By Dianne Anderson

Growing up in a life of crime where feast or famine is the heart of the streets, Terrance Stone developed one of the strongest survival skills known to business owners everywhere, he learned to pivot.

If one thing didn’t work, try another, then another.

In the early days, he was inspired to help in ways he wished he would have had as a kid, and started his nonprofit with a meager 50 backpack giveaway. Today, he helps thousands of youth and families find their way to self-sufficiency.

If nothing else, the last quarter century has taught him how to go after the perpetually shrinking pot of money critical for community services.

“It’s a constant hustle, if I can say that. I just try to keep everything going, everything organized, consistent and constant. There’s no silver bullet,” he said. “You got to get out there every day, make it happen.”

With inflation soaring, most nonprofits are struggling to buy gas and keep the lights on. Whatever extra money that came down post George Floyd is long gone.

He presses on, keeping the doors open in different capacities to serve youth, from youth centers and shelters, workforce development, and outreach services. Finding funding, he said, is a full-time job by itself.

Last week, he worked all day on a grant to get funding to keep programs going, and it still wasn’t completed. It’s not easy, and funds are not guaranteed, but he takes nothing for granted.

He’s always on the lookout for new offerings to meet community needs, while keeping an eye on philanthropists.

On Saturday, May 16, Young Visionaries Youth Leadership Academy (YVYLA) is hosting its Silver Anniversary Gala to celebrate 25 years of empowering youth in the IE. They will honor the students, families, and partners, looking ahead to continued community and funding support. The event will be held at 5:00 PM at California State University, San Bernardino, located at 5500 University Parkway.

At one point, he was offering homeless youth shelter beds, but that federally funded program ran out of funding about ten years ago. To pivot, he said YVYLA has another grant to help connect homeless youth to community-based or county agencies that have housing.

“We work with the county’s Transitional Age Program and they also have [Transitional Age Youth (TAY)] housing. Instead of housing, we find housing and other resources they may need,” he said.

Now with four nonprofit locations, he said they work with close to 50 schools, reaching families with workforce development programs, guard card training, a free food handler’s license, and more. They offer Black Infant Health and other holistic programs for the grandparents, to the babies, and pregnant moms.

But his main goal has been helping youth who are not yet ready for prime time jobs. More advanced youth can access fast tracked programs at community college, but his youth are not there yet, many barely aspire to minimum wage.

“We’re working with a population that hasn’t been prepared to go beyond that,” he said. “[They’ve] probably been wasting time for years, and then it hits, I have to do something. We’re that place to point you in the direction you need to go.”

Reinventing the program, quickly identifying what’s working and what’s not, and navigating new decisions are part of what it takes to keep nonprofits serving the community, he said. One example is how state gang intervention funding was big in 2007, stayed strong for a few years, and then stopped.

Back then, a lot of programs also stopped cold. Some funding restarted five years ago with the California Violence Intervention and Prevention (CalVIP) Grant Program.

“Let go when you need to let go. Some people hold on to programs,” he said, adding, “A lot of gang intervention programs like mine went out of business because they were trying to hold on because that’s my specialty, I’m a gang intervention person.”

Out of necessity, YVYLA pivoted when the money was gone.

He feels that nonprofits must act more like businesses. It’s more than a matter of the heart. They have to be aware of philanthropists, the trends, and how the money can match community needs.

“I tell people once you incorporate and start a business, if it’s summertime and you’re still selling combat boots, you’ve got to get Timberland sandals. Some people are like, we’re the boot store. But, nobody is going to come there when it’s summertime,” he said.

In better days, he was concerned that most young adults in California felt their income couldn’t keep up with rising costs, but now demands are much higher.

For the youth he works with, it’s all the more difficult. Employment development programs have to get them ready from scratch. They learn how to get out of bed. It’s baby steps.

“They don’t have a resume. Don’t know how to fill out a job application. Let’s get you into the job market first,” he said. “We have to get them into that place that I can get up and catch the bus or ride my bike, whatever I have to do to get to work.”

For the coming year, his aspirations today aren’t much different than when he started, getting young people on track to self-sufficiency.

Right now, a lot of the approach is behavioral modification, collaborating with schools, but he hopes to start his own academy, a one stop shop for education, counseling, workforce development tools, GED certification.

“[We’ll have] dual enrollment with colleges for hard to reach kids and getting them back in school and giving them that pattern of doing the right thing, trauma informed care to deal with some of the trauma they’ve been through to make them act or react the way that they are,” he said.

For more information, see https://www.yvyla-ie.org/
For event tickets, see https://yvyla-ie.harnessgiving.org/events/3535