How 1st-Year Volunteer Stint Made Harvard Grad a Nonprofit Powerhouse
A first-year volunteer stint, working to found an after-school tutoring program for students at a nearby public school, nearly resulted in Earl Martin Phalen’s quitting Harvard Law School.
But, despite being engrossed in Building Educated Leaders for Life, which he co-founded with a classmate in 1992, Phalen decided to stay the course—and went on to work for BELL after he graduated, writes Indianapolis Star columnist John Ketzenberger.
Now a multiple-city effort with 100 employees that tutors 12,500 children both after school and over the summer with the help of 1,000 volunteers, the present BELL program wasn’t the end of Phalen’s ambitions. After stepping down as chief executive there last year, according to a BELL press release, he is trying to raise $25 million to establish a high-quality summer school for children who qualify for a free lunch, the newspaper explains—and appears ready for further expansion, when the time is right.
“I already know, thanks to BELL, that we can run programs for 15,000 children in Indianapolis that are high-quality with measurable results,” Phalen tells the IndyStar. “But there are 56 million public school children in the United States.”
Being a Harvard law grad clearly has helped him in his nonprofit career: At the top of his contacts list are former classmates who have pursued big-bucks careers in private equity, according to Ketzenberger.
