In January 2011, teams of government education leaders and grantmakers from 13 states convened for Moving Forward with a Transformative Education Agenda: Practical Solutions for States and Districts, a first-ever national discussion of how grantmakers and state and local education officials might work together to promote elementary and secondary education reform. The states represented included U.S. Department of Education (USDE) "Race to the Top" winners and non-winning applicants. The gathering, coordinated by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), featured expert presentations on promising education reform efforts, panel discussions, workshops, and structured sessions for state teams to consider how to work together in an era when most states are facing drastic cuts to their education budgets. To ensure that lessons learned from the convening will help to inform the efforts of state education officials and education funders nationally, the Foundation Center conducted confidential interviews with six grantmakers and one regional association leader who attended. They offered a nuanced assessment of the many benefits of this type of convening, as well as identified a number of challenges that will need to be addressed for grantmakers and state and local education leaders to coordinate their efforts most effectively in the future. Highlights from these interviews are discussed in this paper.