In 2015, College Futures Foundation launched the Community Philanthropy for Student Success Initiative (CPI) to engage a cohort of community foundations across California as partners and leaders in reducing statewide disparities in college completion rates. Through CPI, College Futures endeavored to build the capacity of participating foundations…

In this paper, we focus on a special use of but in interactions in which those doing the questioning and answering are accountable for producing talk that is relevant to a third party--an overhearing audience. Specifically, we aim to show how participants leverage the contrastive power of "but" in turn-initial position to refocus…

In 2018 Australia's leading national university, the Austrailian National University (ANU), decided to break off consultation with the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation over a bequest to fund a course on Western civilisation. It is not every day that a university decides to turn down a $3 billion bequest to fund a humanities program (Groch,…

The connection between the environment and our individual wellbeing can be seen through our indigenous histories, traditional ways of living, and understanding of health benefits of living in balance with our land, water, and sky. Educational settings can be reimagined and transformed to better use outdoor spaces and build the wellbeing of our…

In this paper two foundation program officers describe their experiences as funders engaged in supporting research practice partnerships in two very distinct settings. The authors set the context for their experiences and walk through the challenges and opportunities in supporting research practice partnerships. They also discuss how supporting…

The OECD is a key player in global education policy advice and part of the edu-business network. This network comprises of companies, philanthropies, consulting agencies and think tanks profiting from educational governance reforms and large-scale testing. This article investigates the structure of the OECD global policy network and its capability…

There are competing popular beliefs about whether education reform is a fundamentally bipartisan or conservative movement. Yet, despite the popularity of these prevariling depictions, there has been minimal effort expended toward systematically observing the political beliefs of the key players in the education reform movement. I gauge the…

Investigating the potential of video games as an aid to community mapping and participatory architectural design, the author discusses the use of the sandbox game "Minecraft" by the Block by Block Foundation in collaboration with Mojang Studios, Microsoft, and UN-Habitat for three projects--Model Street (Dandora Phase 2, in Nairobi,…

Jewish learning in the context of professional development for Jews working in the "disruptive", or engagement sector has emerged as a domain into which millions of dollars are invested annually, with very little hard data on how those investments correlate to educational growth. This article considers the Sensibilities Framework,…

As schools transitioned to virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, community-based organizations pivoted from providing afterschool programs to dealing with all manner of crises and basic needs. Some out-of-school time (OST) providers stayed open to provide full-day programs for the children of first responders and essential workers, while…

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to examine the influence of private contributions from education foundations in public education. This study included an analysis of archival data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Texas Education Agency (TEA), and organizational websites from a purposeful sample of 256 Texas school districts…

This article analyzes the role of the Julius Rosenwald Fund in shaping the career of W. Allison Davis, a distinguished anthropologist who became the first African American appointed to the faculty of a mostly white university. From 1928 to 1948, the Rosenwald Fund ran an expansive fellowship program for African American intellectuals, which,…

This year's report provides a statement of the Foundation's activities (year ended June 30, 2017) and an extensive list of donors and funders supporting the Foundation in fiscal year 2017.

In 2014, the Nellie Mae Education Foundation began funding three projects that together comprise the Grassroots Portfolio: Civic and Family Engagement, Community Organizing, and Amplifying Student Voice and Leadership. This work was part of the Public Understanding and Demand component of NMEF's grantmaking strategy. Following a Foundation-wide…

Background/Context: Research on the patterns of philanthropic funding of charter schools has largely focused on the behavior of major foundations. This work has documented how the once diffuse giving by these major foundations has become increasingly concentrated on a small number of jurisdictional challengers in the form of charter schools,…