Awarded Grants

This grant supports the Texas Community College Education Initiative in aligning pathways from English as a Second Language (ESL) programs to community college credentials, including industry-based certifications, vocational certificates, and academic degrees. Texas community colleges will address placement and curricular structures that have been barriers to success for multilingual learners of English seeking to transition from ESL to workforce training or academic programs.

This grant supports the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy (VICPP) in establishing a statewide coalition focused on increasing high-quality postsecondary education in prison in Virginia. VICCP will raise awareness about postsecondary education in prison and Pell Grant restoration for incarcerated learners and identify and recruit coalition partners.

This grant supports Roadtrip Nation in producing a documentary film and additional video assets that showcase the voices and experiences of justice-impacted individuals who participated in postsecondary education opportunities while incarcerated. The documentary aims to build awareness about the positive impact of access to postsecondary education in prison and help incarcerated and formerly incarcerated learners see the relevance of postsecondary education to their life and career goals.

This grant supports the Education Writers Association in increasing the quality and volume of national postsecondary education media coverage by hosting a national seminar, developing online resources, and providing micro-fellowships to new journalists working on stories that highlight solutions to support learners from low-income backgrounds.

This grant supports Impact! Communications, Inc. in producing seven podcast episodes, as part of their Rural Impact podcast series, focused on postsecondary education and workforce training access and success for rural adults.

This grant supports MDRC in partnering with Ascendium to design a grantmaking initiative that will build next-generation evidence on sectoral training programs. The initiative will identify the conditions and mechanisms needed to deliver and scale effective programs.

This grant supports the University of Puget Sound in designing and beginning to create resources and trainings aimed at improving teaching and learning within college classrooms in prison. An initial project will focus on identifying and codifying promising practices for preparing faculty to teach in carceral settings.

This grant supports Social Finance in piloting innovative workforce training financing models to improve labor market outcomes for learners from low-income backgrounds. Social Finance will design models leveraging outcomes-based funding structures in two areas: (1) to support learners in accessing and succeeding in pre-apprenticeships and (2) to catalyze training programs within specific industry sectors critical to rural workforce needs. Social Finance will also launch the Social Finance Institute as a hub for dissemination of insights from these and other initiatives, with a focus on informing public and private leaders about strategies to build sustainable and inclusive talent development pipelines.

This grant supports the State University of New York (SUNY) in expanding its postsecondary education in prison programs and solidifying the SUNY Office of Higher Education in Prison as the convener of and technical assistance provider for programs on 20 SUNY campuses.

This grant supports The Education Trust-West in providing technical assistance to teams from up to 16 California institutions to develop and implement plans for scaled developmental education reform pursuant to state legislative mandates.