Crews Community


Bright Prospect’s goal is to increase college-going rates among underserved populations across the nation. To accomplish this, we are preparing to provide other organizations with a turn-key package of well-defined Bright Prospect processes, procedures, systems, database and program materials.
Bright Prospect has one of the highest college access, persistence and graduation rates of any college access program in the country. The Crews® program in both high school and college is remarkable in its ability to establish trust and cultivate intimate peer-to-peer and “near-to-peer” relationships. These relationships provide support and deep, mutual commitment to college graduation. Moreover, Bright Prospect operates at a substantially lower cost per student per year than many other college access programs while achieving higher college matriculation and graduation rates.
Bright Prospect has already worked with other organizations in the Southern California College Access Network to jointly implement our Crews® methodology at the college level and in just 4 years nearly 600 additional students are being helped through this multi-organization collaborative effort.
Because of our high college graduation rate and our low cost per student, we firmly believe that the Bright Prospect model, and especially our Crews® format should be replicated across the country. We believe that the best way to accomplish this goal will be the establishment of a new, independent association of organizations interested in using this model. This will be the Crews Community® association.
Crews Community® Mission: The mission of the Crews Community® will be to spread the Crews® model pioneered by Bright Prospect to other college access programs across America, and thereby significantly raise the college admission and graduation rates of the low-income students across the country. We anticipate that member organizations of the Crews Community® will include:
  • Other not-for-profit community based organizations like Bright Prospect, some of whom may already have a college access program that they want to enhance and others may just be launching a college access program in their community
  • Charter schools interested in improving the college going and graduation rates of their alumni
  • Public schools interested in the same goal
  • Associations of college access programs such as the one Bright Prospect belongs to, the Southern California College Access Network
  • Colleges interested in increasing the graduation rates of their low-income students
Crews Community® Members: The organizations that join the Crews Community® will comprise a learning community that will work cooperatively to apply, refine and improve the Crews® model, and to recruit more and more organizations to join the Community.
Crews Community® Services: The Crews Community® will provide a structured environment and support services that will enable its members to:
  • Access an electronic best practices manual and downloadable, turn-key materials for building a Crews® program
  • Participate in training, webinars and conferences for Crews® programs
  • Access a cloud-based database tailored for managing a Crews® program
  • Participate with other members to form multi-organization crews on college campuses where individual members have too few students to form a viable crew
  • Share best practices for implementing and operating a Crews® program
  • Join in organized experiments to improve the Crews® model; share the results of these experiments; incorporate improved practices into the manual, materials and training programs, and implement those improved practices within their own programs
  • Network with other participating organizations
  • Develop and share connections and formal relationships with college campus student support staff and services
  • Utilize the Crews Community® website to facilitate communication and to share information and resources
  • Access current research on preparation and support for low-income college student success
  • Within California, benefit from partnerships with the CC, CSU, and UC systems to provide support for Crews students and programming (e.g. access to on-campus facilities or work-study dollars for crew leaders).
Crews Community® Governance: The governance structure of the Crews Community® is yet to be defined, but is provisionally envisioned as a non-profit association comprised of member organizations that provide college access services to low-income students. The organizational structure may include:
  • Board of Directors whose members are primarily recruited from the boards of a subset of the member organizations
  • Advisory board whose members are comprised of key executives of post-secondary institutions including:
    • Public universities
    • Private, non-profit, 4-year colleges and universities
    • Community colleges
  • Members of the educational and psychological research community
  • Representatives of private and public foundations interested in increasing college graduation rates for low-income students
  • Operating Committee composed of the Executive Director or Program Director of a subset of the participating organizations
  • Permanent paid staff to perform the following functions:
  • Overall management
  • Development
  • Program:
    • Activities management
    • Procedures, materials, database and website management
    • External relations with colleges and researchers
  • Communications/media relations
  • Dues-paying member organizations
Crews Community® Funding: Funding may be obtained through grants from local and national foundations interested in increasing graduation rates for low-income students, and from annual dues paid by member organizations. It has been suggested that dues levels could be variable, depending on the number of students served by each member organization.
If you have an interest in participating in or supporting the Crews Community®, please contact Evan Sotelo at: evan@brightprospect.org or 909-623-9007 EXT 123