Community Compact, Inc

Community Compact, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) organization in Florida doing innovative projects at the crossroads of the educational and nonprofit world. Although we are based in Florida, our work is targeted to be implemented nationally. Our overarching goals are to develop resources and partnerships that will support growth and scaling up of the 2 projects below. The first project, “Gleaning Greatness”, is a program designed to improve college choice and college access for students in underserved rural areas of the country. Several recent studies have addressed the large need for services in this area and the lack of resources currently dedicated to these needs. The second project, “Distance Serve” is a program designed to use MOOCs and other online platforms as the basis for experiential learning partnerships with nonprofits – rather than using traditional classroom arenas. Our experience in facilitating experiential learning projects (of which service learning is one example) has led us to believe that tapping the great potential of thousands of students in online classes will result in much richer, broader impact to both nonprofits and students. Although our projects might seem a bit disparate, from a social entrepreneurial perspective they are very similar: Both projects are aimed at the exploration and implementation of new ways to add positive social capital to communities in need, while providing educational experiences and opportunities to students who have not previously had access to them.