Founded in 2016, GOODProjects is a global nonprofit working with communities to break the cycle of generational poverty. Through our place-based GOODZone model, we connect programs, partners, and resources into integrated systems designed around families and the communities they call home.
Founded in 2016, GOODProjects is a global nonprofit working with communities to break the cycle of generational poverty. Through our place-based GOODZone model, we connect programs, partners, and resources into integrated systems designed around families and the communities they call home.
GOODProjects was founded on a simple but radical premise: the most effective way to help families isn’t to deliver isolated services, but to build an integrated system that addresses the full complexity of their lives.
In 2016, that work began with a summer football camp at a local high school in Washington, DC. What started with young people on a football field grew alongside the needs and aspirations of the families we served. Over the next decade, our work expanded across communities and continents, ultimately evolving into the GOODZone model thousands of families benefit from today.
What began in Washington now reaches families around the world. Through the GOODZone model, we connect family stability, youth development, food access, violence interruption, access to capital, and workforce pathways into one coordinated approach. And we’re just getting started. Our vision is a world without poverty.
Darius Baxter co-founded GOODProjects in 2016 with a deeply personal understanding of the challenges the organization was created to address. Raised in Washington, DC by his mother, a public school teacher, Darius came of age as the crack epidemic deeply affected communities across the city. The loss of his father to gun violence and his family’s own experiences with poverty shaped his belief that lasting change requires understanding both a family’s circumstances and their full potential.
Under his leadership, GOODProjects has grown from a grassroots organization into a global movement, forging partnerships across government, philanthropy, business, and community. His vision shaped the GOODZone model and expanded the organization’s work from Washington, DC to Africa.
Today, Darius is focused on the next decade of GOODProjects’ growth: building the partnerships, infrastructure, and investment needed to bring GOODZones to communities across the diaspora and beyond—with an unwavering vision of a world without poverty.
Youth Programs
Operations
Family Success Planning
Development & Fundraising
Compliance
Compliance
Finance
Violence Intervention
Violence Intervention
Youth Programs
Marketing
GOODProjects is born on the campus of Georgetown University, where teammates Darius Baxter, Troye Bullock, and Danny Wright begin teaching kids from a nearby public housing community to read after school.
After co-creating and successfully piloting a juvenile re-entry program with the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, the Ford Foundation commissions GOODProjects to develop a place-based framework for addressing generational poverty.
GOODProjects makes a defining shift from standalone projects to place-based work, establishing permanent sites in Southwest Washington, DC and Kawangware, Nairobi.
Amid national protests following the police-involved shootings of unarmed Americans, GOODProjects embarks on a national listening tour to identify and invest in the next generation of social justice leaders.
As COVID-19 deepens existing challenges for families, GOODProjects opens Learning Hubs and expands access to essential services to meet the rapidly changing needs of young people and families.
After years of concentrated investment in Southwest Washington, the GOODZone sees a 45% reduction in violent crime.
GOODProjects celebrates ten years of building alongside communities and enters its next chapter focused on bringing the GOODZone model to more communities around the world.
Chairman of the Board
Treasurer
Secretary
Full board bios available upon request. Contact bod@goodprojects.org
