LAST UPDATED • July 27th, 2020
We have invested more than $100M into our community to strengthen our schools, our nonprofits, and the other organizations that serve the people of our region. As Endeavor Foundation, we have responded time and again from behind the scenes to make certain that everyone in Northwest Arkansas has the opportunity to thrive.
But now our foundation has changed.
So our name is changing with it.
We will continue to invest in the forward-looking ideas and tangible solutions of our ever inventive and resourceful community. But we will also step forward to drive lasting change when we see untapped opportunities through our data-driven insights. We will operate at the systems level, standing side by side with the businesses, municipalities, and institutions that shape our region, developing a shared vision and a common will to ensure that all may fully benefit from the prosperity of Northwest Arkansas.
This more proactive approach towards the bigger picture and long-term impact defines Excellerate as we move into the next phase of our work.
Why now? Because the stakes are rising for those who struggle out of sight.
They are our friends and neighbors who are employed and seem secure on the surface yet are one unexpected event away from financial freefall. An auto repair, a medical bill, or a week off work due to illness might be all it takes for these families to spiral into crisis. And since 67 percent of the jobs in our region pay less than $50,000 a year, more than 150,000 people in Northwest Arkansas face these uncertain circumstances every single day.
To fight on their behalf, Excellerate operates in three key ways:
We listen, we analyze, and we learn. We actively seek out information from across the community to get the clearest picture of the region’s most pressing issues. Our key “listening device” is Hark at Excellerate Foundation, which provides robust qualitative and quantitative data on needs all the way down to the individual level.
We foster collaboration among organizations across multiple sectors, often collaborating or partnering with them ourselves in order to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our efforts. And connecting people to the community resources they need is why we founded Hark, which builds comprehensive, individualized “client plans”, using the most extensive map of regional resources ever created, and then follows up to confirm that clients are actually able to connect with those services.
To create long-lasting, fundamental change, the systems that shape our daily lives must be transformed. But this is no easy task and requires us to determine the proper role to play in each situation, be it a convener, a facilitator, an investor, an incubator, or many others.
We are partnering with a wide variety of stakeholders—from corporations to the faith community to city and state government and more—to demonstrate how solutions to some of our region’s most daunting challenges could be developed and scaled through creativity, innovation, data analysis, and business acumen.
Creating affordable communities that do more than get people off the streets; providing our children the chance to grow up to be the best versions of themselves; bringing together new friends from various walks of life to learn from and advocate for each other: These are just a few of the ways that Excellerate has strived to bring enduring change to Northwest Arkansas.
But there is one thing that hasn’t changed: We can’t do it alone. Transforming our region must be a collaborative effort, one that allows each of us to bring our knowledge, our talents, and our resources to the table so that we can play to our collective strengths. We pledge to find our proper role for each of our shared challenges, and we call on you to join us.
We are a foundation of action. We are a foundation of excellence. We are a foundation of urgency.
We are Excellerate Foundation.
To contact us, please email info@excelleratefoundation.com.
For media related inquiries, please email ali.johnson@excelleratefoundation.com.
