Join us in celebrating 50 years of educational achievement and community change!

For the last 50 years, Mission Graduates has built a strong community by creating educational achievement and community change. Starting in 1972 in a small classroom at St. John’s Episcopal Church, we now serve students and families with our multifaceted programming at 12 school sites and five unique programs. We’ve worked with tens of thousands of San Francisco students to make college dreams a reality for Latinx, Black, and immigrant students. This year alone we are serving nearly 5,000 students and families.

Every step of the way and in every program, educational justice and equity are at the center of our work, and it’s been that way since our founding. We know that a college degree means building economic power for students and for their communities. On average, students that obtain Bachelor degrees earn $1 million more than those that don’t over the course of their lifetimes. Our model does not just revolve around just the student, but instead brings in the whole family. Over time, this has created a grassroots movement to build knowledge and navigate broken systems, which ignites generational change. Students and parents become advocates, and advocates become leaders.

Read more about our longstanding history in the community!

While the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) is seeing amazing improvements in graduation rates, Latinx, Black, and English Learner students are still graduating at rates lower than their peers. Graduating is the first step. Going to and graduating from college is the second. And finding meaningful employment is the final step! For us, this means there is still plenty of work to do. We do this work by partnering with SFUSD schools to create high-quality, affordable extended education programming, work with students in our college counseling programs, prepare families on the college-going process, and provide impactful scholarships. But we can’t do this alone!

Help us  raise $500,000 and build a bigger, stronger community to create pathways for students to succeed. You can also help us to achieve this goal by joining our monthly giving program. We need your help to ensure that all of San Francisco’s students have the same opportunities to pursue higher education!

We are experiencing a critical moment in society when people are recognizing and speaking on systemic inequalities and disparities, particularly for Black, Latinx and immigrant communities. During the pandemic, school site closures caused these same student communities to fare even worse than their peers. Compounding this, these young people had already experienced persistent learning opportunity gaps, resulting from racism, xenophobia, and a systemic lack of resources and support. This is the moment for us as educators, neighbors, parents, and community members to address the learning loss our students experience and see it for what it is–opportunity gaps that keep our students constantly fighting to just keep up.

We have spent the last 50 years partnering with schools, students, and families, and we won’t stop until our students–particularly our English Learner, Latinx, and Black students–are able to be on grade level in reading and math and that college is a goal they can realize!

Closing these opportunity gaps will allow our students to achieve their college dreams. With college degrees, they will pursue careers that will ensure they financially support themselves and their families. It will allow them to stay in San Francisco through home ownership and create inter-generational wealth. We hope you’ll join us on this journey to close the opportunity gaps once and for all!

We couldn’t reach such an important milestone without our strong community behind us! Thank you to our major funders, whose support helps our students, families, and staff to succeed. View our full list of funders.