Overview by the Numbers:
Currently serving: 2000+ beneficiaries
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<img src="/icons/sharing_blue.svg" alt="/icons/sharing_blue.svg" width="40px" /> Summary of Team4Tech Contributions and Collaborations (2025):
- 4 projects with 21 pro bono consultants
- 540+ pro bono hours committed
- $115,000+ value of pro bono consulting
- $75,000 in grant support
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“Because of this Team4Tech/Adobe project, BUILD will be able to launch an online marketplace for the first time in our 20+ year history as a youth entrepreneurship organization. Our students will now be able to use their business skills in the virtual realm and accelerate their learning. Customers, partners, and funders will now be able to interact with our student's businesses 24/7. This is something we dreamed of for so long that is now a reality for BUILD’s students. Thank you!” ~Steve Mea
Background:
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📌 BUILD partners with underperforming public high schools with graduation rates far below the national average. BUILD targets students who many have given up on and, in some cases, have given up on themselves. The students we serve face complex barriers on their paths to college and future success. BUILD is an entrepreneurship program that teaches them how to build their own business while becoming the CEO of their own lives. College and career success for these students is the goal. BUILD continues to expand its Youth Entrepreneurs program across the nation - supporting their youth to launch their businesses in a digital marketplace.
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🤝 Partnership Objectives:
BUILD continues to expand its digital offerings to youth across the nation. Team4Tech will be a valued partner in this work, supporting such initiatives as their digital marketplace, marketing reach, and badging. This is critical to the work that they are doing to pivot into the digital world. BUILD will look for Team4Tech's support in learning how to expand and support youth nationwide with digital resources, virtual mentorship, and an online curriculum/network of support.
BUILD Partnership Overview
Grant Budget Analysis:
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<img src="/icons/library_gray.svg" alt="/icons/library_gray.svg" width="40px" /> The grant supported BUILD’s two main partnership goals. BUILD invested in their alumni/mentor platform by purchasing the platform software and creating alumni focus groups. BUILD is supporting their creation of an online “BUILD Store” through purchasing an LMS and BigCommerce subscription and turning Team4Tech’s beta platform into a full-scale, working one.
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Skilled Volunteering Projects:
- April 2021: Online Selling Platform with Adobe
- June 2021: Design For Impact Project with Icertis
- May 2022: Design For Impact Project with Amazon
Partnership Impact:
- BUILD’s first programmatic goal of creating an online selling platform was a success.
- In 2021, Team4Tech was directly supporting the work of creating an online selling platform and accompanying curriculum, along with a design challenge to rethink their comms/marketing strategy, more specifically with how they engage teachers.
- The 2021 Online Selling Platform project with Adobe saw major strides for BUILD. 61 student teams sold product and earned over $8000 in revenue in spring 2021. BUILD plans to incorporate more online selling modules into the existing curriculum.
- In response, BUILD’s staff updated the curriculum modules to make them more age-appropriate & user-friendly, in preparation for teachers to support students in selling online in spring 2022. The Adobe project produced deliverables for advancing curriculum to further support student’s selling their products.
- Since then, BUILD has continued to scale its digital learning tools, including the launch of the FamBiz CEO Simulation Game in 2024, reaching over 80,000 students and 2,600 educators nationwide.
- BUILD’s second goal of creating an alumni portal is making progress.
- In 2022, BUILD partnered with Team4Tech to get the alumni portal project started, receiving both volunteer design input and a $15,000 grant that funded the adoption and piloting of Brightspace, a new Learning Management System (LMS)..
- BUILD completed a Design 4 Impact in which volunteers helped them think through numerous aspects of the platform that they had not yet considered.
- While the exact alumni platform that BUILD envisions has not yet been made, they was able to get started on developing and implementing key support infrastructure (required for the platform), in part thanks to Team4Tech's grant to BUILD in 2022. This grant supported the evaluation of and purchase of Brightspace, a Learning Management System.
- In Spring 2022, BUILD built out Brightspace and launched a small pilot in Fall 2022, and they plan to build out the LMS for a full launch in Fall 2023.