez said that it is a way for Justworks to make an impact in the local communities where it has a notable presence. The grant program, by design, has benefited a diverse group of nonprofits across different pockets of the country.

In 2023, the award went to the Alliance to Cure Cavernous Malformation, a Charlottesville, Va.-based nonprofit that works to improve health outcomes for patients impacted by the rare disorder that causes lesions to develop in the blood vessels of the brain or spinal cord. The year prior, the grantee was a New York civic organization that provides free legal, finance and marketing assistance to small business owners from marginalized communities.

In addition to the Spring Forward Fund, Justworks in 2021 joined the growing Pledge 1% movement and began donating 1% of its equity and profits to create more equitable access to entrepreneurship. Shortly after it launched the Just Thrive program to make its platform more accessible for new and existing minority and women-owned businesses.

Both of those, in addition to its Service for Impact program that connects Justworks employees with community service opportunities with small businesses and organizations that serve them, are part of a multi-pronged effort to deepen connections with the company’s diverse set of community customers.

Justworks was founded on a mission to help small businesses grow with confidence, and in the decade-plus since, it’s made it part of that mission to also help the communities they serve grow and prosper. It’s safe to say that mission is becoming a reality.

Doing well by doing good is going pretty well.