Posse Foundation, Virtual

The Posse Foundation is a nationally recognized youth leadership development and college access program that identifies, recruits, and trains diverse teams—Posses—of public high school students and sends them to top colleges and universities. To date, more than 9,200 Posse Scholars have been accepted into top-tier institutions of higher education throughout the country. These young people have received more than $1.4 billion in full-tuition leadership scholarships from Posse’s college and university partners and have been agents of positive change on their campuses.

Posse’s unique and carefully structured, three-month selection process identifies candidates using criteria beyond academic achievement, including leadership talent, desire to succeed and ability to work constructively with people from diverse backgrounds. Posse’s high school through college programming makes it one of the most comprehensive programs of its kind in the nation. In 2010, The Posse Foundation was identified by President Obama as one of 10 national non-profit organizations to receive a portion of his Nobel Peace Prize grant.

Mission

The Posse model works for both students and college campuses and is rooted in the belief that a small, diverse group of talented students—a Posse—carefully selected and trained, can serve as a catalyst for individual and community development. As the United States becomes an increasingly multicultural society, Posse believes that the leaders of the 21st century should reflect the country’s rich demographic mix. The key to a promising future for our nation rests on the ability of strong leaders from diverse backgrounds to develop consensus solutions to complex social problems. Posse’s primary aim is to train these leaders of tomorrow.

Three Goals

1. To expand the pool from which top colleges and universities can recruit outstanding young leaders from diverse backgrounds.
2. To help these institutions build more interactive campus environments so that they can be more welcoming for people from all backgrounds.
3. To ensure that Posse Scholars persist in their academic studies and graduate so they can take on leadership positions in the workforce.

Virtual Program

The Posse Virtual Program selects and trains Posse Scholars using innovative online platforms.

Through the Virtual Program, nominees for the Posse opportunity take part in an online version of the Dynamic Assessment Process (DAP). Recipients of the Posse Scholarship participate in Pre-Collegiate Training remotely as well. Finally, Scholars selected through the Virtual Program attend college as members of geographically diverse cohorts, with each Posse made up of students from different cities across the country.

While selection and training is conducted online, Scholars are admitted with full-tuition scholarships and matriculate on campus alongside the general student body of our partner schools.