Grantmaking | Ascendium’s Education Philanthropy Skip to main content

Ascendium Education Philanthropy is a division of Ascendium Education Group.

Grantmaking

We fund efforts to improve postsecondary education and workforce training systems so more learners from low-income backgrounds can succeed.

How We Approach Grantmaking

Most good jobs — those that pay a living wage, provide benefits, have consistent, predictable schedules, and offer opportunities for career growth — require some kind of formal postsecondary education or specialized workforce training. Unfortunately, not all programs are created equal. Many aren’t designed to effectively serve and support learners from low-income backgrounds. Some aren’t aligned to employer or local labor market needs, leaving the learners who complete them no better off.

We believe these systems can be changed to better serve learners, but such changes should be grounded in evidence-based solutions. In line with this belief, we make grants to:

  • Identify gaps between what exists and what learners need.
  • Identify promising models and innovations that close those gaps.
  • Build evidence about what works and develop insights about the conditions that enable or prohibit their effectiveness.
  • Equip those positioned to influence public policy or other levers of scale with that evidence so the most effective solutions extend beyond what philanthropy alone can accomplish.
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A woman dressed in a blue blazer stands beside a large screen. The screen includes the words: Fair Chance to Advance. She is addressing a seated audience.

How We Award Grants

We partner with organizations whose objectives align with our core strategies to Expand Opportunity, Support Learner Success, and Connect and Align Systems. Our grantees include postsecondary education and workforce training providers, intermediaries, researchers, and media organizations from across the U.S.

Our grant application process is typically by invitation only, meaning we don’t accept unsolicited letters of inquiry or proposals. On occasion, we do issue open requests for proposals as part of specific initiatives.

How We Advance Solutions

Our commitment to building evidence includes identifying innovative solutions, validating those that show promise, and strengthening the conditions for those with the strongest evidence to reach greater scale. Across our core strategies, we make exploration, validation, and scaling grants based on what we know and don’t know about what works, for whom, and under what conditions.

Exploration Grants

All solutions start as a seed of an idea. We fund explorations of untested ideas to learn more about potentially promising innovations.

A Closer Look: STEM Student Transfers

Careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) offer an excellent opportunity for upward mobility. However, learners from low-income backgrounds are less likely to earn a STEM degree than their higher-income peers. Those who transfer between institutions face additional barriers and are even less likely to earn a STEM degree. In alignment with our Connect and Align Systems strategy, we awarded the Community College Research Initiatives at the University of Washington a $1.2 million exploration grant to develop STEM transfer partnerships in Washington state. Over three years, 10 pairs of rural and urban two-year and four-year colleges worked together to improve the transfer success of learners from low-income backgrounds studying for a STEM degree. The project offered insight into the unique barriers faced by learners from low-income backgrounds in STEM transfer pathways. It also identified the essential components of a successful transfer partnership model.

Exploration Grants

All solutions start as a seed of an idea. We fund explorations of untested ideas to learn more about potentially promising innovations.

A Closer Look: STEM Student Transfers

Careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) offer an excellent opportunity for upward mobility. However, learners from low-income backgrounds are less likely to earn a STEM degree than their higher-income peers. Those who transfer between institutions face additional barriers and are even less likely to earn a STEM degree. In alignment with our Connect and Align Systems strategy, we awarded the Community College Research Initiatives at the University of Washington a $1.2 million exploration grant to develop STEM transfer partnerships in Washington state. Over three years, 10 pairs of rural and urban two-year and four-year colleges worked together to improve the transfer success of learners from low-income backgrounds studying for a STEM degree. The project offered insight into the unique barriers faced by learners from low-income backgrounds in STEM transfer pathways. It also identified the essential components of a successful transfer partnership model.

Validation Grants

Solutions that show promise need proof of their effectiveness. We fund evaluations that build evidence about what works, for whom, and under what conditions.

A Closer Look: Accelerated Courses

Accelerated course formats are increasingly common among community colleges. These courses offer an alternative to traditional semester-length formats, providing the same curricular content in an accelerated period of seven to nine weeks, depending on the college. Although accelerated courses are thought to deliver more flexible and continuous enrollment options, particularly for working students and those with family obligations, the field has lacked rigorous evidence about which students in these alternative course formats experience positive outcomes. In alignment with our Support Learner Success strategy, we awarded the Tennessee Board of Regents a $573,500 validation grant to evaluate the effectiveness of accelerated courses across Tennessee’s community colleges. The Board has partnered with researchers from Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Georgetown University to assess the relationship between accelerated courses and students’ academic success, as well as to learn more about the institutional conditions that support or hinder the successful implementation of these courses.

Scaling Grants

When evidence shows that solutions are effective, we want them to reach more learners. As rigorous evidence is developed, we fund efforts to create the conditions for those solutions to be further adapted and expanded.

A Closer Look: Tech Skill Training

Tech fields, which offer jobs with good starting wages, continue to have high demand for workers. While many unemployed or underemployed jobseekers from low-income backgrounds have the potential to succeed in a tech career, they lack access to the training and employment-seeking skills needed to attain these jobs. Per Scholas offers targeted training and support to these jobseekers. In two prior randomized control trials, participants in Per Scholas training experienced substantial wage gains during the trial periods (Source: P/PV and MDRC). Given the proven success of its training model, we awarded Per Scholas a $6 million scaling grant in alignment with our Expand Opportunity strategy. Per Scholas is using this grant to build new partnerships to reach more jobseekers, deepen its bench of highly qualified instructors to better prepare participants, and redesign its recruitment and admissions processes to be more learner friendly.

How We Amplify Change

Our goal of transforming systems requires changemakers to understand the barriers learners from low-income backgrounds face and the most effective solutions for removing them. We partner with nonprofit media organizations to report on these critical issues with key audiences, thereby creating a sense of urgency for change and inspiring action for those able to enact it.

LEARN ABOUT OUR MEDIA PARTNERSHIPS

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How We Address Learner Needs

Learners from low-income backgrounds are diverse. So, too, are the barriers they face. Our North Star reflects our commitment to understanding and addressing those barriers so all learners have the opportunity to succeed in postsecondary education and workforce training. To that end, we identify race, rurality, and incarceration as key systemic factors impacting opportunity for learners from low-income backgrounds. We name these to help us stay focused on learning not only which solutions work, but also the learners for whom they work so we can achieve our mission to champion opportunity for everyone.

Across our grantmaking, we also partner with organizations focused on addressing barriers faced by other populations of learners from low-income backgrounds, including student veterans, first-generation students, adult students, parenting students, and others. In all facets of our grantmaking, we seek data-driven innovations and work to build evidence for solutions that can improve opportunity at scale.

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.