How We Approach Learning
Learning is at the core of our approach as a funder. We’re committed to building evidence alongside our grantees, evaluating our own effectiveness, and assessing national progress toward our North Star. This commitment enables us to refine our grantmaking strategies and methods over time.
Areas of Focus
Evidence Building
Our evidence-building efforts include:
- Helping grant partners develop evidence-building strategies they can implement themselves or in conjunction with an evaluator.
- Awarding research and evaluation grants to fill critical gaps in evidence, as well as build evidence in important areas of reform.
- Shepherding learning agendas associated with specific grant portfolios.
Evidence Building
Our evidence-building efforts include:
- Helping grant partners develop evidence-building strategies they can implement themselves or in conjunction with an evaluator.
- Awarding research and evaluation grants to fill critical gaps in evidence, as well as build evidence in important areas of reform.
- Shepherding learning agendas associated with specific grant portfolios.
Funder Operations
To optimize our practices, policies, and procedures as a funder, we collect and evaluate data from our grantees and other partners. This data comes in many forms, including surveys, grantmaking output reports, and field engagement monitoring.
Latest Grantee Survey
The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s survey of our 2022 grantees reveals key perceptions about our performance. Learn what we’re doing well and where we can improve in the full report.
Read Report
North Star Progress
Using available data, we track key indicators to see what progress is being made toward our North Star. These indicators help us understand how well postsecondary education and workforce training systems are serving learners from low-income backgrounds. To better track these indicators, we actively invest in enhancing the data infrastructure in and across those systems.
OUR NORTH STAR
We envision a world where more low-income learners succeed in postsecondary education and workforce training as a path to upward mobility, regardless of race, rurality, history of incarceration, or other factors.
