Resilient Coders awarded $100,000
Boston nonprofit receives Cummings Foundation grant
Boston, May 31, 2019 – Resilient Coders is one of 100 local nonprofits to receive grants of $100,000 each through Cummings Foundation’s “$100K for 100” program. The Boston-based organization was chosen from a total of 574 applicants during a competitive review process.
Resilient coders trains young adults of color from Boston’s low income communities for high growth careers as software engineers, and connects them with employment opportunities. Through their free nonprofit coding bootcamp, they teach more than the technical skills students need to be impossible to ignore; they present a path towards economic resiliency. They offer their students a state-of-the-art training in software engineering, making them highly competitive job-seekers in Boston’s growing tech economy. To achieve this, they have developed our Bootcamp, a 14-week program during which students explore the coding skills necessary to become full stack software engineers.
Representing Resilient Coders, Founder and Executive Director, David Delmar, and Chief of Staff, Rougui Diallo, joined approximately 300 other guests at a reception at TradeCenter 128 in Woburn to celebrate the $10 million infusion into Greater Boston’s nonprofit sector. With the conclusion of this grant cycle, Cummings Foundation has now awarded more than $260 million to Greater Boston nonprofits alone.
“We’re thrilled that the Cummings Foundation has chosen to invest in our vision for more inclusive pathways to software engineering and a more equitable tech economy” said David Delmar, Resilient Coders’ Executive Director.
Resilient Coders’ goal is to establish itself as a top provider of local software engineering talent in the Greater Boston Area, therefore opening a pathway for high growth opportunities to low income people of color. This grant will allow us to build capacity in order to scale our graduate placements, which would bring us closer to organizational and financial sustainability.
The $100K for 100 program supports nonprofits that are based in and primarily serve Middlesex, Essex, and Suffolk counties. Through this place-based initiative, Cummings Foundation aims to give back in the area where it owns commercial buildings, all of which are managed, at no cost to the Foundation, by its affiliate Cummings Properties. Founded in 1970 by Bill Cummings, the Woburn-based commercial real estate firm leases and manages 10 million square feet of space, the majority of which exclusively benefits the Foundation.
“By having such a local focus, we aim to make a meaningful positive difference in the communities where our colleagues and leasing clients live and work,” said Joel Swets, Cummings Foundation’s executive director. “We are most grateful for the nonprofit organizations that assist and empower our neighbors, and we are proud to support their efforts.”
This year’s diverse group of grant recipients represents a wide variety of causes, including homelessness prevention, affordable housing, education, violence prevention, and food insecurity. Most of the grants will be paid over two to five years.
The complete list of 100 grant winners is available at www.CummingsFoundation.org.
Cummings Foundation announced an additional $15 million in early May through its Sustaining Grants program. Through these awards, 50 local nonprofits will receive ongoing funding of $20,000 – $50,000 for 10 years.
The history behind Cummings Properties and Cummings Foundation is detailed in Bill Cummings’ self-written memoir, “Starting Small and Making It Big: An Entrepreneur’s Journey to Billion-Dollar Philanthropist.” It is available on Amazon or cummings.com/book.
About Resilient Coders
Resilient Coders started in 2014 when its Founder and Executive Director, David Delmar, was taking vacation days from his job at PayPal to give coding lessons to young men in a youth correctional facility. The idea stemmed from the observation that while the technology industry is celebrated as a meritocracy, it lacks in diversity and fails to address the problems faced by the most economically vulnerable among us. David quickly realized that the students he taught had the grit, intelligence and resourcefulness to be contributing members of the tech economy. Since then, Resilient Coders has grown to bring to light more talents that are too often ignored by our society by providing sustainable career opportunities to young adults of color and empowering them to bring change to their own communities.
About Cummings Foundation
Woburn-based Cummings Foundation, Inc. was established in 1986 by Joyce and Bill Cummings. The Foundation directly operates its own charitable subsidiaries, including New Horizons retirement communities in Marlborough and Woburn. Its largest single commitment to date has been to Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University. Additional information is available at www.CummingsFoundation.org.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Rouguiatou Diallo, Resilient Coders, 617-417-3315, rougui@resilientcoders.org
Contact: Joyce Vyriotes, Cummings Foundation, 781-932-7072, jkv@cummings.com
