Sam’s Club Giving $700k to Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship to Educate Future Business Leaders

Today, the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) announced a $700,000 grant from the Sam’s Club Giving Program to support the organization’s award-winning entrepreneurship education program for young people in 15 U.S. communities.

A presentation to celebrate the award and to appreciate NFTE students and alumni took place today at Bladensburg High School in Bladensburg, MD.

NFTE teaches young people how to start their own businesses and helps to develop the entrepreneurial mindset, which creates successful futures. The Sam’s Club Giving Program, centered on funding organizations that promote small business growth and success, awarded the grant to support NFTE’s entrepreneurial curriculum in 15 domestic markets and to create NFTE’s first-ever Alumni Study to track the successes of past curriculum participants.

Over the past year, NFTE taught more than 1,500 students about wholesale business through field trips to select Sam’s Club locations, where the students engaged in role playing as business owners and learned skills on how to manage a small business and how to budget for business operations.

The NFTE Difference, the organization’s first study of its U.S. alumni, funded as part of the Sam’s Club Giving Program grant, tracked the long-term impact of NFTE’s transformative educational program among 1,282 participants surveyed in early 2013. Results confirm that level of education and business ownership are higher among NFTE alumni as compared to their age group in the U.S. overall.

Some highlights of the study include:

• 90% of NFTE alumni aged 16-24 are enrolled in high school or college, as compared to 60% of the same age group in the US overall.
• In 2012, 73% of NFTE Alumni Business owners turned a profit.  They created 329 new jobs in 2012 (109 self-employed, 220 hired).
• 88% of NFTE alumni between the ages of 25 and 40 were employed, compared to 69% in the US overall. Among that population, 22% of NFTE alumni were self-employed, as compared to only 11% in the US overall.

“NFTE appreciates the collaboration with the Sam’s Club Giving Program and their local associates who welcome students to their clubs to help them understand how big business can serve entrepreneurs in their community,” said Amy Rosen, CEO and President of Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship. “The Sam’s Club Giving Program grant will help us reach our goal of the instilling the entrepreneurial mindset in one million young people by 2017.”