Eleven Fifty Academy is the recipient of the Enhancing Opportunity in
Indianapolis grant from Lilly Endowment. Through its initiative, Enhancing Opportunity in Indianapolis, Lilly Endowment is awarding 28 grants totaling $93.6 million to fund collaborative strategies and programs focused on helping Indianapolis residents living in or near poverty make progress toward achieving lasting economic self-sufficiency.
Eleven Fifty Academy is partnering with Martin University, Goodwill Industries’ Excel Program, Eastern Star Church, and Innopower for this grant. They are among many organizations that will collaborate to implement promising strategies designed to improve the livelihoods of individuals and families facing complex and varied challenges associated with poverty and financial insecurity.
“Transformational impact is the modus operandi for Eleven Fifty Academy and this opportunity with Lilly Endowment is the perfect accelerant to help leverage tech as an equalizer for our community’s most vulnerable populations,” says Scott A. Jones, President, and founder of Eleven Fifty Academy. “We are grateful for Lilly Endowment for its support to positively impact individuals and the Indianapolis community.”
Eleven Fifty is dedicated to skilling up individuals from diverse backgrounds, reducing barriers to entry for technology careers in web development, cybersecurity, application development, and UX/UI. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts a job growth rate of 22% for software developers between 2019 and 2029, compared with 4% for other occupations.
More good news for Eleven Fifty Academy students is that funding through the extended CARES Act may cover comprehensive education and training to get a tech job. These CARES dollars are expected to be available until September of 2021, providing graduates a financial onramp to enter the workforce of high-paying careers 16x faster than via a traditional 4-year college degree, at substantially less cost, with similar placement and salary outcomes. The Academy is approved to accept the GI Bill for all of its courses and CARES Act dollars may cover up to 100% of tuition for any student who is underemployed or unemployed. Eleven Fifty Academy has consistently been named by CourseReport as one of the Best Coding Bootcamps in the nation.
Eleven Fifty has a graduation rate of over 80% depending on the cohort, and approx. 70% placement rate into jobs paying entry-level compensation averaging over $55,000 to start. Many graduates are earning over $100,000 within 18 months of completing the Eleven Fifty immersive curriculum. The nonprofit Academy, now in its 7th year, has skilled up over nine hundred entry-level developers through their immersive learning experience. The Academy’s Apprenticeship Program with the U.S. Department of Labor places their employer partners in an excellent position for bringing on even more developers.