Communities In Schools

Daniel Cardinali. Dan Cardinali has led Communities In Schools since 2004. Under his leadership, the organization has developed and embraced an evidence-based model of integrated student service provision and has launched a national growth strategy to increase the organization’s impact on improving public education. Cardinali’s background as a community organizer has helped the organization continue its steady and measured growth, establish its… See full bio.

Read Annual Report	Overhead Ratio: 14.69%
Charity Navigator Rating: (profile)	Total Revenue: $16,287,078

Sep 08, 2011

At Communities In Schools, we rely on strong fiscal management to strategically use donor funds, allowing us to give the 1.3 million young people we serve a better chance of staying in school and achieving in life,” said Daniel Cardinali,… Read More.

Story: The story of Communities In Schools began in the 1970s, when Founder Bill Milliken, then a youth advocate in New York City, came up with the idea of bringing community resources inside a public school building – where they are accessible, coordinated and accountable.

In the span of a little more than 30 years, Communities In Schools has become one of the nation’s leading dropout prevention organizations, and the only one proven in an independent evaluation to both lower dropout rates and increase graduation rates. We have a unique model that positions a site coordinator inside schools to assess needs and deliver necessary resources that remove barriers to success.

Our mission is to surround students with a community of support, empowering them to stay in school and achieve in life.

Our network is comprised of nearly 5,000 passionate professionals in 25 states and the District of Columbia. We serve the most vulnerable students in the most dropout-prone school districts, nearly 1.35 million young people in nearly 3,000 schools.

We are actively engaged with policy makers, school staff, parents and business partners to ensure that Communities In Schools’ services are extended to as many K-12 students as possible and that those students have access to college.

Independent research demonstrates that Communities In Schools is one of a very few organizations proven to keep students in school and the only one to document that it increases graduation rates. The study also shows that a higher percentage of students served by Communities In Schools reach proficiency in 4th-grade and 8th-grade reading and math.

Evidence of Impact Summary:

Communities in Schools has both effective programs and strong program evaluation. Evaluation studies show that students in Communities in Schools schools perform better academically and socially.
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Organization Strengths Summary:

According to experts, Communities In Schools' national leadership is highly effective in advocacy and marketing. They also have excellent impact stories at state and local levels with great results on improving graduation rates.
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Areas for Improvement Summary:

According to experts, Communities In Schools has limited reach. They could address this issue by improving links to community-based organizations.
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Dan Cardinali has led Communities In Schools since 2004. Under his leadership, the organization has developed and embraced an evidence-based model of integrated student service provision and has launched a national growth strategy to increase the organization’s impact on improving public education. Cardinali’s background as a community organizer has helped the organization continue its steady and measured growth, establish its voice in national education policy debates and launch an organization-wide quality improvement campaign.

Cardinali is a 2007 Annie E. Casey Children and Families Fellow. He also currently serves as a Trustee for America’s Promise, and as vice chairman of the board of directors of the National Human Services Assembly. Cardinali is a board member of Peace First, The Harwood Institute of Public Innovation and Child Trends. In May 2011, Dan Cardinali was appointed by President Barack Obama to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics.

Trained as a community organizer in Guadalajara, Mexico, Cardinali served on a team organizing a “squatter” community of 120,000 to secure land rights, running water and public education. He returned to Washington, D.C., to receive a one-year research fellowship at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. At Partners of the Americas, Cardinali coordinated its leadership training program, the International Fellowship in Community Development.

Before assuming his current position, Cardinali served as executive vice president of field operations at Communities In Schools.

Cardinali holds a Bachelor’s degree in international relations from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and a Master’s degree in philosophy from Fordham University.

Sep 08, 2011

At Communities In Schools, we rely on strong fiscal management to strategically use donor funds, allowing us to give the 1.3 million young people we serve a better chance of staying in school and achieving in life,” said Daniel Cardinali, president, Communities In Schools. “We are honored to receive this latest recognition as it gives us additional credibility in the eyes of millions of potential supporters who will allow us to continue carrying out this mission.