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,…

This study was designed to investigate the applicability of the IES/NSF pipeline-of-evidence protocol in ascertaining why two notable educational initiatives spearheaded and financially supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation achieved or not the goal of improved academic outcomes for K-12 public school students. Our interest was not…

As schools across the country closed in March 2020 at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was not clear how long in-person education would be disrupted. The abrupt transition to remote learning was particularly challenging for districts in rural communities, many of which have long lacked reliable access to high-speed internet and…

It is not possible to predict how we might re-exist/resist while most of our bodies fail to be hospitable to the virus. For now, what seems possible, and potent, is to make strange the solutions we have been putting into practice, while sharing the world and our bodies with this enemy / companion species. This article focuses on some solutions…

In 2020, the Canadian-based humanitarian organisation WE was the subject of a funding scandal in Canada that cast a critical light on its finances and mandate. The scandal tarnished the reputations of the organisation and its founders, Craig and Marc Kielburger, who had been lauded as model global citizens for more than two decades. This paper…

Pressing social problems and inequities call attention to the need for interventions that target root causes and change systems. A significant challenge facing system change efforts is the lack of systems-based evaluation theory and methods. To address this challenge, we conducted an instrumental case study of evaluation within an exemplary…

How can funders create a grantmaking strategy that puts them in a position to quickly and effectively respond to unpredictable challenges? This case study follows strategy redevelopment for The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation's education program. The re-envisioning of the strategy ensured the education program team could be nimble and…

In March 2020, the nation's schools began shutting down in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. More than 55 million students as well as teachers, administrators and families have had to adapt at lightning speed. Philanthropists have responded quickly, but the need for educating students has garnered little funding attention so far. As the…

Philanthropic organizations are experimenting with ways to support capacity building in order to scale innovations and leverage funding for greater social impact. Increasingly, philanthropies are also attending to their own organizational needs for learning in order to inform strategy, shape future work, and measure effectiveness. This article…