After 30 years, PULSE fellowship program to end
After 30 years, a program that paired young people with local nonprofits to uplift community service in Pittsburgh is coming to an end.
The Pittsburgh Urban Leadership Service Experience announced this week that it will be sunsetting by the end of the year, citing the challenges of the pandemic and other growing workforce opportunities in Pittsburgh.
The nonprofit, founded in 1994, invites university graduates and young professionals to partner with community organizations, ranging from the arts to homelessness to environmental advocacy, to jump-start their career in the nonprofit sector. The participants live together and receive professional development training.
More than 400 PULSE fellows have worked with almost 200 Pittsburgh nonprofits, contributing over 600,000 hours of service.
“Though we are sad to see this chapter close, we are also proud and grateful,” the organization wrote in a statement on its website. “We are grateful to you for being part of the PULSE community and helping us achieve the work for which we are proud. Your support has sustained us — and has translated to substantial work throughout the Pittsburgh nonprofit community.”
The organization began at a time when its founder, John Stahl-Wert, noticed that Pittsburgh was losing young professionals, creating a need for educated, skilled workers in the nonprofit field specifically. He also saw college graduates were
struggling to find opportunities for service.
While most participants do not come from Pittsburgh, 70% have stayed in the city after completing the program, and 60% were hired by the nonprofit they worked for, according to the organization. About 60 alumni still live in the city, half within a 1-mile radius of the “PULSE houses” across the East Liberty, Garfield, Perry Hilltop and Highland Park neighborhoods.
The organization tends to attract college students, maintaining partnerships with Carnegie Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh and Chatham University for tuition discounts if fellows want to pursue their master’s degrees or other education.
Aaron Gray, PULSE’s executive director, has worked with the organization since 2020, seeing firsthand the impact the fellows have left in the community all these years.
“It’s just really inspirational,” Mr. Gray said. “It sounds trite, but it’s true. They come into Pittsburgh to do this year of service, but so many of them stick around either in Pittsburgh working with nonprofits or they go into doing public work for other organizations across the country, around the world. It’s very much inspirational.”
Since its founding, the landscape of Pittsburgh’s workforce has changed significantly. In the decade before PULSE, the city was grappling with a population drop after the 1980s collapse of the steel industry.
While the area has continued to see a falling population and its job market is still recovering from the pandemic, Pittsburgh has worked to attract and retain young professionals to fill well- paying positions in tech, robotics and more.
Just over the past decade, more than $10 billion has been invested in Pittsburgh technology companies, with more than $3.5 billion in 2021 alone. And about 18% of Pittsburgh’s employment is in science- and technologyfocused occupations, while the national share is 16%.
At the same time, Mr. Gray said retaining participation in service-oriented opportunities such as AmeriCorps, where he worked prior to PULSE, has become more difficult over the years.
Local universities are also increasingly offering co-op and other service programs, ones that provide benefits such as medical insurance and student loan repayment that PULSE says it couldn’t afford. With this in mind, the longtime organization had to make a “difficult decision.”
“When we were founded, it was to fulfill two needs in Pittsburgh,” Mr. Gray said. “One was that nonprofits needed extra help, which they will always, always need. And the other was that there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for young people that are coming here to go to school. When we step back and look at it now, there isn’t that lack of opportunity for young folks.”
And that growth is a good thing in Mr. Gray’s eyes, who sees the mission of PULSE continuing on through those other opportunities. The organization will be holding a fundraiser to support the current fellows’ transition after the final program ends in July to help them pay for their next steps after PULSE. The organization will also be holding a farewell party that same month.
“Some really positive results have come from this social experiment 30 years ago,” Mr. Gray said. “We’re very proud of what the PULSE fellows have done for the community. I’m also just very grateful for how the community has supported us.”