A PIVOTAL MOMENT IN THE BASTA STORY
I’ll get straight to the good news; I am delighted to announce that we have received a major gift of $4M from MacKenzie Scott to support the next stage of Basta’s growth. We are deeply grateful for this immense generosity, which will unlock opportunities we could not have imagined just five years ago.
Not long after I founded Basta, an employer asked me to stay after a meeting and told me that she wished she’d had Basta when she was a student. I was floored. Here was a mid-career professional, by all accounts thriving, who still held the feeling that so many first-generation college students have, of needing to find a way, any way, to accelerate their careers. I’ve heard the same sentiment many more times in the last eight years, but it was that first time when I knew we were creating something special. I still feel her admission in my bones; it signaled that we were solving a real problem, one that lots and lots of people could see themselves wound up in.
Now, as we embark on our second five-year plan, this investment enables us to make the bold decisions necessary to make the kind of impact I know we can. Fortunately, we’ve already set the stage for our next big bets. Two years ago we launched the pilot of our first tech product, Seekr, a mobile-optimized digital career navigation tool. Seekr already counts over 10,000 users, affording us a footprint across 38 states nationally. Last year a pro-bono consulting team from Deloitte helped us to articulate the potential scale of our efforts and designed with us a plan to reach 1 million users by 2030, creating $60bn in generational wealth.
Are these bold numbers? Of course. But so was the idea of getting to over a thousand Basta Fellowship alumni by the end of our first plan, a goal we reached almost two years ahead of schedule. Through extensive partnerships with some of NYC’s biggest employers, those alumni are getting career-ladder jobs faster than their peers, creating a platform for lifelong socioeconomic mobility.
Which brings me back to that first employer who expressed her wish for a Basta for her younger self, because at the end of the day our work is about the people who are changing the face of the American workforce.
This new infusion of resources, first and foremost, will allow us to assemble an interdisciplinary team of cross-sector experts, something that can feel unique in the nonprofit landscape. We will need to assemble a team that includes everything from technologists to advisors and product managers to intrepid career guides. New funds will give us the competitive edge necessary to welcome and sustain these folks who will shape our vision of the future.
If we’ve learned anything since 2016, it’s that change is the only constant, and that the best preparation for the world on the horizon is to surround ourselves with brilliant, committed, creative people. Together we can continue building Basta, a leading-edge organization where people who solve big and complex problems can thrive, while unleashing #FirstGenMagic and closing the employment gap.
Thank you MacKenzie. This is a pivotal moment in the Basta story.
Sheila Sarem
Basta CEO and Founder
