What an outside evaluator found.
After School Matters places Chicago teens with community organizations and evaluates every one of them. These are ARK's results for fiscal year 2025, measured by them, not by us.
Source: After School Matters, FY25 Community-Based Organization Impact Report. After School Matters is an independent partner; these figures are their evaluation of ARK, not our own count.
Most of what a nonprofit says about itself is written by the nonprofit.
This page is mostly not. After School Matters runs its own evaluation of every organization it places teens with, and what follows is what theirs said about ARK.
What the teens said
From 31 surveys completed across the year.
The programs the figures above came from.
Who travels to get here
ARK ran these programs from one site, and teens traveled across the city to reach it. That is the clearest argument we have for a second campus, and for putting it where the largest share of them already live.
Seventy percent came from a DFSS priority group: teens at CPS schools rated Level 2 or 3, teens with a disability, English language learners, teens who have had juvenile justice or DCFS involvement, and teens who are unstably housed.
The work behind it
Thank you for believing that our teens are our future.
An After School Matters teen
Our own count
Numbers ARK keeps, across every program rather than the ASM ones alone. That is why the attendance figure here is not the one After School Matters measured above. Different programs, different count.
Want the detail behind these numbers? Talk to us →
One site did all of this.
Everything above happened at a single site in Pilsen, with teens traveling from twenty-one community areas to reach it, and the largest share of them already living in North Lawndale. The second campus is how we stop asking them to make that journey.
The ARK Entrepreneurial is a nonprofit organization · Tax ID 42-3240734 · Gifts are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law