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Youth Policy Institute, L.A. Nonprofit Known For Anti-Poverty Programs, Is Shutting Down

Dixon Slingerland, right, was fired last month as the top executive of Youth Policy Institute. After years of rapid growth, the group is shutting down. (Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Youth Policy Institute, the L.A.-based nonprofit known for its anti-poverty programs and aggressive fundraising, announced Friday it is closing its doors, eliminating hundreds of jobs and leaving services for some of L.A.’s neediest families in serious doubt.

Interim Chief Executive Dan Grunfeld, hired just last month as part of an effort to save the organization, said he and the board of directors had made the “incredibly difficult” decision to shutter the decades-old nonprofit at the end of Friday.

“We have explored every option, but in the end, we have realized that we cannot keep it going,” Grunfeld wrote to Youth Policy Institute’s employees. “I wish this were not so.”

Grunfeld said his organization had reached agreements to transfer after-school programs on 80 campuses to another group, the Santa Ana-based nonprofit Think Together. The move should allow at least 400 of the group’s full- and part-time workers to remain employed, albeit with another organization, he said.

Read the full story on LATimes.com.

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