Mentorship Matters
Help us give a disadvantaged child a hand up. Change their world. This changes everything.
ABOUT US
Paying it Forward
Our founders, Austin Scee and Mike Gandy Auzenne, were matched in the Big Brothers Big Sisters (“BBBS”) program of Metro Atlanta in 1997. Mike went from the projects of Atlanta to Colgate to Wall Street to Harvard Business School, following in Austin’s footsteps. In 2017, when Mike returned to Atlanta after business school, they set out to build a scalable mentorship model to complement excellent programs like BBBS.
MISSION
Helping Disadvantaged Kids to Thrive
Nearly half a million children in Metro Atlanta live in communities with low or very low child well-being. Mentorship programs work, but traditional mentorship models can only serve a fraction of the kids who need a hand up, because one-to-one mentorship models are difficult to scale.
Our mission is to provide high quality mentorship at scale, serving more kids, more quickly.
We have grown from 15 kids in 2017 to over 1,000 in 2023. We have strong demand from parents and partners, and aim to serve 1,500 kids by the end of 2024 and deepen our relationships with our scholars and families.
VISION
building a Scalable Mentorship Model
Martial Arts gyms are generally run by practitioners who have dedicated their lives to teaching, and to a set of core values.
One Sensei or gym owner can mentor 40-60 scholarship kids at a time, and senseis work after school and on the weekends.
PowerUP can provide senseis and gym owners with marketing help and business tools to increase the number of paying students in addition to scholarship students.
Many gym owners have excess capacity, and fluctuating businesses. A base of recurring revenue is highly attractive to them. We help our Senseis build sustainable businesses.
This virtuous cycle enables us to serve underprivileged kids, and support local businesses that create jobs.
HOW IT WORKS
Delivering Mentorship through Senseis
Private donors, schools, and communities provide money and other resources. Partners and schools refer scholarship candidates. PowerUP grants scholarships to underprivileged and at-risk kids. PowerUP recruits, trains and monitors a network of participating senseis. Senseis provide mentorship and martial arts training.
IMPACT
Change their world. This changes everything.
News
Mentorship Matters
The First Annual Tom Rawls Memorial Tournament
This past weekend, we held the first annual Tom Rawls Memorial PowerUP Tournament, a truly special event named in honor of our friend, mentor, and visionary Board Member, Tom Rawls. The event marks an important milestone for PowerUP, and the five things we’re most
A Powerful Force: Remembering Tom Rawls’ Impact
In the early days of COVID, when the world was deeply uncertain, I received a cold email from a man named Tom Rawls. His introduction was so humble that it would have been easy to dismiss the call, but he was passionate about martial
From Nervous Beginners to Confident Warriors: Celebrating a Year of Growth in Martial Arts
As I watch Carrie, Angelo, and Terrance prepare for their first tournament, I cannot help but be proud of three 10 year olds I barely know. Each of these students carries their own unique story, their own set of challenges, yet they stand here