Posted on October 1, 2003

Funding for Elementary and Secondary Education - Private Foundations

J.A. & Kathryn Albertson Foundation
http://jkaf.org
The J.A. & Kathryn Albertson Foundation engages in programs and proactive initiatives to improve kindergarten through twelfth grade education in Idaho, through a variety of programs, including Creating High Performance Schools, an initiative that challenges schools and school districts in Idaho to strategically design improvements and innovations that will result in improvements in student achievement, dropout rates, school readiness, stakeholder satisfaction, and student preparedness for their future; Teaching With Technology, Parents As Teachers, a professional development program designed to assist teachers in increasing student achievement; the Open Book Initiative, a statewide, pre-K-through-eighth grade reading improvement effort based on professional development; and the Idaho Student Learning Kick-Off Incentive, a program which rewards and promotes effective, data-driven strategies for improving student learning.

Annenberg Foundation
http://www.annenberg.org/
A school-anchored community development initiative, the Annenberg Foundation's Community Learning Collaborative Program works to to encourage local collaboration and build strategic alliances in a comprehensive effort to increase student achievement and educational quality and to encourage revitalization in select, historically underserved urban communities and the systems that serve people living in these communities. The three basic programmatic components include school enhancement, family services and community development. The program funds initiatives in the Mechanicsville community in Atlanta and the Boyle Heights community in Los Angeles.

Carnegie Corporation of New York http://www.carnegie.org/sub/program/education.html
Through its Education program, the Carnegie Corporation of New York dedicates a major part of its grant funds to education reform, specifically urban high school redesign, with an emphasis on adolescent literacy and the preparation of teachers who are on the front lines of that reform. Most of the Corporation's resources are directed toward support for two large-scale initiatives: Schools for a New Society, an initiative that aims to reinvigorate efforts to improve high schools around the country; and New Century High Schools Consortium for New York City, a five-year, $30 million initiative established in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Open Society Institute that promises effective high schools for all students and the implementation of small-school designs. In addition, the Corporation's Teachers for a New Era initiative works to strengthen K-12 teaching by developing state-of-the-art schools of education.

Annie E. Casey Foundation
http://www.aecf.org/
To encourage public education that works better for all kids, the Annie E. Casey Foundation concentrates its education grantmaking in states and communities where there is potential for comprehensive reform and in developing and publicizing specific components of comprehensive education reform. In addition, the foundation supports a variety of efforts across the country to create new schools and improve existing ones, using the charter mechanism or whatever other tools communities have at their disposal to create high-performing learning communities for young people. The foundation also supports technical assistance centers, school design centers, and school incubators that work with community groups to create or improve schools, as well as system-level efforts to achieve this end.

Edna McConnell Clark Foundation
http://www.emcf.org/
Through its Program for Student Achievement, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation supports urban school districts in their efforts to improve learning opportunities for students in grades six through eight. The foundation focuses on the middle grades because these are the years when schools need to provide students with both strong support and meaningful academic challenges. The program currently works with three school districts — Corpus Christi, Texas; Long Beach, California; and San Diego, California — to increase the academic achievement of all their public middle school students. The program uses a variety of approaches to improve student performance, from providing direct financial support to the school systems and community-based organizations, to working with outside consultants and experts to continually evaluate each school system's progress. A key component of these reform efforts are continuous opportunities for professional development programs.

Ford Foundation
http://www.fordfound.org/program/edu_units.cfm?unit_name=education_and_scholarship
The Ford Foundation's Education and Scholarship unit, part of the foundation's Knowledge, Creativity, and Freedom program, seeks to increase educational access and quality for the disadvantaged, to educate new leaders and thinkers, and to foster knowledge and curriculum supportive of inclusion, development, and civic life. The program supports policy, research and reform programs in both schools and higher education institutions, with particular emphasis on enhancing the performance of educational systems through improving finance, governance, accountability, and training. In addition, scholarship is supported to deepen understanding of such issues as gender, identity, pluralism, and social change, as well as particular non-western areas of the world and the relationships between them.

Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
http://www.edexcellence.net
The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation supports national research, publications, and action projects in elementary and secondary education reform, as well as significant education reform projects in Dayton, Ohio, where it is based. The foundation's work in education seeks to advance understanding and acceptance of effective reform strategies that incorporate the need for dramatically higher standards, an education system designed for and responsive to the needs of its users, verifiable outcomes and accountability, equality of opportunity, a solid core curriculum taught by knowledgeable, expert instructors, and educational diversity, competition, and choice.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/education
The Gates Foundation focuses its education grantmaking on initiatives that create more small high schools and reduce financial barriers to higher education. The foundation is helping large, troubled high schools transform themselves into smaller, more personalized learning environments, while at the same time funding the replication of successful small school models. In addition, to increase the number of talented low-income students who attend and graduate from college, the foundation funds scholarship programs that are helping thousands of students attend college each year.

Heinz Endowments
http://www.heniz.org/
Through its education program, the Pittsburgh-based Heinz Endowment seeks to improve educational outcomes for children by working with schools and communities that face significant learning challenges and demonstrate a commitment to overcoming them. The program works to develop an expanding network of excellent and innovative schools notable for their commitment to helping every student succeed and to involving every teacher and staff member in a process of continuous learning and improvement. In addition, The program works to increase the region's pool of highly skilled teachers capable of creating successful learning environments and functioning effectively as partners in school improvement efforts, as well as supports efforts to help schools and communities take full advantage of technology as a tool for learning.

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
http://www.hewlett.org/guidelines/education/
The Hewlett Foundation's education program seeks to achieve greater quality and equality of educational opportunity in the United States and throughout the world through grants that support increased student achievement in urban school systems and community colleges; improved access to exemplary educational content through information technology; educational excellence in California by using policy analyses and public information strategies to help create the condition and public support for the state's schools and community colleges; and improved effectiveness of universal basic and secondary education throughout the developing world by exploring new ways of delivering effective teacher training and student instruction, particularly through technology.

Joyce Foundation
http://www.joycefdn.org/
The Joyce Foundation supports efforts to reform public schools in Chicago, Cleveland, and Milwaukee to ensure that all children, regardless of race, gender, or economic circumstances, get an education that prepares them for lives as thoughtful and productive citizens. Recognizing that each city's schools are unique, the foundation looks for proposals that support reform in each district and reinforce basic reform concepts, including equitable allocation of resources. The program focuses on innovative strategies to develop and attract diverse, highly qualified teachers for hard-to-staff subject areas, schools, and districts; identifying, informing, and supporting leaders at the school and community level and enabling them to participate meaningfully in school decision-making; fostering broad application of successful, technology-based innovation to promote district-wide improvements in the reform of teaching and learning; and using proven strategies for helping minority students achieve at high levels. These program priorities are currently being reexamined. New funding guidelines will be announced in late 2003.

Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
http://www.emkf.org
The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation focuses its education grantmaking on the goal of helping all youth develop to their full potential. To this end, the foundation supports programs that promote children's development from birth to young adulthood through funding and technical assistance to build quality programs and services in the areas of family support, early childhood care and education, urban K-12 education, and out-of-school activities. Because no single foundation has the resources to effectively address all of these areas simultaneously, the Kauffman Foundation's Education investments focus on quality early education directed at school readiness and parent and family support initiatives and quality K-12 public education and meaningful out-of-school activities, and parent and community engagement. Most of its education grants support programs in Kansas City's metropolitan area.

W.K. Kellogg Foundation
http://www.wkkf.org/
The goal of the Youth and Education team at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation is to support healthy infant, child, and youth development by mobilizing, strengthening, and aligning systems that affect children's learning. The foundation accomplishes this goal by mobilizing youth, families, and communities to influence institutions and policies that impact learning and achievement for vulnerable children and youth; and by forging partnerships between education institutions and communities to promote learning, academic performance, and workforce preparation among vulnerable young people. The foundation seeks concept papers or proposals on projects that address this goal and/or strategies in innovative ways.

Meadows Foundation
http://www.mfi.org/
Believing that voluntary citizen action is one of America's fundamental strengths, the board of the Dallas-based Meadows Foundation initiated its Awards for Charitable School Projects in 1981 to encourage and support youth voluntarism. The program challenges high school and middle school students to engage in community service and provides cash awards to help students plan and execute community service programs. Participation in the program affords students the opportunity to expand their life experiences through interaction and involvement with those of different circumstances and backgrounds. Their involvement exposes them to the reality of the struggles faced by those they seek to help. In addition, students develop leadership skills as well as a sense of community and personal responsibility for the welfare of others. Since its inception, the program has grown to include over two hundred public and private schools and eleven middle schools in the North Texas region and has awarded close to $1.5 million to participating schools.

New York Community Trust
http://www.nycommunitytrust.org/
The goals of the New York Community Trust's education program are to make the New York City public schools effective for the full range of students, and to build a broad constituency to support public education. The Trust awards grants to initiatives that implement educational reforms on a sufficient scale to affect educational quality on a systemic basis; conduct action-oriented research, and advocate to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and equity of public education; and strengthen the involvement of citizen groups, particularly parents, in working with schools, and build effective collaborations among all public education stakeholders. Because its focus is on systemic improvement, the Trust is unable to fund individual public or private schools or programs that involve limited numbers of students.

Wallace Foundation
http://www.wallacefunds.org/programs/programArea.cfm?id_area=9547109
The Wallace Foundation (formerly the Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds) focuses its education grantmaking on strategies to help principals and superintendents be more effective in their work. In 2000, the foundation launched LEADERS Count, a five-year, $500 million national initiative to strengthen the abilities of superintendents and principals to improve student learning and to create more supportive working conditions for education leaders to succeed. Its centerpiece is a State-District Initiative, which links regulatory reform at the state level with innovative practical reform at the school district level to improve school leadership. In addition, In 2001, the foundation announced a three-year, $8.9 million grant to launch the State Action for Education Leadership Project (SAELP), a national consortium working directly with fifteen selected states to ensure that laws and policies in all fifty states strengthen the capacity of superintendents and principals to improve student learning. The SAELP states are: Connecticut; Delaware; Georgia; Illinois; Indiana; Iowa; Kentucky; Massachusetts; Missouri; Montana; New Jersey; Oregon; Rhode Island; Vermont, and Virginia.