Profound Gentlemen

A challenge to retain male educators of color exists in schools. While students of color account for more than 50% of students nationwide, male educators of color make up only 6% of teachers (about 211,000 of 3.5 million teachers) and are five times more likely to leave the profession than other groups. They experience more burnout and stress, often lacking community and a peer support network. Oppressive environments, lack of professional development opportunities, and often being asked to double as the school disciplinarian all contribute to educator dissatisfaction and attrition.

Retaining these educators is crucial because studies show that teacher diversity improves outcomes for all students, especially students of color. When students of color have male educators of color, they are more likely to graduate high school, experience increased self-esteem, and have greater chances of attending college. The positive “role model effect” of having a teacher who looks like you is especially beneficial for low-income Black males, who are 39% less likely to drop out of high school if they had at least one Black teacher in elementary school. The likelihood of boys of color enrolling in college increases by 13% after having at least one male educator of color.

Profound Gentlemen develops, supports, and retains highly effective male teachers of color nationwide, helping them navigate their early, mid-, and late careers as educators. We encourage and empower our growing network of 1,100 male educators of color through leadership development, mentoring, and coaching. Our educators participate in innovative regional community cohorts, skills-based fellowships, and professional development workshops, receiving support and engagement opportunities relevant to their career stage. For new educators in their first five years of teaching, we provide the tools and 1:1 coaching needed to navigate the educational system to have a positive, meaningful impact. For mid-to-late-career educators with six or more years of teaching, we provide professional development opportunities that can lead to positions of advocacy for positive institutional change.

Additionally, we support our program partners, such as K-12 schools and districts, in their efforts to retain a diverse educator workforce. We provide the support they need to attract and retain male educators of color and make meaningful improvements to their institutions. We support these partners’ male educators of color through our Gentlemen network and share our expertise, resources, and best practices to help create more equitable and inclusive learning environments for teachers and their students.

Profound Gentlemen serves a growing nationwide network exceeding 1,100 male educators of color. Since 2015, we have retained 92% of educators, roughly 30% higher than the national average, and aided in the promotion of 22% in their careers and 37% into leadership positions. 

By providing male educators of color with a sense of community, leadership and professional skills development, and social and emotional learning support through mentorship, we reduce the risk factors that cause them to leave the profession. Our Gentlemen, who often may be one of the only male educators of color in their school, participate in regional community cohorts that expand their social network of multi-generational male educators of color. They experience increased awareness of other men of color in the profession and an improved sense of community and camaraderie. The professional development and leadership training we provide results in more resources and tools to combat feelings of burnout and improve leadership opportunities and outcomes for our Gentlemen. The impact on the educational landscape is that more men of color remain in the education profession, and a new narrative about the positive and influential roles men of color play in their classrooms and communities is uplifted.

Founded in 2014 by two Charlotte Mecklenburg teachers who shared a common challenge of being male educators without a peer support network, we have since grown our membership from 15 educators located in Charlotte to 1,043 male educators of color across the nation. Our Profound Gentlemen team is well-positioned to represent and collaborate with the community we serve.

One hundred percent of our leadership team members identify as males of color, and 83 percent of our board members identify as people of color. Our entire staff identifies as persons of color, and many of our staff and board members, including all of our part-time Impact Leaders, have strong backgrounds as educators.

Staff support the organization’s growth by successfully maintaining key regional school and district partnerships and building relationships with potential new partners, including pipeline partners like university programs. In addition to full-time staff, we currently have 13 part-time Impact Leaders who lead our collaborative cohorts. Impact Leaders are highly effective educators trained to lead our collaborative cohorts as coaches. They receive comprehensive training in relationship management and coaching. Through their efforts, they help build empowering peer communities of male educators and help our Gentlemen navigate their careers in education.

Since 2014, Profound Gentlemen has grown our organization from 15 educators to more than 1,000 educators in 37 states. In the past two years, we have increased the number of local education agency partnerships by 557% from four to 27 and grown the number of male educators of color in our network from 700 to 1043; 92% of Gentlemen were retained in the profession, 22% were promoted in their careers, and 37% reported leadership advancement. Our skilled male educators of color teach more than 12,650 students nationwide, and our retention efforts have saved school districts more than $6,100,000. 

Profound Gentlemen is poised to scale significantly by improving efficiency. In the past two years, we strengthened our programming model to better support male educators of color after a year of data analysis, seeking feedback from our Gentlemen, and digesting updated research. Our new partnership model encourages a more collaborative effort to retain male educators of color within their schools and districts. This model allows us to have open feedback loops with our partners about the conditions that are beneficial or need improvement for educator retention, for example, work environments and offering additional leadership opportunities and career advancement potential within the district.

https://profoundgentlemen.org

Profound Gentlemen has operated as one of the country's only retention-focused organizations for male educators of color for ten years. Tackling the absence of males of color in education requires a systems-level change approach and a collective effort. While other organizations work to recruit educators of color to the field, Profound Gentlemen views our efforts to retain and develop male educators of color as another crucial ripple in the pond to moving the needle for change. Critical systemic challenges in our field, from salary to oppressive working environments, play a role in why males of color leave the profession. While we provide the support and professional development opportunities that male educators of color need, we also work to identify opportunities for systemic change with our LEA partners to attract and retain a more diverse education workforce. Narrative shifting and perspective-changing is an important part of this work. In our work with male educators of color, we emphasize empathy and vulnerability and uplift the positive and influential roles males of color play in both the classroom and their community. 

Profound Gentlemen’s mission complements our partners' work to recruit and retain their male educators of color. Our role in the field is to support existing educators with increased professional development and leadership opportunities and to retain these men in education. By supporting LEA partners in retaining their male educators of color, we are building a supportive peer-to-peer network that empowers and diversifies the educator workforce. By supporting partners that focus on educator recruitment, we are implementing part of our long-term vision to strengthen and streamline the pipeline of future Gentlemen. While these partners recruit the next generation of educators, Profound Gentlemen, in turn, will support their retention and professional development throughout their careers.

As an organization focused on UN Sustainable Goal Number 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, Profound Gentlemen’s key indicators of success measure our impact on retaining male educators of color in the classroom. We will retain 90% of our Gentlemen in the field of education and support at least 30% of Gentlemen as they advance their careers and take on new leadership opportunities and roles.

 Every year, we conduct an annual survey to measure our retention and leadership development accomplishments and receive any feedback gentlemen have regarding the programming. Through our community cohorts and affinity group meetings, we gained a greater understanding of the career navigation needs of our Gentlemen. The responses we receive have also helped to shape our outreach objectives. We continue these efforts as we bring in new partners and our Impact Leaders work with new cohorts of Gentlemen.

Additionally, Profound Gentlemen has recently completed a strategic plan to deepen the community programming for our Gentlemen and grow the network in our priority regions through a refined partnership model. Our main strategic goals are to:

1.     Evolve our approach to advancing our mission, building an evidence base to fuel future growth and expansion.

2.     Grow our capacity to sustain and expand our impact-generating program nationally. 

3.     Increase awareness, appreciation, and resources to fuel our mission, creating a more sustainable business model.

Our organization's innovation exists to solve longstanding problems in education equity. While studies show that students of color benefit from having teachers of color, widespread diversity gaps between populations of teachers and students and high attrition rates for male educators of color are entrenched problems our innovation seeks to address. Male educators of color often identify a lack of community and networks of peer support as one reason they leave the profession. Profound Gentlemen’s innovative community cohorts provide strategic upstream investments in connecting men to peer educators in supportive and growth-minded settings that expand their multi-generational network of male educators of color. Our innovative 1:1 coaching, skills-based programming, and professional development workshops address topics unique to male educators of color, encouraging leadership and career development for our Gentlemen. This work ensures that 1) teachers are supported in creating fulfilling and meaningful careers that impact students, and 2) highly skilled male educators of color are retained in the profession, thereby impacting education equity. Since 2015, we have retained 92% of educators, roughly 30% higher than the national average, and aided in the promotion of 22% in their careers and 37% into leadership positions.

Our business model is built on a foundation of strong partnerships with a diverse range of educational institutions, including school districts, K-12 schools, charter schools, colleges, and universities. Many of our Gentlemen serve as teachers or students at these institutions. Two types of partnerships fuel our business model: pipeline and network partners.

Pipeline Partners help fuel the membership pipeline of Profound Gentlemen with early career educators who have the highest risk of attrition in their first years of teaching and can greatly benefit from our intensive support model. We support Pipeline Partners, such as university and tutoring programs, in our shared goals of recruiting prospective men of color into education programs and supporting them as they matriculate into the education profession.

Network Partners are local education agency schools and districts where we support their male educators of color through an innovative and collaborative effort to retain male educators of color within partner schools and districts. This model allows us to have open feedback loops with our partners about the conditions that are beneficial or need improvement for educator retention, for example, work environments and offering additional leadership opportunities and career advancement potential within the district. Through these partnerships, we share our expertise, resources, and best practices to help create more equitable and inclusive learning environments for teachers and their students.

In the past two years, we have increased the number of partnerships by 557% from four to 27 and grown the number of male educators of color in our network from 700 to 1043; 92% of Gentlemen were retained in the profession, 22% were promoted in their careers, and 37% reported leadership advancement. This incredible growth in our programming and results in retaining educators is proof that focusing on partnerships to grow our network and support male educators of color in their schools is strategically sound.

Profound Gentlemen currently employs 7 full-time staff members and 13 part-time Impact Leaders.

Profound Gentlemen was founded in 2014, and we have been working to retain male educators of color for the past 10 years.

Dylan Holmes has been leading Profound Gentlemen since 2022 and previously served as a board member for Profound Gentlemen. 

In the past couple of years, Profound Gentlemen worked with a human resources agency to formalize employee policies and procedures and establish a standardized hiring process. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace, ensuring that our team is representative and reflects the male educators of color we serve. Just as our work with Gentlemen minimizes barriers for male educators of color to advance in education, we also work to minimize barriers to opportunity for our staff and provide a welcoming and inclusive environment for all team members. Some of the ways we do this are:

●      By seeking individuals from various race backgrounds for board and leadership positions within our organization.

●      By reviewing compensation data across the organization to identify disparities by race or other status.

●      By engaging everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.

Profound Gentlemen provides skills development and mentorship through year-round cohorts, fellowships, and coaching. When a male educator of color joins Profound Gentlemen, they are placed in a regional community cohort led by our part-time Impact Leaders. Based on their number of years in education, Gentlemen will receive one of two types of support – intensive or maintenance:

For educators with 0-5 years of experience with the highest attrition risk, Intensive Support with a direct, hands-on approach will best support these early-stage educators. We provide support through:

• Regional Community Cohorts that expand their social network of multi-generational male educators of color.
• Skills-based fellowships that enhance skills in a specific topic area (i.e., STEAM, SEL, and SPED). These 3–4 months-long small cohorts receive a variety of content development support and resources throughout the sessions.
• Seasoned Profound Gentlemen mentors that support these early-stage educators.

For educators with 6+ years of experience, Maintenance Support provides pathways for growth and leadership and opportunities to share their knowledge with younger Gentlemen. These seasoned educators:

• Lead or join Regional Community Cohorts that expand their social network of multi-generational male educators of color.
• Serve as Profound Gentlemen mentors for early-stage educators within our network.
• Lead skills-based fellowships and professional development workshops.

Male educators of color become Profound Gentlemen members by applying directly online or through one of our partnerships with colleges, universities, K-12 schools, and districts. Upon joining, members are invited to a collaborative cohort of educators organized by region who help break down isolation barriers and build a stronger community of practice. In addition, Gentlemen have opportunities to attend community-building events, participate in education retreats and workshops, and attend conferences specifically designed to cater to their professional growth plan. The program empowers educators to become more effective and successful in their field. 

Profound Gentlemen is supported through a diversified funding strategy that includes private foundations, corporate, and individual giving. For the past several years, Profound Gentlemen has continued to increase its annual budget thanks to organizations that believe in our mission and vision. We have received funding to support our work from national partners and regional partners including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Foundation, Reis Family Foundation, Skyline Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Georgia Power Foundation, Dobbs Foundation, Nike Foundation, Z Smith Reynolds Foundation, Square One Foundation, Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, Belk Foundation, McDougal Foundation, and the Polk Brothers Foundation. Support for the current fiscal year includes:  

Funder

Amount

Charles and Lynn Schusterman Foundation

$375,000

Skyline Foundation

$100,000

Nike Foundation

$150,000

Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation

$200,000

Annie E. Casey Foundation

$30,000

Profound Gentlemen welcomes the opportunity to work with Truist Foundation and MIT Solve as we scale our programming model. Our organization has grown exponentially over the past several years, and we are strategically positioned for continued growth. Working with experts, accessing resources, and participating in workshops with nonprofit partners would be invaluable and educational to our small-staff organization. This thought partnership would help us do more rigorous research and impact measurement, further quantifying the impact of our programs. We have spent the past couple of years reassessing the strength of our program data and monitoring and evaluation procedures and would like to contribute more to our field from a research and data lens by publishing best practices that support retaining male educators of color and highlight the male educators of color experience.

Furthermore, we believe that participation in the Challenge would have a multiplying effect on nonprofit organizations beyond ours. Many of the Pipeline Partners we work with, including university partners and tutoring organizations, look to Profound Gentlemen for advice on how to scale their programs and create sustainable organizations. We work closely with our Pipeline Partners in our shared goals of recruiting prospective men of color into education programs and supporting them as they matriculate into the education profession. The more successful Profound Gentlemen becomes in our mission of inspiring and retaining educators in the profession, the more successful our Pipeline Partners can become in their missions to inspire men of color to become educators.