NOTE: Grantseekers should review the Foundation’s mission, vision, beliefs, priorities, and focus areas, as well as the grantmaking guidelines, before submitting an inquiry. If a grantseeker believes a request meets these criteria, an inquiry can be made by completing a Letter of Inquiry (LOI). Inquiries are accepted throughout the year.

Mission

The Brinson Foundation is a privately funded philanthropic organization that provides an opportunity to focus our family’s common interests in encouraging personal initiative, advancing individual freedoms & liberties and positively contributing to society in the areas of education and scientific research.

Vision

We envision a society that cares for all of its members and endeavors to enhance individual self-worth and dignity. We also envision a world where every individual is a valued and productive member of society, where all people are committed to improving their lives and the quality of their environments.

Priority Areas

Education

We believe education provides people with the opportunity to expand their talents and capabilities. Through our grantmaking, we hope to inspire them to reach their full potential both as individuals and as contributing citizens of a greater community. We are especially interested in programs that make quality education accessible to those who are personally committed.

Education grants are made in the following focus areas:

• Health Care Career Development – programs that spark interest among high school and college students in health care-related career paths or provide professional development and accreditation supports for existing health care professionals.
• High School, College and Career Success – programs that provide motivated students and young adults of limited means with the academic support, personal skills, and financial resources needed to reach their full potential in school and careers.
• Liberty, Citizenship, and Free Enterprise – programs that educate and promote the principles of liberty, citizenship, and free enterprise to elementary through graduate school students and adults.
• Literacy – programs that develop the literacy skills of children, birth through elementary school age, improve the pedagogy of teachers, and ensure support for this learning among parents so that young children become functionally literate and are prepared for success in their future education and in life.
• Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) – programs that provide STEM education for youth and adults, promote careers in STEM, support professional development for STEM educators, and communicate STEM content to the general public.
• Student Health – programs that foster the health of preschool through high school students to help them stay enrolled and be productive in school.

Scientific Research

We supports cutting edge of research in specific areas of interest that are underfunded or at a stage in which they are unlikely to receive government funding. These programs are typically sponsored by top research institutions, which provide quality assurance oversight and accountability that may not be possible in a less structured environment. Support is often specific to graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, staff scientists, or faculty who are at the early stages of their careers.

Scientific Research grants are made in the following focus areas:

• Astrophysics/Cosmology – the study of the behavior, physical properties, and dynamic processes of celestial objects and related phenomena; and the study of the origin and evolution of the Universe and its largest structures.
• Evolutionary Developmental Biology – a field of biology which synthesizes embryology, molecular and population genetics, comparative morphology, paleontology, and molecular evolution to understand the evolution of biodiversity at a mechanistic level.
• Geophysics – the study of the physical processes and phenomena occurring in and on the Earth and in its vicinity.

Note:  In a typical year, about 15 percent of our grants are awarded to first-time grantees and less than one percent come from unsolicited proposals. This program is not accepting unsolicited proposals, but welcomes your ideas for funding requests.

Children, Families, and Communities

All children should have access to health and early learning opportunities that help them be healthy, ready for school, and on track to reach their full potential.

The foundations for a lifetime of health and learning are built in the first five years of a child’s life, and adults are key to making these foundations strong.

When adults know how to support a child’s healthy development and can create experiences for learning, children grow up with the curiosity and confidence they need to succeed in school and life.

Many different adults matter to a child’s growth—from parents to child care providers, educators, and health care professionals. They all play an important role in nurturing a child’s development, learning, and health.

We can help children have a strong start in life by ensuring that all the adults in their lives are equipped with the best information, coaching, resources, and support they need to help the children in their care grow and thrive.

Focus Area: Early Learning

Education doesn’t start in kindergarten. Parents, caregivers, and educators encourage children to learn long before they start school. We help all adults prepare children for a life of learning.

Our Early Learning strategy aims to ensure that all infants, toddlers, and preschoolers are ready for kindergarten by age five.

To do this, the Packard Foundation supports organizations working to improve training and professional development for early childhood educators and caregivers, and provide parents, extended family members, and informal caregivers with the information, coaching, and support they seek to create environments where children can learn, grow, and thrive.

We also partner with California communities to test new approaches to strengthen and unify local early learning systems, and explore ways to scale what works statewide.

And, we support smart policies, services, and programs that help create the best learning environment for California’s young children.

We are working to:

• Support local, state, and federal policies that ensure kids are able to show up to preschool and kindergarten ready to learn, and educators in every environment are able to connect with and help students learn and develop.
• Promote educator preparation programs that help teachers talk with parents, improve learning and classroom environments, and help young children grow.
• Build and improve professional development programs that help child care providers and educators plan for and support children’s learning and development as they grow.
• Support local, state, and federal policies that guarantee parents can send their children to a first-rate preschool.
• Connect parents and caregivers with information on how to create quality early learning experiences.
• Support research and evaluation on practices that best support children’s growth and share the results.

NOTE: Letters of inquiry are accepted on a rolling basis; there are no deadlines. Please note that we do not seek, and rarely fund, unsolicited grant applications.

Our Goal

Our grantmaking aims to ensure that American public education prepares all students with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions they need to fully participate in democracy and thrive in the global economy.

Focus Areas

New Designs to Advance Learning

Our grantmaking funds school- and classroom-based innovations to better support student learning and holistic youth development, with an emphasis on meeting each student’s unique needs, ensuring deep mastery of content and skills, and improving academic outcomes.

Schools today are charged with preparing students to thrive in an increasingly complex world. This extends beyond supporting academic success and includes equipping young people to actively engage in our democracy and workforce. In order to meet this challenge, schools of the future will need to be places where learning is deeply personalized, instruction is focused on mastery of core skills, competencies, and knowledge, and holistic youth development is woven into the student experience. Our investments support schools, school districts, charter management organizations, and other school support organizations in catalyzing and implementing these changes.

Pathways to Postsecondary Success

We invest to reimagine pathways to educational and economic opportunity for high school graduates. This includes initiatives to improve college access and completion, particularly for low-income and first-generation students, as well as efforts to better align K–12 learning, higher education, and careers.

Given the changing nature of the economy, it is more imperative than ever for students to attain some postsecondary education to thrive in the global economy. This requires American education to collaborate with the labor market in the design of better pathways to opportunity for all students beyond high school graduation. By providing a diversity of options and flexibility necessary to accommodate the range of student needs and ambitions after high school, we can improve outcomes for all students, especially those who have faced historic barriers to opportunity. To meet that need, our grantmaking supports initiatives to improve postsecondary access and completion, and to expand the range of postsecondary pathways available to students, and to ensure that K–12 and higher education collaborate with the labor market to prepare young people for the future of work.

Leadership and Teaching to Advance Learning

We work to ensure that all students benefit from content-rich, standards-aligned instruction by funding efforts to strengthen teaching and school leadership, including the development of high-quality instructional materials and curriculum-based professional learning.

Educators today are tasked with holding all students to high academic standards in mathematics, English language arts/literacy, and science, requiring an increase in both the rigor of instruction and the level of student engagement in order to achieve those expectations. As a result, teachers adapt teaching to meet students’ diverse needs while helping them master the academic content, skills, and habits of mind required for success in school and life. To help educators meet these challenges, the Corporation invests in the development of high-quality instructional materials and curriculum-based professional learning for teachers and instructional leaders. It also supports a wide range of initiatives to advance the knowledge, skills, and practices that educators need to support student success, including clinically rich teacher preparation, coaching and mentoring, and ongoing professional development for teachers and school leaders.

Public Understanding

Our grantmaking aims to build a shared understanding about the changes needed to ensure that all students excel in school and life, including efforts to foster collaboration among families, educators, community leaders, and students as true partners in achieving that vision.

Research shows that students thrive when families have a meaningful role in their education and schools are stronger when they have close ties to their communities. But not all children experience the benefits of strong community and family engagement at their schools. At the same time, the perspectives of families and educators are often neglected when school reforms are being developed and implemented, which can lead to frustrations that compromise the success of those initiatives. Our grantmaking aims to reverse those trends by bringing together families, communities, students, educators, policymakers, and the public in support of an equitable and educational system and high-quality learning experiences for all. These efforts include initiatives to elevate the concerns and priorities of families and educators, empowering them to shape educational policy and practice. We also fund programs to bridge the gap between home and school. This work ensures that all families have access to the information and best practices they need to navigate and support their children’s education and that they are able to act as effective advocates for change. Because we believe an informed public is vital to ensuring educational equity, we also support media organizations to encourage national and local conversations about issues that matter most to families and educators.

Equitable Systems

Our grantmaking is designed to ensure that everyone invested in improving our nation’s schools works together more effectively to design and implement improvement strategies within complex systems. This includes efforts to reduce fragmentation, foster collaboration, and build cultures of continuous learning, with the goal of building a more equitable education system that puts all students on a path to lifelong success.

School systems in the United States are exceedingly complex, encompassing great diversity and competing demands. New initiatives are often introduced without engaging the people who will be most affected by them or considering how changes in one area might have ripple effects in others. As a result, the field of education has often struggled to put promising ideas into practice, slowing the pace of progress for students, particularly those from historically marginalized communities. Two central challenges have been the tendency to design and implement improvement strategies in isolation, and the limited or ineffective sharing of knowledge across the field. The Corporation seeks to change these patterns by catalyzing integrated approaches that are better suited to improving complex social systems and sharing lessons learned from that work. Our grantmaking also supports initiatives that stimulate innovation in an effort to reduce inequity, paying particular attention to increasing diverse and representative leadership in education, designing and managing change effectively and inclusively, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement.

Hearst Foundations' Mission

The Hearst Foundations identify and fund outstanding nonprofits to ensure that people of all backgrounds in the United States have the opportunity to build healthy, productive and inspiring lives.

Hearst Foundations' Goals

The Foundations seek to achieve their mission by funding approaches that result in:

• Improved health and quality of life
• Access to high quality educational options to promote increased academic achievement
• Arts and sciences serving as a cornerstone of society
• Sustainable employment and productive career paths for adults
• Stabilizing and supporting families

Funding Priorities

The Hearst Foundations support well-established nonprofit organizations that address significant issues within their major areas of interests – culture, education, health and social service – and that primarily serve large demographic and/or geographic constituencies. In each area of funding, the Foundations seek to identify those organizations achieving truly differentiated results relative to other organizations making similar efforts for similar populations. The Foundations also look for evidence of sustainability beyond their support.

Culture

The Hearst Foundations fund cultural institutions that offer meaningful programs in the arts and sciences, prioritizing those which enable engagement by young people and create a lasting and measurable impact. The Foundations also fund select programs nurturing and developing artistic talent.

Types of Support: Program, capital and, on a limited basis, general and endowment support

Education

The Hearst Foundations fund educational institutions demonstrating uncommon success in preparing students to thrive in a global society. The Foundations’ focus is largely on higher education, but they also fund innovative models of early childhood and K-12 education, as well as professional development.

Types of Support: Program, scholarship, capital and, on a limited basis, general and endowment support

Health

The Hearst Foundations assist leading regional hospitals, medical centers and specialized medical institutions providing access to high-quality healthcare for low-income populations. In response to the shortage of healthcare professionals necessary to meet the country’s evolving needs, the Foundations also fund programs designed to enhance skills and increase the number of practitioners and educators across roles in healthcare. Because the Foundations seek to use their funds to create a broad and enduring impact on the nation’s health, support for medical research and the development of young investigators is also considered.

Types of Support: Program, capital and, on a limited basis, endowment support

Social Service

The Hearst Foundations fund direct-service organizations that tackle the roots of chronic poverty by applying effective solutions to the most challenging social and economic problems. The Foundations prioritize supporting programs that have proven successful in facilitating economic independence and in strengthening families. Preference is also given to programs with the potential to scale productive practices in order to reach more people in need.

Types of Support: Program, capital and general support

Note: If you have thoroughly reviewed the Foundation’s priorities and grantmaking activity on the website and you believe your organization is a good match for our mission, you can email our staff (lnffstaff at lairdnorton dot org) with a brief description of your work. Please be aware that we rarely make grants to organizations that we first learn about through these types of email inquiries, and have limited staff capacity to respond to every message. Our team will be in touch if there is an interest in learning more about your work, or if there are other resources we can connect you with for your work.

Laird Norton Family Foundation

The Laird Norton Family Foundation (LNFF) is a private family foundation in Seattle, Washington, with a mission to honor and reflect the family’s shared values through giving and engage the family in philanthropy as a platform for strengthening family connections. 

Programs

Arts in Education

The goal of the Arts in Education program is to increase arts education and to improve pre-K through grade 12 student learning through the arts. Funding will be directed toward programs that seek to enhance students’ educational outcomes rather than to simply increase participation in, or appreciation for, the arts.

The Arts in Education program will consider funding programs that:

• Encourage the adoption and/or growth of arts integration within a public school or school district. We will prioritize programs that integrate the arts as a tool within greater, diverse curriculum content areas over arts enrichment or direct arts instruction programs.
• Advocate systemic change within schools, districts, or at the state level to encourage arts in education, and
• Utilize the arts as a tool to reduce the educational achievement gap.

Climate Change

Climate change poses a significant global threat, one which we are addressing by striving to ensure an equitable, resilient, habitable, and enjoyable world for current and future generations. While our work is focused on climate change, we believe in the value of ecosystems services and in the stability and resiliency of healthy natural systems. We also believe it is essential that the cost of externalities be incorporated into lifestyle, policy, and business considerations.

 We are focused on investing in regenerative biological systems that influence the carbon cycle (“biocarbon”) and reducing dependency on fossil fuels. We have chosen to focus our grantmaking on efforts to hasten the demise of coal and other fossil fuels and on work that increases the abilities of the forests, agricultural lands, and estuaries of the Pacific Northwest to sequester carbon.

Human Services

The goal of the Human Services program is to support, empower, uplift, and create opportunities for long-term success and a brighter future for unaccompanied youth and young adults (age 12-24) who are in crisis, have experienced trauma, or are aging out of the foster care system. We want to support these youth and young adults in their journey from surviving to thriving.

We will consider funding organizations or programs that provide support for youth/young adults suffering from trauma, mental illness, or addiction, with priority given to homeless youth and those impacted by the foster care system. While the full spectrum of services for youth in crisis is essential, we expect to do the bulk of our grantmaking in two areas:

• Prevention and early intervention work to keep young people from sleeping in unsafe situations — or at a minimum make that a very brief and one-time occurrence, and
• Support for long-term stability support services.

Watershed Stewardship

Watersheds have social, ecological, and economic significance. The goal of the Watershed Stewardship program is to create enabling conditions for long-term social and ecological health and resilience in places of importance to the Laird Norton Family. Currently, we prioritize work in Minnesota and Wisconsin as well as a few key watersheds in the Western United States, consistent with the Laird Norton family's priorities.

Interests & Priorities

Democracy & Civil Liberties

Goal: Ensure informed, active, and equal citizen participation in the democratic process and protect civil liberties from emerging threats.

Geographic Area: National

Strategies:

• Protect and expand access to voting.
• Ensure political equality for all by reducing the influence of money in politics.
• Strengthen policy and education efforts to prevent gun violence.

Education & Literacy

Goal: Strengthen public education for grades kindergarten to 12.

Geographic Area: San Francisco

Strategies:

• Advance education and literacy projects that support the strategic priorities of the San Francisco Unified School District.
• Support community-wide literacy projects.

Goal: Strengthen civic education for grades kindergarten to 12.

Geographic Area: National

Strategies:

• Promote efforts to make civics more of a priority for states and school districts.
• Support professional development for teachers to refresh and expand knowledge of civics and develop skills for teaching it effectively.

Environment

Goal: Address the environmental impacts of producing, consuming, and disposing of goods.

Geographic Area: National

Strategies:

• Advance sustainable industry practices throughout the lifecycle of products.
• Influence market shifts toward environmentally-responsible materials and decreased use of harmful chemicals.

Goal: Reduce local sources of greenhouse gas emissions and help prepare for the impacts of climate change on Bay Area ecosystems.

Geographic Area: San Francisco Bay Area

Strategies:

• Advance responsible land use and transportation policies and practices.
• Promote strategies to protect natural resources from the effects of climate change.

Jewish Community

Goal: Ensure a more vibrant, inclusive, and safe Jewish community.

Geographic Area: National, with a preference for projects that impact the San Francisco Bay Area

Strategies:

• Support innovative, experiential projects that enhance Judaism’s relevance in contemporary life.
• Engage the Jewish community in combatting climate change, expanding access to voting, preventing gun violence, and protecting reproductive health and rights.
• Combat antisemitism and discrimination against Israel by advancing education, advocacy, and communication about Jews, Judaism, and Israel.

Reproductive Health & Rights

Goal: Support abortion service delivery, training, safety, and clinics.

Geographic Area: National and Northern California

Strategies:

• Promote activities that increase and improve abortion provider training.
• Protect the safety of abortion healthcare professionals and their clients.
• Support Northern California-based health clinics that offer abortion services.

About the Motorola Solutions Foundation

At Motorola Solutions, we are good citizens by design. Our work makes a difference in the critical moments that shape lives, businesses and the world, but our contributions don’t end there. The Motorola Solutions Foundation acts as the charitable and philanthropic arm of Motorola Solutions and focuses on giving back to the community through strategic grants, employee volunteerism and other community investment initiatives. The Foundation is one of the many ways in which the company lives out its purpose to help people be their best in the moments that matter.

Grant Program Focus

The Motorola Solutions Foundation, which has donated $100 million over the past 10 years, aims to partner with organizations that are creating safer cities and thriving communities, and prioritizes underrepresented and/or underserved populations, including people of color and women, within the three focus areas below:

• Technology and engineering education
• First responder programming
• Blended first responder programming and technology/engineering education programs

Overarching Priorities

• Reach people of color, women and other underrepresented and/or underserved populations within our focus areas
• Leverage robust partnerships with other nonprofit organizations and institutions
• Support organizations that exhibit strong financial health
• Support organizations with data-driven evaluation methods, including quantifiable metrics

Focus Areas

First Responder Programming(The term First Responders includes: law enforcement personnel, firefighters, EMT and frontline healthcare professionals.)

• Provide leadership development and training opportunities for underrepresented first responders, including people of color and women
• Provide mental wellness and stress management trainings for first responders and their families
• Provide wellness and scholarship support to families of fallen first responders
• Prepare youth and young adults for careers in public safety through outreach, scholarship and educational programs
• Offer safety preparedness and response training to schools, adults, students and first responders
• Lead safety and disaster preparedness trainings for the public

Technology & Engineering Education

• Engage students in innovative, hands-on technology and engineering activities, such as design, coding and robotics
• Provide vocational skills, scholarships, certifications and workforce placement opportunities in engineering, information technology and data science
• Equip teachers with the skills and training necessary to enhance instruction in technology and engineering
• Prioritize school-aged students ages 8-18, college/university students and young adults

Overview

Through our EDge fund, we invest in solutions beyond any single investment area, with a focus on innovations that empower students with learning differences as well as innovations to help schools recover and rebuild from the pandemic. In 2023, we will invest $5 million across these priorities.

EDge funding allows us to respond to emerging needs in the sector and quickly deploy resources to organizations working to address those needs. By investing in new areas, we can learn more about entrepreneurial activity, funder interest, management assistance needs and inform our future strategy. Both our Diverse Leaders and Racial Equity investment areas started as EDge-funded initiatives.

This year, we are interested in learning about and funding innovations focused on better serving students with learning differences, emergent technologies that support teaching and learning, college and career readiness, educator and student mental health and reimagining the role of teachers.

Empowering Students with Learning Differences

Learning differences are a critical facet of students’ identities and should be understood as assets that can create new opportunities for all students to learn and grow together. Nationwide, 1 in 5 students have a learning difference. Some students have a formal disability diagnosis, providing schools with a roadmap for how to best meet their needs. Other students do not have a formal diagnosis but can be better served when educators are trained to recognize, value, and support these students appropriately.

At NewSchools, our goal is to build a diverse portfolio of leaders developing early-stage, equity-centered solutions for the benefit of students with learning differences, especially those impacted by racism and poverty. That’s why from 2022 through 2023 we’re investing more than $4 million in innovations that empower students with learning differences with generous support from Oak Foundation. We seek to fund a broad range of ideas because we heard from community members that innovation is needed at all levels of the education system.

Organizations applying for funding should demonstrate a commitment to three design principles:

• Committed to asset-based approaches
• Center culturally responsive and inclusive practices
• Grounded in research-based, equity-centered instruction

Investment decisions are informed by a community review process to help ensure decisions are made with — and not for — young people and their families. We actively engage students with learning differences through a fellowship, as well as Advisory Board members who identify as caregivers, researchers, teachers, and education leaders who are personally and professionally invested in this work. Learn about our ventures supporting students with learning differences here.

Emerging technologies

As the use of artificial intelligence spreads rapidly to every sector, we see its potential for good in education when integrated in responsible and meaningful ways. We seek to fund emerging technologies that empower educators and support student learning. These ideas will range from making learning more personalized and engaging to making it easier for educators to do their jobs. These technologies should address and bridge inequities, creating better learning opportunities for students, no matter their background.

College and career readiness

Today’s students are growing up in a fast changing world. In order to equip them with the skills necessary for the jobs of the future and to be the leaders our world needs, K-12 schools need to better prepare young people for college and career. We seek to fund ideas that help middle school and high school students access better routes to opportunity, including approaches, models, and strategies that support students discover their talents, explore their career interests, develop post-secondary goals, and engage in high-quality experiences that prepare them for lifelong learning and economic opportunity.

Mental health support

Schools are a lifeline for students and educators with mental health needs, connecting them to counseling services and other critical support. But with demand for these services outpacing available resources and staff, schools are having trouble meeting these needs. We are interested in solutions that improve access to quality mental health care in schools so that students and educators can thrive. We are particularly interested in approaches that increase the number of licensed mental health professionals in schools, as well as provide direct counseling services and wraparound support.

Redesigning the role of teachers

Most schools are experiencing a shortage of teachers, especially in special education, math, and bilingual education. Finding and keeping effective teachers in these positions has become more difficult as the role of a teacher has expanded, especially during the pandemic. It’s time to rethink the educator role and develop new human capital designs for the future. We seek ideas that extend the reach and impact of great teachers, identify new roles that adults can play to support student learning and make the profession more sustainable.  

What We Fund

We’re looking for the people with the ideas that are going to change education and open doors for all children. The call has never been more urgent to innovate — to bring new approaches and new organizations that will give every child a great chance in life. Each and every child has a fundamental right to an excellent education — one that leaves her ready to create a fulfilling life, make positive change, and help build an equitable future for everyone. Yet, too many children — especially in Black, Latino and low-income neighborhoods — don’t have access to the learning opportunities they need. If you have a plan to change that, we want to support you.

We believe the genius to create an excellent and equitable education system already exists in our nation, in our communities, and that new ideas must have the support they need to grow. That’s why NewSchools offers not just funding, but partnership and support, to innovators who seek to build strong schools and organizations dedicated to a more just future in education.

Learning Solutions Grant Program

Overview

More than 25 million students attending U.S. public schools qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Many of these students – who are disproportionately Black and Latino – attend schools that are overwhelmed and struggling to keep pace with their changing learning needs and the ongoing challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic. While new school creation is a central piece of NewSchools’ investment strategy, the majority of students attend schools that already exist. Our Learning Solutions portfolio ensures that all schools and school systems can access instructional breakthroughs that make learning more equitable and effective. We fund innovative and coherent learning solutions — tools, content and whole-school models — that are rooted in equity and can power new levels of student success. 

• Equity-centered design: We prioritize investing in learning solutions created by innovators whose own lives and professional experiences inform their commitment to serving students experiencing poverty and racism, and improving systems to better meet the needs of multilingual learners and students with disabilities. We build, engage, and invest in an ecosystem of early stage, equity-centered leaders who have not historically been on funders’ radars.
• Coherent and relevant student experience: We look for comprehensive solutions that account for the diversity of experiences, identities, and needs of students and educators. It is critical that innovations support both academic and social-emotional growth, and that they are accompanied by the necessary resources and capacity-building support to ensure easy adoption by leaders, teachers, and students. Our work addresses gaps in the market by delivering seamless solutions educators are demanding and supporting innovations that honor students in the full context of their lives.  

While there is no shortage of innovations we could pursue to help achieve equity and excellence in education, we are investing in two focus areas — literacy solutions and whole-school models — to move the needle for children right now.

• Literacy content and tools: Literacy is the foundation for all learning. Reading and writing skills empower students to pursue their dreams, enable them to share new ideas, and give them the tools to participate fully in society. The idea is not new; literacy has been at the center of educator, researcher, and policymaker efforts for over 30 years. We know more now than ever about how students learn to read and write. Still, we aren’t seeing significant reading gains, and some groups of students have fewer opportunities to build these critical skills. We believe that it’s time to think in a more integrated way about how tools, content, and teaching practices work together to promote equitable and effective literacy learning experiences for students.
• Whole-school models: Our strategy will also prioritize a deep investment in whole-school models. We believe students learn best when the elements of a school model work together in a seamless way to support their academic and social-emotional growth. Many excellent instructional resources have been developed in recent years, but it can be challenging for educators to bring these pieces together on their own. What’s needed are whole-school models that weave together well-designed instructional elements into a coherent, unified experience for students and educators. These equity-focused ideas accelerate student learning, especially for learners who have been historically overlooked. 

Ventures will receive a one-year, unrestricted grant ranging from $150,000 to $250,000, depending on the stage of the idea. If you are still developing your strategy or are in the process of piloting your idea, you are likely to receive a grant on the lower end of our range. If you already have a clear strategy and a successful pilot under your belt, you will probably land toward the top of our range