A Bridge for Kids expands programs to empower underserved San Diego students
With a 100% graduation and college acceptance rate, the nonprofit is growing its reach to 200 new students while offering mentoring, scholarships, and life-changing opportunities

When I last spoke with Michael Nance, founder of the nonprofit A Bridge for Kids, in 2018, he was already several years into his work recharting the course of the future for high-achieving kids in underserved areas of San Diego. Even then, as a fledgling organization (it was founded in 2012), Nance was reporting staggering — and undeniably inspiring — outcomes for the kids whose lives A Bridge for Kids was able to impact, including a 100% graduation rate and acceptance into some of the most esteemed and competitive universities in the country.

Today, Nance and A Bridge for Kids have expanded its impact from having the bandwidth to mentor a couple dozen kids to now looking to bring 200 new students into the program this year, and the stats are no less astounding. “Eight years in a row, 100% of our students graduate high school, 100% get accepted into college, and 95% choose a four-year college or university,” says Nance, sounding like a proud father. What’s changed is the array of programs ABFK is now able to offer due to growing awareness and support.
From its early beginnings providing mentoring and college tours that would introduce kids to an education they may never have otherwise thought possible, ABFK now presents kids with support across a spectrum of programs, all free of charge, including providing laptop computers and at-home wi-fi, essay assistance for college applications, a health and wellness program that gets kids active, socializing, and engaging with their community, a speaker series that offers networking opportunities, SAT prep, financial support for tutoring, college scholarships, an internship program, and even dorm kits to set kids up once they head off to college. The East and West Coast college tours continue to push kids to seek not just a great school, but the school that’s the right fit for them, from Stanford, Berkeley, or UCLA to Harvard or Yale. All programs are run by volunteers; Nance has a single employee on staff who nimbly juggles a range of responsibilities from website maintenance and marketing to running the organization’s health and wellness program.




“Every student we support represents untapped potential, and with the right resources, mentorship, encouragement — that hand up — they really do go on to achieve incredible things,” says Nance. “And you know what? They pay it forward.” As former ABFK students graduate from these elite colleges and universities, they are eager to return and share their experience with kids coming up through the organization — in-the-flesh success stories that are also the most relatable mentors for the younger students.
The annual DreamMakers Gala, an exciting evening featuring a hosted bar, casino games, music, and dancing, generates roughly half of ABFK’s annual funding. This year’s event will take place on October 18 at Hyatt Regency La Jolla at Aventine. abridgeforkids.org
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