Legacy Grants

A 10-year partnership launched in 2011 between Ascendium, Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and researchers funded by a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences, set out to evaluate the impact of promise scholarships on college attendance and persistence. To receive the scholarship, students needed to meet a specified set of academic and enrollment requirements.

The Degree Project had some impact on students’ motivation, college expectations, and steps toward college. However, it had no effect on the academic measures and no effect on whether students went directly on to college. While The Degree Project scholarship did not have the hypothesized positive impact on college access and persistence, the project was nonetheless worthwhile. First, 312 students received more than $2.68 million to attend college. And, the lack of impacts helped to inform Ascendium’s current focus on removing structural barriers to success at the institutional and system level rather than providing financial supports alone.

Between 2012 and 2019, Ascendium invested in emergency grants, an intervention designed to help students get through unexpected financial crises and stay on track to complete their program. We have disbursed more than $22.6 million in scholarships as of February 1, 2020 in four separate grant projects for two- and four-year colleges, with 19,985 awards made. Overall, 119 institutions used our support to cover students’ emergency expenses, institutional administrative costs and use of a common emergency grant application and reporting platform.

This initiative produced two well-received best practices reports and a training toolkit for emergency grant decision makers:

• 2012-2015 Emergency Grant Closing Report and Best Practices,
• A Broader View of Emergency Aid: Toward a More Holistic Approach to Helping Students Weather a Financial Crisis
• Training for Emergency Grant Decision-Makers

Our work was also cited as the basis for Wisconsin legislation that provides funding for emergency aid grants for low income students in the Wisconsin Technical College System and at the University of Wisconsin System’s two-year campuses.

Ascendium’s headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin is also home to Madison College, a two-year institution with a strong track record of preparing students for family-supporting careers. But for residents of the city’s South Side, geography and scheduling limitations have long presented obstacles to a postsecondary credential. When the college announced plans to build a new campus on the South Side, Ascendium committed a total of $10.2 million to enable completion of the campus in a single phase. As the first capital grant we have ever made, this gift represents a departure from our normal philanthropic approach. Madison College’s Goodman South Campus was completed in time to welcome students in September 2019, and we’re excited about the opportunities the new campus presents for students in our hometown.

Photo: Matt Ammerman/Madison College

The Wisconsin Covenant program was designed to give middle schoolers a clear path to college with financial support to pay for it. Interested eighth graders signed pledges to be good citizens and keep a B average or better in high school. They agreed to apply to a Wisconsin college and meet financial aid deadlines before graduating high school. Nearly 91,000 Wisconsin students signed the Wisconsin Covenant pledge over its five years. The state recognized students fulfilling their pledges and promised them a spot at one of 60+ Wisconsin colleges or universities. To help them pay, the state made annual grants of $250 to $1,500, depending on the family's financial need, for up to four years of college over a five-year period. Ascendium supplemented those grants, ultimately disbursing $22.7 million in scholarships.