Elevate Your G.A.M.E. | Application Preview
Elevate Your G.A.M.E. is seeking government funding to support a mentoring program for 50 Black student-athletes at Compton High School and Dominguez High School from December 2025 to May 2026. The organization aims to motivate these students to excel academically and pursue college degrees, ultimately preparing them for successful careers.
The program involves trained adult and peer mentors leading weekly small group sessions, which are structured around a curriculum designed to foster transformative conversations. These discussions cover essential topics such as educational achievement, respect, perseverance, and leadership. Guest speakers may also participate to provide insights into their professions and further inspire the students. Through this mentoring, participants are encouraged to make positive life choices, contributing to a high graduation rate of 95% and a track record of improved academic performance.
In addition to the immediate program, Elevate Your G.A.M.E. plans to extend its reach by sharing mentoring materials with urban coaches across the nation, aiming to grow from 100 to 1,000 coaches within five years. The goal is to ignite a nationwide mentoring movement that benefits urban communities.
The organization brings a proven model with 23 years of experience and nearly 3,000 students mentored. Key metrics demonstrate a strong impact, with over 80% of participants showing improvement in grades, attendance, and character.
Elevate Your G.A.M.E. differentiates itself from competitors like Big Brother Big Sister and Think Together by offering a highly structured mentoring program that guarantees weekly sessions on school campuses, overseen by a program coordinator to ensure quality and consistency. This approach enhances the mentoring experience and fosters meaningful relationships between mentors and mentees.
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General Information
Business Registration Number: Elevate Your G.A.M.E.
Location: LOS ANGELES, CA, United States
Length of Operation: 11plus
Number of Employees: 1-10 Employees
Annual Gross Income: $100k to $250k
Annual Gross Expense: $100k to $250k
Open to Loans: NO
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Funding Usage
We will use the funding to mentor football players at two high schools in Compton, California. The two high schools are Compton High School and Dominguez High School. We will mentor a total of 50 Black students athletes from December, 2025 through May, 2026. The goal is to motivate these student-athletes to excel in their classes and to inspire them to want to obtain college degrees for career jobs. Adult and peer mentors (student athletes who are excelling in their academics and character) will be trained to mentor the student-athletes in small groups. Mentoring sessions for each team will be held once a week at each high school. The mentors will have transformative conversations (guided by the Elevate Your G.A.ME. curriculum and the Elevate Your G.A.M.E. program coordinator). In the mentoring conversations, the student-athletes will have aha moments in which they discover something about themselves, something new or something that they need to change. These mentoring sessions will motivate the student-athletes to improve in their academics and inspire them to develop character qualities that are essential for having success in life. Topics discussed in the mentoring sessions include: educational achievement, respect, perseverance, integrity, responsible behavior, conflict resolution, time management and leadership. In addition, mentors help students to develop career goals. Occasional guest speakers address some of the above topics and/or expose the students to their professions. Through our mentoring programs, youth are provided with mentors who encourage them and challenge them to excel in their academics and character to empower them to become leaders who bring about positive change in their schools, communities and ultimately the world. As a result, our participating students are led into making healthy and positive decisions that lead to a better outcome for their lives: graduating high school (95% graduation rate), continuing their education after high school, securing career jobs and becoming contributing citizens in society.
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Business Plan
We plan to expand the uplifting impact that we are having on Black youth by exporting our mentoring conversation material to urban coaches (basketball and football) throughout the nation. We currently have approximately 100 coaches (from the West Coast to the East Coast) on our texting system. Through the texting system, we send a mentoring conversation session to them at the start of every week. We have a website that contains this material at gomentors.org. Within five years, we plan to increase the number of urban coaches receiving this material to 1,000. Our goal, as an organization, is to spark a movement of mentoring that spreads into every urban community in America. We have a proven mentoring model. We have a 95% graduation rate. Every year, 80%+ of our students improve their grades, 80%+ improve or stay good in their school attendance and 80%+ improve in their character. We are also an organization with longevity. We have 23 years of experience, established in 2002. Since our inception, we have mentored nearly 3,000 urban students. Most of them continue their education beyond high school and are being productive citizens who are working in various careers.
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Self Identified Competition
Big Brother Big Sister, Think Together Think Together provides educational enrichment programming for high school students, but they do not have a mentoring component which we think is essential. Big Brother Big Sister provides mentors who meet with their mentees whenever it is convenient. Thus, the mentoring may or may not happen. We have a much more structured model. Our mentoring model ensures that consistent weekly mentoring occurs between mentors and their mentees. The mentoring is conducted on the high school campuses where the students are, at a specific location on the campus, at a specific time. In addition, our Elevate Your G.A.M.E. on-site program coordinator is there every week to provide consistent leadership in facilitating each mentoring session by introducing the discussion topic each week and providing the mentors with materials and conversation sheets that help them have transformative conversations with their mentees. As a result, mentors and mentees are guided through a quality mentoring experience every week.
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