American University is a student-centered research institution with highly-ranked schools and colleges, internationally-renowned faculty and a reputation for creating meaningful change in the world. This grant will help launch a new national academic center focused on improving college and career counseling for low income and students of color.   View Website

American University is a student-centered research institution with highly-ranked schools and colleges, internationally-renowned faculty and a reputation for creating meaningful change in the world. This financial amendment funds the Center for Postsecondary Readiness and Success’s ongoing efforts to improve the field of school counseling and college advising. View Website

This grant will enable Bottom Line to pilot a fee-for-service strategy that leverages its evidence-based model and tools to train thousands of advisors to improve the quality of their advising.  Bottom Line is a national direct service college access and success provider. View Website

This grant will support California Competes to identify institutional strategies that postsecondary institutions should take, and policy changes needed, to support the re-enrollment and graduation of adults with some college and no degree (“comebackers”). California Competes will: 1) recruit comebackers to serve as co-researchers and co-designers; 2) conduct research to identify institutional changes that will improve how colleges serve returning adults; 3) advise leaders at Sacramento State and Shasta College while they pilot the interventions; and 4) create publications to share findings and amplify the policy reforms needed. View Website

This multi-year grant will enable the California State University (CSU) system to understand the impact and to assess the efficacy of the CSU Rapid Re-Housing Initiative, an effort designed to address housing insecurity and improve student success. View Website

Civic Nation uses organizing, engagement and public awareness to address social challenges and promote policies to address them. With a goal to influence “grasstops” and grassroots organizations, a two-phase implementation strategy will be supported for two and-a-half years to strengthen local cross-sectoral College Promise Committees to promote free community college for best-fit strategies within local contexts. View Website

This grant will enable ColaborativoPR to implement an evaluation administered by MDRC and strengthen its college access and success programs.  ColaborativoPR, which will be the Education Team's first direct grant to a Puerto Rican nonprofit, works mainly in Loíza, located on the northeast coast of Puerto Rico. Fifty-four percent of Loiza's population live under the poverty level and it has the 5th lowest college enrollment rate among Puerto Rico's 78 municipalities. ColaborativoPR has seen promising results since launching in 2014 and hopes MDRC’s evaluation will validate its outcomes to scale its work over the long-term. View Website

This three-year effort will strengthen data systems, expand organizational capacity, and build on their partnership with MDRC to scale a proven support model. While directly reaching 600 students, the project holds broader potential to inform national strategies for serving low-income, first-generation Latino students.

The college coaching program offers personalized, near-peer mentoring and a strong support network to guide motivated students to and through college. This grant enables College Forward to scale its ability to improve college access and success outcomes for hundreds of thousands of students in Texas and beyond.  The grant was awarded along with a $1 million Kresge program-related investment (PRI) in CoPilot, a student database that provides nonprofit and education partners with a holistic student information system.  The database allows users to access and analyze critical student data to deliver targeted interventions to keep students on-track for college completion.   View Website

The college coaching program offers personalized, near-peer mentoring and a strong support network to guide motivated students to and through college. This grant enables College Forward to scale its ability to improve college access and success outcomes for hundreds of thousands of students in Texas and beyond.  The grant directly leverages a $1 million Kresge program-related investment (PRI) in CoPilot, a student database that CoFo built on the user-friendly Salesforce platform, that provides nonprofit and education partners with a holistic student information system.  View Website

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

This grant will support Peer Forward to expand its peer-to-peer college coaching model to serve more students in Southern Florida and California colleges. Peer Forward recruits and trains 25 students in each partner college to serve as peer leaders who each work with a cohort of about a dozen students. View Website

PeerForward will expand its peer leadership model by investing in technology innovations, program capacity, and new revenue streams to scale beyond its current reach of 700 peer leaders annually across 11 states that support over 700,000 students. This investment strengthens pathways to postsecondary success by building the infrastructure needed to grow a proven peer-to-peer model that helps students navigate college access and completion. The grant supports PeerForward's work to expand educational opportunity for low-income students through youth leadership development and peer mentoring. View Website

CollegeSpring partners with schools and community organizations to help students from low-income backgrounds raise their SAT scores, navigate college admissions and financial aid and pursue college degrees successfully. Through grant funding, CollegeSpring can gain organizational leadership and capacity to move toward a more self-sustainable business model and a financial operating model in which philanthropy only supports start-up, pilot and seed program costs. View Website

CollegeSpring partners with schools and community organizations to help students from low-income backgrounds raise their SAT scores, navigate college admissions and financial aid and pursue college degrees successfully. This three-year grant helps CollegeSpring build its capacity to scale test preparation services for students from low-income households and students of color in Detroit, MI; Los Angeles, CA; Oakland, CA; and New York City.  View Website

The Common Application (TCA) is committed to the pursuit of access, equity, and integrity in the college admission process. This two-year capacity-building grant supports the Common Application's efforts to improve college access for underserved students. Specifically, the grant activities include: (1) leveraging TCA’s data capabilities to improve crucial supports provided to underrepresented students throughout the nation; (2) evaluating the effectiveness and impact of Reach Higher’s digital awareness campaigns; and (3) identifying how TCA can leverage its unique position in the field of higher education to help underrepresented students navigate the scholarship application process. View Website

This grant will enable Educate Texas, a public-private initiative of the Communities Foundation of Texas, to support the Texas College Access Network (TxCAN) to increase postsecondary access across the state through partnerships, strong local college access networks, and scaling best practices.  TxCAN will serve more than 1,600 college access providers located within the six largest regions in Texas.  View Website

This grant will enable the Southern California College Access Network to create an online hub to help students navigate the unique challenges of college access and success during COVID-19, including evolving campus plans, financial aid, distance learning, mental health and transfer, and help them make informed decisions about higher education in fall 2020 and 2021. Community Partners' mission is to accelerate ideas into action to advance the public good, and will serve as the fiscal sponsor for this grant. View Website

Con Mi MADRE is a high school and post-secondary education support organization through leadership training, college access support and mentoring for diverse, low-income and first-generation students. This six-month support will assist with building external partnerships and capacity building for the Texas Education Consortium for Male Students of Color. View Website

Education Commission of the States (ECS) partners with education policy leaders to address issues by sharing resources and expertise. This grant enables ECS to serve as the coordinating intermediary for “Strong Start to Finish: Building Momentum for Postsecondary Success,” a national effort to scale developmental education innovations to increase the number of students passing key math and English courses by the end of their first year in college. View Website