In America, it remains all too predictable who gets a fair shot at life. Our education system should be a gateway to opportunity, yet it often acts as a barrier. While there’s no shortage of committed leaders and bright spots in communities across the country, we have yet to move the baseline for everyone. 

An education system that makes it possible for all kids to succeed is the greatest investment in our shared future. It’s the key to unlocking the well of talent and ingenuity essential for preserving our inclusive democracy, combating climate change, and fostering a more just society. While we cannot know what challenges and opportunities tomorrow will bring, one thing is clear: creating a better future starts in our classrooms. Education fuels progress.

Our Investment Strategy

Our new three-year investment strategy is focused on creating a student-centered education system. We will build on proven approaches and fund solutions that empower young people to become the leaders and problem solvers our society needs. In this next phase, we will drive change by investing in promising ideas and leaders, amplifying effective solutions and success stories, and forming stronger, broader coalitions for change. 

From 2024 to 2026, our team will raise $100 million to invest across three areas —  Innovative Schools, Learning Solutions, and Teaching Reimagined — and our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion will be at the core of everything we do. We will fund groundbreaking ideas to close gaps and significantly improve outcomes for all students, particularly those furthest from opportunity — including students of color, those experiencing poverty, and those with learning differences. This involves expanding access to capital for leaders of color with the expertise and cultural wisdom to support these students.

Innovative Schools

Schools are the heart of public education. We believe in the transformative power of excellent, innovative schools to change the lives of students, their families, and entire communities. Our investments will support the creation of new charter and district schools that provide students with a solid academic foundation and the mindsets, habits, and skills needed for lifelong success (we call this an expanded definition of student success). These schools will emphasize student choice and personalized learning, prioritize relationships and community collaboration, and engage students with the broader world as they explore their passions and develop their future plans.

Learning Solutions

Existing schools need help developing student-centered classrooms that offer learners personalized support. We plan to invest in learning solutions — including tools, content, and models — that accelerate literacy and math outcomes for students while fostering experiences that positively impact students’ social-emotional learning, motivation, and self-awareness. We know that generative artificial intelligence will play a significant role in this effort as we ensure that every student gets the support they need, when they need it. 

Teaching Reimagined

It’s time to reimagine the role of teachers and right-size the job. We will invest in innovative ideas that evolve how teachers work and strategies that involve caregivers and community experts in supporting student success. Our goal is to build on current efforts, catalyze new approaches and leverage generative AI to accelerate progress and make teaching a more sustainable, effective, and joyful profession that attracts a diverse group of educators.

In doing this work, we will adapt to market shifts and invest in areas where entrepreneurial activity is growing and the potential for positive impact on students is greatest. Across our portfolios, we seek solutions that leverage generative artificial intelligence to improve teaching and learning, embrace learning that happens outside of school, and support students in achieving college and career success. We see a significant opportunity to drive innovation in special education, given that one in five students has a diagnosed or undiagnosed learning difference like dyslexia or dyscalculia. That’s why we’re making investments to enhance teaching and learning for students with learning differences within and beyond our three main focus areas.

Engaging Communities in Investment Decisions

Community input will inform our grantmaking. We have seen time and again that we can solve hard problems when we follow the lead of students, parents, and educators who are closest to the problems we aim to solve. Our past experience with participatory grantmaking has demonstrated that communities are well-equipped to identify solutions that meet their unique needs. That’s why all first-year investments will be made with input from an advisory group that includes students, parents, educators, and researchers.

Moving the Field Forward

We are committed to moving forward with the optimism, creativity, and ambition necessary to meet the needs of this generation of students. Along the way, we will elevate key insights and best practices to generate a ripple effect, where the successes in our portfolio inspire and guide others, contributing to systemic change across the sector. We are excited to partner with you to create an education system that delivers on its promise to every student.

Share Your Bold Idea

If you have a groundbreaking idea that reimagines the role of educators, empowers students with learning differences, or supports students to build foundational literacy and math skills, we want to hear from you. Our 2024 funding opportunity launches today, offering you the chance to realize your vision and join a national community of innovators leading the way. Visit our Apply for Funding page to check your eligibility. 

NewSchools is in good company this year among peers in philanthropy and education who are celebrating milestone anniversaries or signaling deeper shifts in their strategy by announcing brand refreshes. Anniversaries are unremarkable, sentimental events, except in their unique power to spark a special kind of reflection and collective remembering. Such an exercise can re-energize the people who have made history together and give them renewed hope and direction for the future. 

Leading up to our 25th anniversary year, we embarked on a brand refresh to clarify our vision for impact and capture the essence of our story. In the process, we were reminded of NewSchools’ founding premise that venture philanthropy could catalyze a better education system. And that by doing so, we could keep the promise of public education to unlock opportunity for all students. 

A new brand story

NewSchools has always been at the leading edge. We are the first venture philanthropy focused on K-12 education. We believe that philanthropy can power a better future for all students, not just a chosen few. As an intermediary, we bridge the gap between those with capital and those with the courage to put that capital to work on the frontlines of education. We have been unwavering in our focus, despite increasing skepticism and fatigue, talent exodus, and the redirection of dollars toward other pressing social issues. We play the long game because the future we’re investing in is one where all students can grow into the leaders and problem solvers that our world truly needs. 

We are rewriting the rules of education and philanthropy — who gets to lead, who’s invited to collaborate, and whose dreams have a shot at coming true. In service of this big vision, we have made a lot of big bets in the past 25 years. We have led the way toward an expanded definition of student success and a more equitable approach to funding that drives exceptional outcomes for students. And, we continue to stand up for the vast, untapped genius in innovators of color because we need the best ideas from everyone. 

Reimagining education is a generational endeavor. This is bigger than any one organization, and we have proven there is more for everyone when we don’t give in to zero-sum thinking, when we refuse to get into petty fights that force us to choose ideology over the best interests of our kids. Our story is 25 years in the making, and it’s not nearly done. We’ll keep writing it together as we build broader and better coalitions in the years ahead.  

A new visual identity

Change is less about what we know and more about what we feel. We need people to feel motivated to do what’s right for all students, even when it’s hard. Design has a unique power to reach the heart and spur action. 

That’s why we partnered with the team at Hyperakt to translate our brand story into a powerful and emotive visual identity. This week, we are previewing our new brand in New Orleans at a special 25th Anniversary Community of Practice gathering with over 400 venture leaders and partners. It felt fitting to share it with them first, as the new brand puts the emphasis on the leaders, educators, and students who are at the center of our work. 

From the fresh, vibrant color palette and the new dimensional pathway to our new logo and photography style, every creative decision was purposeful. We look forward to sharing more with you in the coming weeks, including our new website, which we hope will inspire you to innovate at the intersections, explore, and lead at the edge. 

This month Bright Spots, a new live, interactive series hosted by NewSchools debuted on LinkedIn. We’re excited to connect with more education innovators and stakeholders in real-time and lift up what’s working during this time of rebuilding and reinvention in education. This series features our NewSchools colleagues in conversation with the innovators we fund and support and the communities we serve. We discuss bold innovative solutions to address some of the most pressing challenges in education today. Our first episode was dedicated to all the amazing and resilient school leaders and educators who started a new school year. Watch the highlights from the conversation and be sure to tune in on October 11 for our next LinkedIn Live session, “Shifting Power to Communities in Grantmaking.”

New achievement data — comparing student performance before the coronavirus pandemic to now —shows the gaps between lower and higher achieving students have widened. Jason Atwood, director of research and learning at NewSchools, and our research partners analyzed academic data for schools in our portfolio and found that academic backsliding was not as pronounced at some schools. These are schools where students reported stronger relationships with teachers, higher academic expectations, better perceptions of fairness, a greater sense of psychological and physical safety, and better management of their learning. If more schools move to create these conditions, more students will be better off for it. 

We spoke with three leaders who opened schools in various phases of the coronavirus pandemic and have had to grapple with how to design and operate schools in enormously complex circumstances without losing sight of their incredible vision and core innovations. Mia Howard, who leads the Innovative Schools investment team at NewSchools, says these leaders are meeting the moment by becoming public health experts, operations gurus, and coalition builders, all while still rallying staff around a vision for instructional excellence and delivering on it day in and day out.

Fernanda Flores is the principal of La Promesa, a high school in Houston that enrolls students from non-English speaking countries who are new to the U.S. Her school has faced challenges, but Fernanda explains that her commitment to create better opportunities for immigrant students keeps her motivated. “Showing students how do we bridge our own identity and culture with a new culture and not finding what we’re different with, but how we can become brothers and sisters because we have so much more to share — that’s what we’re trying to do,” she says. Her advice when things get hard: Build a community that you can lean on. 

Kimberly Neal-Brannum is the founder and executive director of BELIEVE Schools. BELIEVE is an early college and career high school serving students in the Indianapolis area. Months before opening her school, Kimberly was battling Covid, unsure if she would be able to enroll enough students and hire the staff she needed to open her school on time. “I think that’s what for me was the definition of resilience and it allowed me to tap into an inner strength that I didn’t necessarily know that I had” to build a school with a strong culture. Her students are now taking college classes and starting internships to be able to graduate with good options after high school. 

Veronica Coleman is the principal of A School Without Walls, New York City’s first hybrid public school for students interested in interdisciplinary, project-based learning. She talked about the support that school districts can provide leaders who are navigating new realities trying to open schools. “Having people with us as we’re iterating, as we’re going through this journey, who are willing to say, ‘Okay, I see a roadblock. How can I help you to remove that roadblock? And not to say, no, that’s not possible because it hasn’t been done before. That’s been really really fantastic and has been very sustaining for me.”

Watch the full episode here.

Whether it’s ensuring students have access to mental health services or culturally relevant curricula, the selected organizations — all founded by leaders of color — are tackling big problems in education and offering new pathways to opportunity for students and educators of color. 

The funding decisions were made by a diverse council of parents, students, and education innovators who brought their own experiences, ideas, and concerns to discussions about what solutions are needed at this moment. It is the first time our organization has piloted participatory grantmaking, a process that centers the voices of community members in philanthropy. The council focused on selecting innovators who understand the communities they serve and are doing work that truly disrupts racial inequities in education. 

Each organization is receiving $150,000 in unrestricted funding. The funds will help leaders — 89% of whom are solo entrepreneurs — to grow their teams and scale their impact so that they can create meaningful change in their communities. The teams have joined a community of practice and begun receiving management assistance support from NewSchools related to strategy, impact measurement, and entrepreneurial mindsets.

We’re proud to support these visionary leaders and their bold efforts to advance racial equity at a time of rebuilding and reinvention in our nation, and honored to invest in organizations led by resilient leaders of color, many of whom have experienced the pain of structural and systemic racism themselves. 

If you have an early-stage idea for how to advance racial equity in education, please apply to our funding opportunity by March 28th. We are excited to support leaders of color working to ensure all students are able to realize their full potential.  

Scroll to learn more about the current grantees and their visions.

Black Girls Do STEM empowers Black girls in St. Louis, Missouri schools to pursue advanced coursework and careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Cynthia Chapple, a Black chemist, founded the program to change a glaring racial disparity: Black women make up just 2 percent of all STEM professionals. Through her program, girls gain greater confidence and curiosity in STEM subjects by receiving mentorship, tutoring, counseling and other support. 

“This is about unlocking the potential of Black girls,” Chapple says. “Freeing them up to imagine that they are capable of something that maybe they have not historically dominated.”

Detroit Heals Detroit provides culturally-rooted trauma-informed care, wraparound services and healing spaces for youth in Detroit. The program, led by Sirrita Darby, a former high school educator, helps youth process their trauma through discussions, writing, and other group activities, with the goal of transforming their pain into power and joy.

“Exposure to trauma has a profound impact on cognitive development and academic outcomes and our specific students in Detroit seem to wake up to trauma like its breakfast,” the organization’s vision statement states. “We understand that Detroit youth face more challenges than any individual person can remedy so our goal is to help each other heal from the trauma together.”

Firestarters, based in Ukiah, California, seeks to build an equitable and sustainable world through environmental education and cultural revitalization for Indigenous youth. Founded by Edwin Stevenson of the Pinoleville Pomo Nation, the organization seeks to foster land stewardship through training youth in traditional land stewardship practices — unleashing the power of tribal sovereignty to combat environmental destruction and cultural genocide.

“I’m excited to partner with local tribal governments as they seek to restore traditional pathways for youth to weave education and career goals to revitalize our land and people,” Stevenson says. “Now more than ever, we have the opportunity and responsibility to rapidly accelerate systems change through our most valuable asset, the next generation of firestarters.”

ALAS is the brainchild of Lisa Maria Rhodes, an educator in New Orleans. ALAS will receive funding to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline for undocumented students and students in the court system. The organization pairs students with attorneys and trains educators to be advocates so that students awaiting to appear in court remain in school, instead of being in jail.

“Some of these students don’t have charges accepted by the court, but they are incarcerated because they are too poor to pay bond,” Rhodes says. “They frequently miss school for a minimum of two months, and up to two years — thus increasing dropout rates and recidivism.”

Hipeexnu’ Kii’u Nuun Wisiix promotes and preserves the language and traditions of the Nez Perce Tribe. Founded by Bessie Walker, a community leader in Lapwai, Idaho, the organization launched a cultural immersion program with curriculum designed to engage community youth and families. 

“These children represent our future, the continuation of our culture,” Walker says. “They are the ones who are going to carry it forward into the next generation.”

Love Your Magic advances the healthy development of Black and Brown girls through community and school partnerships and experiences that cultivate self-advocacy skills, self-love, and sisterhood. Ivanna Solano, an educator and activist, and her colleagues founded the program in Boston in response to the disproportionate rates of Black and Brown girls being disciplined in schools. 

“We need to uplift our girls, empower them, and then, as a community, pour into them the love, the acknowledgment, and everything they deserve,” Solano says. “Our Black girls deserve the world, and we’re failing them right now.”

Mindcatcher, a San Francisco-based education provider, disrupts the cycle of hopelessness, disconnection, and inadequate resources in education by equipping educators with the mindsets and practices for engaging young people in transformative teaching and learning. Founder Naykeshia Kendall Williams says,

“Already I have seen youth come alive in ways previously unimaginable and educators trying out-of-the-box strategies.”

ProjectHEAL provides culturally relevant and antiracist trauma-informed professional development for adults and meditation and calming centers for students to increase access to social emotional and mental health supportive services. The program was founded by Johnny Reed, a Chicago native and former educator.

“Life has taught me a valuable lesson: Although we cannot prevent trauma, we can surely be proactive in advancing individual emotional intelligence and identifying healthy coping mechanisms to minimize the impact that stress and trauma have on our hearts and minds,” Reed says. “This conviction fuels ProjectHEAL’s mission and vision and continues to expand our impact.”

The Transition Academy expands access to college, career, and life skill programs for Black students with disabilities. Based in Kansas City, Missouri, the organization develops tools and resources to help students, their families, and teachers plan for a successful transition after high school. The organization was founded by Kim Riley, whose son has autism. 

“Students with disabilities and their families want, need and deserve an education that prepares them for life – not just one that checks boxes on state assessments,” Riley says. “Every step of the journey should involve helping children discover their talents and sharpen their skills in order to be successful after high school.”

TrueFiktion is a Chicago-based company founded by Steph Manuel, a U.S. Army veteran. His organization helps students understand pivotal moments in U.S. history from the perspective of marginalized groups through the use of engaging comics and curriculum. The group also provides coaching to train teachers in the curriculum. 

“Billions of dollars are spent on educational content that blinds Americans to the injustices that Black people and other marginalized communities face,” Manuel says. “I believe we need to overhaul the methods and content that drive history education in our classrooms so that we can avoid having to fight for empathy, understanding, and critical thought around social issues.”

People of color face additional barriers when raising capital. They are often perceived as a riskier investment, which means they get subjected to a higher level of scrutiny. Their chances of success are lower when their ideas don’t fit into funder strategies or align with conventional wisdom. Some of our most promising education entrepreneurs give up on their dreams before their ideas ever see the light of day. All of this is fixable. Just like processes can be designed to keep people out, we can redesign them to let people in.

Our investment team at NewSchools made a commitment to listen more deeply and act on what we learned. Over the years we’ve heard feedback from applicants that it can be hard navigating our different funding opportunities. Applicants are eager to share their ideas with us but don’t always know how to do it.

This year will be different, and we are excited to announce that in 2022, we are piloting a more streamlined funding process. Rather than having a funding opportunity for each of our investment areas, we will have one main funding opportunity that will be open from February 15 to March 28, 2022. We’ll do the work internally to figure out how each idea fits best with our strategy — all you have to do is share a powerful idea with us. 

We plan to invest close to $40 million this year across all our investment areas to create a more equitable education system — $15 million alone through this funding opportunity. We will provide unrestricted funding and our typical grants range from $150,000 to $250,000. We are hopeful that the changes we’ve made will improve the applicant experience. You can be certain that whatever this year brings, we will keep listening and learning together. 

Learn more about the investment areas included in this funding opportunity — Learning Solutions, Diverse Leaders, Racial Equity and the EDge Fund — and take this quiz to determine if you are eligible before applying. 

Once you’re ready, please share your idea with us. 

We promise to be a different kind of funder. To us, this means being responsive to the field and addressing real-time needs, being flexible about where we deploy resources to get better results, and being reasonable about what we expect from applicants and grantees. We have a plan to help us get there. Here’s a preview of what we’ll focus on in the year ahead. 

Increase opportunistic and responsive funding: 

Over the next year, NewSchools will invest nearly $40 million in early-stage innovations, schools, and organizations. NewSchools is well-positioned to support students through the Covid-19 crisis and beyond, by providing what school and school system leaders need most right now: Schools and solutions that accelerate student learning, provide students with social-emotional support, and put equity at the center, which includes ensuring that students see themselves reflected in what they are learning and who they are learning from. 

Our organization will continue to fund new ideas through our Innovative Public Schools, Learning Solutions and Diverse Leaders investment areas. In addition, we will deepen our focus on participatory grantmaking through our Racial Equity strategy. Alongside that, we will invest more than $5 million through our EDge Fund, which is how we deploy resources to meet pressing needs in the sector in responsive ways. Through this fund in 2022, we will invest in solutions that extend beyond any single investment area, with a focus on innovations that empower students with learning differences, specifically those who are also facing the impacts of poverty and racism, as well as innovations emerging in response to the pandemic. 

We are interested in hearing your best ideas for how schools can recover and rebuild from the pandemic and chart new paths for students to realize their full potential. There is a need to focus on addressing human capital shortages and rethinking the role of teachers, providing stronger mental health support for educators and students, engaging parents as full partners in their children’s education and helping students successfully navigate the transition to college and careers. These are some of our observations, but we are open to ideas that address other pressing issues too.

Expand access to capital:

Whether it’s by expanding our approaches to participatory grantmaking, creating advisory groups or partnering with other funders, we will continue to push ourselves and our peers to think differently about how we expand access to capital. One of the most important ways we do this is by investing in racially diverse innovators. When we include all leaders of color who have received NewSchools funding since 2015, the total tops $89 million. These leaders are launching innovative and affirming schools and developing breakthrough learning and talent solutions. 

We also want to ensure that we are listening to our grantees and partners, and improving our approaches based on what we learn. Over the years we’ve heard feedback from applicants that it can be hard navigating our different funding opportunities. Applicants are eager to share their ideas with us but don’t always know how to do it. To make our processes more accessible and equitable for applicants, we have decided to launch a new, centralized funding opportunity for our Learning Solutions, Diverse Leaders and Racial Equity investment areas, as well as the EDge Fund. 

Lay a foundation for the future: 

NewSchools turns 25 next year. Everything we learn together over the coming months will help us clarify our vision for the future and define the next strategy phase. We are embarking on a brand refresh effort to help us tell the bigger impact story and spotlight the innovators across our portfolio who are leading the way toward a more equitable and excellent education system. 

If we have learned anything from the past two years, it’s that change is constant. We are stepping into this year with hope and humility, ready to make adjustments and respond as events unfold. We are looking forward to working with you and learning alongside you this year. 

This post was originally published in Medium.

We are thrilled to announce that NewSchools Venture Fund has received an incredible $35M investment from MacKenzie Scott—a gift that allows us to continue to provide unrestricted dream capital to the innovators we fund. This is the single largest contribution NewSchools has received to date, and these funds will allow us to dream even bigger about additional ways to support educators and innovators who are reimagining learning right now and in the years to come. 

This contribution comes at a critical time for the education sector. We are in the midst of yet another complex and disruptive year for teachers, school leaders, families, and students. Even as we celebrate this gift, we are doubling down on our commitment to meet this moment and support those on the frontline advancing education equity, excellence, and innovation. 

Many great ideas are waiting in the wings, and we are excited to put more capital in the hands of leaders with the vision, heart, and solutions our students need. There is no doubt about whether we can keep the promise we made at the launch of our strategy to invest more deeply in innovative schools models, accelerate learning solutions that meet student needs, amplify the impact of diverse leaders, and advance racial equity as a cross-cutting goal and through participatory approaches to giving. We will continue to direct resources swiftly and responsively to school and organization leaders across our community, and we will be listening and learning alongside many of you to guide our efforts. 

Our sincere thanks to Ms. Scott, and all of the innovators, leaders, funders, staff members, and partners who have helped shape NewSchools into the organization it is today. This gift is both a reason to celebrate and to energetically accelerate our efforts to help millions of students get the education they deserve. Their futures depend on it, and so do ours.

With gratitude,

Frances & Stacey

Philanthropy can be a powerful force for good. When innovators have a compelling idea that meets the moment, philanthropy can provide flexible, responsive capital so those ideas can flourish. 

This is one such moment in education.

Despite a massive infusion of federal aid — $190 billion through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, school systems are stretched thin. State and local leaders need support developing quality plans to address the effects of the pandemic, and the best service providers are navigating major surges in demand. If philanthropy steps in to provide the upfront capital needed for these providers to add capacity, more states and districts can get the support they need to improve the lives of millions of students and reimagine schools in the process. 

So why aren’t more funders stepping up? 

NewSchools Venture Fund invested more than $30 million this year in innovators who are bringing new ideas to uplift schools and communities most impacted by the pandemic. Today we are announcing an additional $2.5 million in funds for organizations doing innovative work with states and districts that need their expertise to recover and rebuild. 

These organizations are led by diverse, capable teams and have a record of helping school systems advance equity, innovation, and achievement. With their support, states and districts can tackle unfinished learning, mental health, social-emotional concerns, and build back better than before. Additional capital will allow the organizations to hire more staff and partner with more districts that could benefit from their work.

Our team had the idea to deploy additional funds after doing a listening tour in the summer (before many schools reopened for in-person learning). We asked leaders in the field these two questions: 

1. What support do states and districts need right now? 
2. Who has “shovel-ready” ideas to support those needs? 

These conversations gave us deeper insights into the challenges and potential opportunities in this moment. We heard stories of education leaders who were exhausted and needed additional support. Leaders were grappling with how to meet competing demands and navigate through the complexities of restarting and rebuilding with limited time and capacity. 

But there was also a recognition that public education is at an inflection point and that the ESSER funds could be used to meet immediate needs and reimagine the educational experience long-term. From these conversations, we came to understand new ways that philanthropy could unlock innovation and accelerate change. 

Specifically, we identified five organizations that can help school districts recover and reimagine their work in unique ways. Our team responded quickly to meet the needs of these organizations, using our own strategic reserves to deploy capital. 

• Catalyst:Ed is a nonprofit that plays a matchmaking and facilitator role between consultants and states, districts, and nonprofits. With our funding, the group will be able to support the strategic planning efforts of 45 districts in 3 to 5 states by connecting districts with the right providers to address their urgent needs.
• Education Pioneers is a nonprofit with a fellowship program that provides senior-level talent to districts and charter management organizations. Our investment will support a new cohort of fellows who will be trained and matched with districts that need talent to recover and rebuild.
• Instruction Partners is a nonprofit that works with districts to ensure equitable access to great teaching for students in underserved communities. With additional funding, the group will be able to grow their capacity and expertise to support state-level planning efforts, offering integrated support that advances the academic, social-emotional learning, and equity priorities of up to 10 states. 
• Transcend works with superintendents, principals, and teachers in hundreds of schools across 30 states and shares best practices that advance effective and inclusive educational models. Our funding will support the nonprofit to develop a training and credentialing program for independent consultants, which would allow them to extend their reach, while also building the capacity of community-based organizations to provide school redesign support. 
• UnboundED empowers educators to disrupt systemic racism through professional learning opportunities and high-quality instructional materials. Our funding will allow UnboundED to move forward with developing a digital ecosystem that helps educators make informed choices about content and services. We believe the effort will change school- and district-level purchasing behavior toward better, equity-focused products and services.

States and districts have three years, until September 2024, to spend and show the impact of the federal aid that has been coming their way since last March. Now is the time for philanthropy to support the innovators that are needed in this moment — innovators with smart and bold ideas to blunt the pandemic’s effects and ensure that schools do not go back to the “old normal” when the funding expires.

Philanthropy can help these innovators be in a stronger position to support school recovery and re-imagination efforts by investing in their capacity and sustainability. That’s what our meet-the-moment investments are intended to do over the next three years. We hope more funders will follow suit.

In April, NewSchools launched a new funding opportunity to provide dream capital to innovators of color with bold ideas to advance racial equity in education. This investment area combines a broad focus with a new approach to grantmaking: Ceding decision-making power to a council of parents, students, and education innovators. The council is deciding how to allocate $1.5 million in funds, not us. 

Community and grassroots leaders have long called for changes in philanthropy. The growing movement for racial justice has amplified those calls for funders to shift traditional practices and share decision-making power with the communities they serve. Participatory grantmaking does this by elevating the voices and experiences of people who are most affected by funding decisions and gives them authority in the selection process. 

It is heartening to see more donors and foundations include community voice in their decision making. Our organization is still in the early stages of piloting participatory grantmaking, but already we see how those closest to the realities on the ground can be effective co-creators and agents of change, not simply passive beneficiaries of funding. 

Our Racial Equity Council is diverse by design; the council members are diverse in age, race, ethnicity, education, and where they live. All of them have brought their lived experiences to bear in shaping almost every aspect of the  grantmaking process. Our staff play a supporting role, but the council members are the ones driving it. They have been meeting regularly over Zoom since May to develop selection criteria, review applications, and calibrate on who to move forward in the process and why.

Reflections from the Racial Equity Council

We asked the council members to tell us how their lived experiences are informing the decision-making process and why participatory grantmaking matters. This is what they shared with us:  

“As a student who spends upward of 40 hours a week in a classroom, the experiences that I’m bringing are meaningful and valuable. I felt deeply invested in the work of the council, and I think my insights and experiences definitely shaped the decisions about who we ended up moving forward.” —Pragya Upreti, high school student, Lexington, Kentucky 

“I’ve been helping families navigate a system where Black children are not getting the education they deserve. They are not graduating from high school and those who graduate are not ready for college.” Being a participatory grantmaker “is the most amazing thing I have ever done! I am still a little uncomfortable in this space, but it is a good-uncomfortable feeling.” —Renee Smith, great-grandmother and parent advocate with The Memphis Lift, Memphis, Tennessee

“When I think about participatory grantmaking, I think about redirecting the flow of love and power. The bigger those coffers get and the more our students, our parents, and educators are redirecting the flow of that power, the more hope I have that our education system will change for the better.” —Wisdom Amouzou, co-founder and executive director of Empower Community High School in Aurora, Colorado. 

“As an entrepreneur of color, I have been on the other end, and I wish I had more conversations with funders who could acknowledge their privilege, power dynamics, and the role that systemic racism plays in philanthropy.  This level of humility doesn’t make you less of an expert, but it shows that you are willing to learn and evolve to level the playing field.” —Yulkendy Valdez, co-founder and CEO of Forefront, a consultancy that helps clients develop pipelines for Black and Latinx youth to enter the workforce, New York

Advice to applicants: “Don’t just stuff your proposal with big words. I’m looking for you to be real and genuine. I’m looking for you to give me an example of how this is really going to help students. Another thing that’s important to me is how you are budgeting. Even though we are giving you this money, do you know how to spend it wisely?” —Crystal Gray, parent and community leader, Washington, D.C. 

“I’ve never been on this side of grantmaking. I’ve always been on the recipient’s side. This was an opportunity to do something innovative that’s rooted in racial equity, so I just knew I had to be a part of this. Everyone in my group was brilliant and motivated intrinsically to do the right thing for communities of color.” —Dr. Dwight Rhodes, education leader and CEO of Rhodes2Equity, a consultancy that supports school districts in improving student outcomes, Atlanta 

“The whole process has been a wonderful learning experience. As a woman of color working hand-in-hand with the community, it was a fascinating shift to now look at the work with a funding lens. What was really helpful was the support NewSchools offered. They took care of the details so that I could show up genuinely as myself.” —Elizabeth Casillas, parent and community organizer with RISE Colorado, Aurora, Colorado

“Philanthropy is sort of at the top of the food chain. The funders get to call the shots and everyone else has to jump through all these hoops to get the money. I think that experience impacted our decisions on the council. We certainly had a bias for groups that did not have other funding sources.” —Kentaro Iwasaki, educator and nonprofit leader, San Francisco

View the council members bios

Disrupting Racial Bias in Education

We’re excited to see what the council decides to fund and how those investments will improve outcomes for students of color across the country. Participatory grantmaking is not without challenges. But at every juncture, the Racial Equity council has shown deep care for advancing ideas that will meet real needs in communities, not band-aid solutions.

The council members are looking for evidence that solutions are created in partnership with communities and that these ideas will truly disrupt patterns of racial inequities in education. This experience and their feedback is already pushing us to think differently about how to continue to use participatory grantmaking in the future so that our relationships with the communities we partner with are stronger and our impact is more far-reaching.

Check back to learn about the selected grantees and what their ideas are for advancing racial equity.