Please share your mission. 
Bottom Line helps low-income, first-generation students get into college, graduate from college, and go far in life.
Describe how your organization lives/realizes its mission.
There is no better way to tie our Access and Success programs to our mission than by impact. We seek to transform urban communities from within by producing thousands of career-ready college graduates who are breaking the cycle of poverty. Despite a great deal of interest in improving college outcomes for our target population, college enrollment and completion rates for Chicago Public high school students remain tragically low. According to a research brief released from the Urban Education Institute at the University of Chicago in June 2016, less than 1 out of 5 (18%) Chicago Public high school freshmen will earn their bachelor’s degree within 10 years of starting high school. This statistic underscores the huge need and opportunity for Bottom Line to help improve Chicago’s college enrollment and completion rates. Bottom Line is making an immediate impact on these challenges through our highly effective programs. Access to the one-on-one support from our full-time counselors will set Chicago’s low-income students on a path to college completion. We are eager to grow our capacity so that we can make college graduation a reality for more students as part of our strategic plan to serve 2,000 students annually by 2019-2020. As a result, increasing the number of beneficiaries is central to achieving our vision of producing thousands of career-ready college graduates in Chicago. We are eager to expand this unification of mission and programs by continuing to increase our impact.
