Our Children and Teens Can Reach New Heights With Your Support

Our uptown community has long faced a shortage of resources for its public schools and local nonprofits.

Each year, Columbia Community Service (CCS) helps close that gap, by investing in neighborhood organizations that support educational enrichment in STEM, the arts, and literacy, and organizations that combat hunger and provide vital social services. 

Last year, CCS supported 19 organizations that provide educational enrichment opportunities to more than 10,500 students in Morningside Heights and Harlem. In the last five years, CCS has provided $531,700 in annual grants to support these essential educational nonprofits.

Providing financial assistance for this work is made possible thanks to the generosity of faculty, staff, and retirees at Columbia, Barnard, and Teachers College.

Columbia Community Service raised $220,000 during its 2025 Annual Appeal, just shy of our $300,000 goal. We now ask that you help us make up this critical difference. The University covers all of the administrative costs, so every dollar you give goes to the programs we support, and every dollar makes a difference.

• $25 provides classroom sets of vocabulary and phonics flashcards used in small-group instruction to build phonemic awareness and word recognition.
• $25 provides a meal for two students participating in an after-school professional exposure program.  
• $50 covers the cost of 20 individual whiteboards, markers, and erasers that children use to practice handwriting, phonics, and word-building in real time.
• $50 covers the cost of two hours of tutoring for an individual or small group of students in an after-school program.
• $100 supports one month of phonics and writing supplies for a full class, including decodable readers, handwriting paper, composition notebooks, word-building tiles sentence strips for writing practice.
• $100 supports meals and materials for a group college visit, giving students the chance to step onto a campus, ask questions, and imagine themselves there.
• $250 supports career exposure programming, connecting students with professionals, workplaces, and industries that broaden their sense of what’s possible.
• $500 helps fund cultural enrichment experiences—museum visits, performances, community events—that deepen students’ understanding of the world and strengthen their cultural identity.

If a gift in these amounts is not possible, we encourage you to donate via a regular payroll deduction. Just $10 a week can have a tremendous impact.

Whatever you give will make a meaningful difference by providing children and teens in our community with essential academic enrichment activities that support their growth and success.

Thank you in advance for supporting CCS and our local community.