This program, created for Boston Partners in Education—the City of Boston’s leading organization training and deploying volunteer academic tutors in the Boston Public Schools—is the nation’s first “CEO-driven” academic mentoring program for middle school students.

Background and Objectives

  • Build the critical link between reading and career success.
  • Expand middle school students’ sense of career possibilities.
  • Expose all middle school students to at least one of the City’s corporate chieftains, as well as recruit volunteers from the corporate sector to serve as in-classroom academic tutors.
  • Raise visibility, as well as private sector funds, for this historically low-profile organization.

Program Elements

  • Corporate chieftains visit middle school classrooms to read to students and discuss those readings, as well as discuss the importance of reading to career success.
  • An annual gala, at which chieftains don Big Cheese ties and scarves, serves to showcase both the program and the organization to prospective sponsors and participants.
  • Funds are raised through a “CEO self-sponsorship” appeal, as well as through traditional gala fundraising.
  • CEOs are recognized in a campaign-capping full-page ad in the City’s leading business journal.

Impact

  • Now in its 20th and final year, over 500 CEOs and other C-Suite professionals have participated as Big Cheeses.
  • The program grows to the point that it raises more than half of the organization’s annual budget.
  • In addition to raising over $20 million, the program inspires numerous companies to support the City’s middle schools with computers for classrooms, workplace tours, printing and other business services, internships, and college tuitions.
  • Over 800 corporate volunteers per year now participate as in-classroom academic tutors.