VPP's investment partners are working to sharpen their programmatic focus, improve the quality of the services they provide, and increase the relevance, effectiveness, and scalability of programs to deliver better outcomes for children and youth. Some investment partners have made significant improvement to programs to date while others are in the middle of focused efforts to do so.

Through business planning, See Forever realized that it needed to develop a more formal curriculum and add additional senior school leadership and master teachers. As they began to plan for a second campus, the leaders also realized the curriculum would need to be unified across all its locations and instruction quality would need to be consistent. Two experienced principals, a new board member with deep expertise in education, and several staff members created the new curriculum and professional development system to support teachers. See Forever simultaneously began a process to become officially accredited, an 18-month intensive process whereby evaluators look deeply into program quality. In the winter of 2005, the evaluation team from the Middle States Coalition of Secondary Schools unanimously recommended to its board that the Maya Angelou Public Charter School be accredited for seven years, the longest term possible.

"The work Venture Philanthropy Partners is doing for Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington is resulting in nothing short of a transformation of our clubs, enabling us to significantly increase and improve our service to youth at risk throughout the Washington community. On behalf of our entire membership of 21,000 boys and girls who have better opportunities to develop into fine men and women because of VPP's enabling assistance, thank you."

—Tim Coughlin, Managing Director, Edgemoor Capital Management, Inc. and Board Member and past Chair, Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington