March 19, 2015
For more than 40 years, the Association for the Advancement of Mexican Americans (AAMA)’s mission has been to inspire and empower at-risk Latinos to pursue their potential and achieve success. Located in Houston, Texas, AMMA’s services include adult education, counseling and prevention services as well as a charter school.
The name of AAMA’s adult literacy program is Adelante, which means “to move forward” in Spanish. The free ESL, GED preparation and computer courses provided by this program helped 1,400 adults move forward in their education in 2013. Pre-kindergarten and childcare options offered by AAMA allow parents to attend these courses too.
AAMA’s Dinosaur Project, better known as DiNo, provides elementary students with tools to avoid drugs, gangs and violence. Their prevention and counseling services also include residential treatment centers, a communicable infection outreach program and pharmacological treatment. Most of these services are based in Houston, however selected services are also available in Laredo and San Antonio.
The Sanchez Charter School serves pre-kindergarten and sixth through 12th grade students. Through AAMA’s partnership with the Houston Community College, older students can complete dual-credit college as well as workforce readiness courses. In 2013, AAMA earned its National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) certification for their Early Childhood Center.
Since 2005, AAMA has saved more than $500,000 by opting out of paying State Unemployment Taxes (SUTA) and enrolling with First Nonprofit. AAMA has been a member of both of our unemployment programs and is currently a member of our Unemployment Savings Program. “We’ve valued the flexibility of two options to further enhance cost savings,” says Lisa Schott, AAMA’s Human Resources Director.
“We highly recommend considering moving to one of FNG’s programs to lower costs, completely eliminate SUTA and have more evenness in budget,” Schott says. Under the SUTA method, employers often submit their largest tax payments during the first half of the calendar year. Budget certainty is a benefit provided by both of our programs. “Knowing what our quarterly costs will be, has given us budget certainty to allow for better cash flow and expense accrual. This has been enormously helpful during several times we’ve had to lay off staff,” Schott continues.
Like all members of our programs, AAMA is partnered with one of our unemployment claims administration partners. Schott works with her claims team on a regular basis. “Having a dedicated claims team to respond to and monitor claims is a huge plus, as we don’t have the resources to devote to this.”
We look forward to many more years of success with AAMA! For more information about their services, please visit their website, www.aama.org.
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