Awarded Grants

This grant supports WorkingNation in expanding its reporting related to postsecondary education and workforce training, both broadly as national issues and in relation to rural communities and in carceral settings, specifically. The grant also supports focused reporting on specific workforce opportunities in cities and towns across the nation in collaboration with mayors and local leaders in those places.

This grant supports Jobs for the Future (JFF) in developing podcasts to be hosted on its online information and resource-sharing hub, the Horizons platform. Informed by an advisory council representing its broad, cross-sector network, JFF will develop two podcast series to explore opportunities and challenges related to connecting education and career in support of economic mobility.

This grant supports the Communities Foundation of Texas in building a cross-sector coalition of stakeholders from education and the workforce to improve credit mobility statewide. The expanded Texas Transfer Alliance will work toward the goal of reducing the time and money required for learners to earn a credential of value.

This grant supports NPower in expanding its technology sector workforce training programs. NPower will partner with institutions to support learners at-risk of dropping out, increase alumni engagement support for continued education and career persistence in technology, and launch a new full stack developer training program designed specifically for women from underrepresented communities.

This grant supports Goodwill Industries International in expanding its Opportunity Accelerator framework to serve eight rural communities. Local Goodwill centers will develop new training pathways aligned to labor market needs in their regions, providing low-income young adults with training and support to attain jobs that pay a living wage.

This grant supports Propel America in preparing for growth of its short-term, credit-bearing training that leads to an industry-validated credential and employment in healthcare jobs for young adults from low-income backgrounds without a postsecondary degree.

This grant supports New York University’s Marron Institute in producing national reporting, communications, and a multimedia web project to raise the profile of rural workers and educational pathways in Appalachia. The project will highlight strategies to help more rural low-income workers in the region, and in other rural regions, to complete postsecondary education and workforce training programs aligned to local economies.

This multi-year, Ascendium-led grant supports American Institutes for Research in managing Ascendium’s multi-year research initiative to support action-oriented research aimed at addressing critical gaps in the evidence available to inform scaled and sustained improvements in the postsecondary and workforce outcomes of low-income learners in rural geographies.

This grant supports the Gardner Institute, through the Accelerating Just Transformation in the Foundational Postsecondary Experience (TFPE) project, in working with cohorts of colleges with growing populations of first-generation, low-income and minoritized student populations to redesign the first-year student experience. TFPE will enable institutions to redesign practices that impede success for learners from low-income backgrounds and identify and act on targeted reforms to promote equitable student success.

This grant supports the QA Commons in integrating employability skills and college transitions supports into the Missouri Department of Corrections' Career and Technical Education programs for incarcerated learners.