uAspire uAspire works to expand college access and success by advising students on financial aid, providing training and technical assistance for school counselors and college access practitioners, and advancing a student-centered policy agenda. The organization also offers consulting services to institutional partners seeking to simplify and improve their financial aid processes, helping to remove barriers that prevent students from accessing and affording higher education. View Website Amount $400,000 Year 2025 Location Boston, Massachusetts Program Education Focus Area Urban Pathways to College
University of West London This grant supports the 2025 World Access to Higher Education Day's second annual in-person conference at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa. The conference aims to convene up to 800 virtual and in-person delegates from around the world to advance pathways to higher education access and equity. View Website Amount $25,000 Year 2025 Location London, United Kingdom Program Education Focus Area Urban Pathways to College
College Possible College Possible serves 25,000 low-income and first-generation students annually across eight cities through intensive coaching and support. This grant will enable the organization to integrate generative and predictive artificial intelligence capabilities, providing students and coaches with personalized information to make better decisions and track progress. The AI integration will also support a transition from AmeriCorps coaches to professional staff, creating a more cost-effective, sustainably funded model that fosters longer-term relationships with students. View Website Amount $550,000 Year 2025 Location St. Paul, Minnesota Program Education Focus Area Urban Pathways to College
Urban Institute This grant supports the Urban Institute's Work, Education, and Labor Division to establish a six-state Great Lakes community of practice focused on strengthening basic needs support for college students. Cross-sector teams including higher education institutions, human services agencies, and students will collaborate to develop goals addressing food and housing insecurity that impede college completion. The Urban Institute will document and publish findings to inform effective practices nationwide, directly advancing Kresge's commitment to expanding educational pathways and economic opportunity by addressing the structural barriers that prevent low-income students from completing their degrees and accessing better employment prospects. View Website Amount $750,000 Year 2025 Location Washington, D.C. Program Education Focus Area Urban Pathways to College
Civic Nation This grant will enable Civic Nation to help ensure that millions of Americans in traditionally hard-to-reach communities learn about and take advantage of federal student debt relief programs. View Website Amount $500,000 Year Location Washington, D.C. Program Education Focus Area Urban Pathways to College
University of South Florida Foundation This grant will support the Florida College Access Network (FCAN) in strengthening its advocacy and convening capacity to connect policymakers with stakeholders from different sectors to improve Florida’s postsecondary pathways. View Website Amount $175,000 Year 2023 Location Tampa, Fla. Program Education Focus Area Urban Pathways to College
Ithaka Harbors, Inc. This grant will enable Ithaka to expand its stranded credits “clearinghouse,” which it piloted successfully in the Akron, OH, region. View Website Amount $250,000 Year 2023 Location New York, New York Program Education Focus Area Urban Pathways to College
Get Schooled Foundation This grant will allow Detroit youth to access personalized youth-friendly, research-based, digital college access content via popular social media channels: text, TikTok, Kahoot!, YouTube, and a mobile-first website. Get Schooled will work with Detroit College Access Network (DCAN) and Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) to reach Detroit juniors and seniors with FAFSA support, scholarship and college essay support, and other college-going content to increase college enrollment among Detroit seniors. View Website Amount $300,000 Year 2023 Location New York, New York Program Education Focus Area Urban Pathways to College
Strada Collaborative, Inc. This grant will enable InsideTrack to launch California Reconnect to help California adults with some college but no degree to complete their credentials. InsideTrack will partner with two Kresge grantees, the Institute for Higher Education Policy and California Competes, to conduct targeted outreach to 13,000 stopped-out students and provide advising and coaching to support their re-enrollment at 30 colleges and universities in the Inland Empire, South San Joaquin Valley (Fresno), and Sacramento. View Website Amount $500,000 Year 2023 Location Indianapolis, IN Program Education Focus Area Urban Pathways to College
iMentor This grant will enable iMentor to design, implement, and refine a national strategy based on its successful New York City region model to institutionalize how it brings higher education partners into its postsecondary framework. This model will allow the organization to build new revenue-generating models with a placed-based focus by providing tech-forward tailored mentoring experiences for colleges to improve college-going and completion rates for first-generation and students of color. View Website Amount $300,000 Year 2023 Location New York, New York Program Education Focus Area Urban Pathways to College
ACT Inc. The American College Application Campaign will pilot a national College Match Day campaign for 2,000 high school juniors — including in Detroit, New Orleans, Miami, Memphis, and Fresno — to create earlier awareness of and preparation for the senior year college application process. The students will create college lists, complete a mock FAFSA, and apply for scholarships to help them enter senior year with an enhanced understanding of postsecondary options. View Website Amount $350,000 Year 2023 Location Iowa City, Iowa Program Education Focus Area Urban Pathways to College
CollegeSpring CollegeSpring will develop new technology, hire new leadership, and bolster research to expand its current services, including math remediation, dual enrollment, and career preparation to serve an additional 60,000 students in Detroit and across the country to reduce inequitable racial and economic disparities in standardized test outcomes. View Website Amount $450,000 Year 2023 Location San Francisco, California Program Education Focus Area Urban Pathways to College
Woods & Watts Effect This grant will allow the consulting firm Woods & Watts Effect (WWE) to facilitate a community engagement process to understand better what is needed to support students in Detroit to aspire to, apply to, persist in, and graduate from HBCUs and what might entice them to return to Detroit to begin their careers. WWE will support stakeholders in the Detroit HBCU pipeline to develop shared solutions to improve Detroit students’ success at HBCUs. View Website Amount $200,000 Year 2023 Location Detroit, MI Program Detroit, Education Focus Area Urban Pathways to College
College Promise This grant will allow College Promise (fiscally sponsored by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors) to continue to serve as the free college tuition movement’s national connector and convener. College Promise will deliver high-quality technical assistance, broaden and amplify research and policy that addresses the specific needs of historically marginalized students, and support the statewide expansion, capacity, and sustainability of promise programs nationally to help more students achieve a more affordable college degree. View Website Amount $500,000 Year 2023 Location Program Education Focus Area Urban Pathways to College
John Burton Advocates for Youth This grant will allow John Burton Advocates for Youth to provide tools, resources, technical assistance, and a community of practice for California community colleges to implement new institutional Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) student requirements. SAP refers to the minimum academic standards, including GPA and percent of courses completed, that students must maintain to be eligible for federal, state, and institutional financial aid. View Website Amount Year 2023 Location San Francisco, CA Program Education Focus Area Urban Pathways to College
National Association for College Admission Counseling, Inc. This grant will enable the National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) to build a community of leaders and practitioners concerned about equity in college enrollment. NACAC will establish the Equity in Enrollment Collaborative to disseminate innovative practices that span student outreach, recruitment, admission, aid, and scholarships. View Website Amount $300,000 Year 2023 Location Arlington, Virginia Program Education Focus Area Urban Pathways to College
Education Reform Now This grant will enable Education Reform Now to play a watchdog role in the wake of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling limiting the use of race-conscious college admissions. Education Reform Now will track changes that occur over the next two admissions cycles and produce annual reports and interactive data reporting to give practitioners and policymakers close to real-time data about the diversity of applicant, admit, and enrollment pools at four-year institutions, shining a light on effective and ineffective approaches strategies to maintain or enhance student diversity. View Website Amount $200,000 Year 2023 Location New York, NY Program Education Focus Area Urban Pathways to College
uAspire This grant will enable uAspire to help the higher education field transition to the new FAFSA form launching in December 2023. uAspire will overhaul its advising curriculum and training resources and pursue strategic partnerships to ensure its expertise reaches students and the practitioners who support them. View Website Amount $450,000 Year 2023 Location Boston, Massachusetts Program Education Focus Area Urban Pathways to College
Scholarship America Inc. This grant supports Scholarship America to build a data warehouse to meet its strategic goal of awarding most of its funds to Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and other underrepresented students with high financial needs by 2027. View Website Amount $150,000 Year 2023 Location Minneapolis, Minnesota Program Education Focus Area Urban Pathways to College
Strive for College Collaborative This grant will enable Strive for College to expand the number of students it supports nationally with college enrollment and completion coaching, and mentoring. In August 2022, the Common Application, also an education grantee, will offer Strive for College services to all its student applicants, increasing demand from 85,000 students to 136,000. To meet this emerging need, Strive for College will expand its corporate partnerships, increase its pool of volunteer mentors by 46%, and improve its mentor training and technological infrastructure. View Website Amount $450,000 Year 2022 Location Milpitas, CA Program Education Focus Area Urban Pathways to College