Catalyzing Impact Through Investments

We believe in foundational elements as the basis for great schools. Schools with active parent and community engagement, great teachers and dynamic school leaders are most often supportive environments for children to learn and grow. We see positive outcomes for students when the best teachers and school leaders are given the trust, freedom, flexibility and support to make changes that serve the unique needs of their students and communities. Our role as a collaborative funder is to provide financial resources to sustain community-led organizations, cultivate school-level talent, foster great schools and transform systems

Investment Insights:

Since 2017, redefinED atlanta’s first year of grantmaking, our funds have flowed to one of three areas: Community and Parent Empowerment, Strong School-level Talent and Equitable Schools and Systems. While these categories have remained constant, our contributions have varied over time. For example, between 2018 and 2020, redefinED atlanta significantly increased its funding of strong school-level talent as part of a successful effort to bring the Relay Graduate School of Education to Atlanta. Additionally, the Community and Parent Empowerment portfolio has grown steadily over time.

$4,881,500

Schools & Systems

$5,062,337

Community

$5,337,499

Talent Pipeline

Community and Parent Empowerment

We cannot disregard families or their experiences when supporting children in schools. Therefore, we invest in organizations anchored in K-12 public education whose missions, campaigns and initiatives center on advocacy for positive student outcomes. We also invest in schools to grow their partnerships with community organizations to drive positive results for students in school and beyond.

Parent and Community Engagement in Schools

We believe that great schools have active parent and community engagement. In the 2018-2019 school year, we launched a family engagement microgrant fund to support Title I schools and schools on the Turnaround Eligible Schools list. The family engagement microgrant fund provided up to $1,000 for eligible schools to host a family engagement event, support parents with speaking to their state and local legislators, or transport parents to talk about issues impacting the school community during the Georgia legislative session. We welcomed our vice president of impact and external relations in January of 2020 to develop a comprehensive community impact strategy and deferred the family engagement microgrant fund due to the pandemic.

In the summer of 2022, we launched our Family and Community Engagement (FACE) grants. The $150,000 investment fund evolved from the family engagement microgrant fund and will aid schools aiming to strengthen their family and community engagement efforts throughout the 2022-2023 school year. Under this new framework, the grant amount is larger and allows schools to implement a one-year strategy with additional assistance from our engagement team. We believe the investments will impact schools’ family engagement efforts and provide opportunities for redefinED to build deeper school-level relationships and inform our work.

Community and Parent-led Organizations

Advocating alongside community members can take various forms, such as time and thought partnership, informing audiences through convenings and reports, and grantmaking for impact. Our Community Engagement Theory of Change is the framework by which we grow relationships, and it also serves as a lens for our advocacy efforts. The investments we have made in organizations through our community portfolio are unrestricted and paired with capacity-building allocations to aid with each organization’s self-assessed needs. In addition, we provide recommendations regarding consultants and tools, such as a capacity-building assessment called iCAT, to aid in organizations’ evaluating their needs (without penalty to them for opting not to engage with the consultants or use the tool). We’ve simplified our reporting and replaced some with interviews in which we capture insights and document them ourselves.

Partner Spotlight:

EdConnect is a non-profit (501c3) that informs African American families of their K-12 educational options across metro Atlanta, targeting low-income and working-class communities. EdConnect engages families in advocacy to enhance and expand high-quality education options that empower youth and successfully prepare them for college completion. Since 2013, EdConnect has reached more than 1,000 parents in person through workshops, event canvassing, and private consultations educating parents on using data platforms (i.e., Great Schools and APS Insights) to explore education options – public school transfers, charter schools, and private schools using the Tax Credit Scholarship or Special Needs Scholarship. We initiated a partnership with EdConnect in 2021, granting funds to aid with growing their reach among families in the city of Atlanta.

Our Turn is a national youth empowerment group fighting for educational justice. Our Turn focuses on high school and college-aged students (ages 16 – 25) who identify as any or all of the following: low-income, firstgeneration, non-US-born, undocumented, local public school students impacted by inequity, and/or students of color. Our Turn focuses on activating the power of students and believes that young people should lead the way in pursuing an equitable education. We formed our partnership with Our Turn in 2021, investing in their strategy to build capabilities and platforms for students — in partnership with families and community leaders — to organize and mobilize youth.

Strong School-level Talent

For years Georgia experienced a dwindling pipeline of teachers. For children to receive a great education in our city, schools need highly prepared teachers continuously entering the talent pool in Atlanta. Our investment in school-level talent aims to reinforce district and school leaders’ ability to sustain quality learning environments for children by providing an additional pathway for training highly prepared teachers.

Partner Spotlight:

Relay Graduate School of Education offers prospective and current teachers an evidence-based, practical curriculum. It incorporates equity, inclusivity and cultural responsiveness into every aspect of teaching and learning. Relay’s teacher residency model is a powerful and proven value-add to the Atlanta educational ecosystem. Our investment in 2017 brought Relay GSE to Atlanta as of 2018. They have plans to expand, grow their impact and serve children and schools across Georgia.

Equitable Schools and Systems

Community responsiveness, autonomy and accountability are themes that have guided our efforts to foster great schools since our founding in 2016. Through our schools and systems focus, we have made major strides in support of Atlanta Public School students and some surrounding districts, though COVID-19 caused significant setbacks.

We’ve invested in 16 school leaders who’ve launched schools in metro Atlanta, 87.5% of whom are Black, and we continue to invest in school incubator programs to recruit and train school leaders best equipped to serve Atlanta families. As part of our focus on engaging communities, we supported the launch of a new program in 2021 for a two-year community co-design process. This pace gives incoming school leaders time, space and resources to get to know families and design their school to meet the community’s needs and desires. The first community co-design effort has seen favorable outcomes, and we’re excited to continue this offering for aspiring school leaders.

Partner Spotlight: Atlanta Unbound Academy and Resurgence Hall

Our partners at Atlanta Unbound Academy launched their K-6 public charter school in the 2020-2021 school year and, in their second year of operations, expanded to include grades 7-8. We’ve also witnessed our partners at Resurgence Hall, a public charter school, report one of the highest student academic achievement rates for schools serving Atlanta Public Schools students, grow into two campuses with a capacity for 400 middle school students. In the meantime, other schools are moving toward approval for a Fall 2023 launch.

Atlanta Public Schools

In 2021, we made one of our most significant investments in partnership with the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Kendeda Fund. We committed a multi-year investment to launch Atlanta Public Schools’ Center for Equity and Social Justice. The Center’s expressed mission “is to positively impact the lives of our learners and learning communities so that every single one of our students thrives — not by accident, but by design.” learnings & the journey forward

Moving forward, the beliefs that guided our work during the pandemic will continue to be our focus as we work to secure racially just and equitable policies in K-12 public education. Specifically:

• The most extreme and pressing inequities deserve the boldest and most urgent actions.

• Collaboration with the community is necessary. People experiencing the greatest inequities should lead this work and we will help elevate their voice.

• Grantmaking efforts are most effective when paired with community power building.

We see this work unfolding in new ways and, perhaps, in new places. The overarching theme for the work ahead is a sense of urgency around accountability and innovation. As we move into a new phase of COVID-19, we have to reshape and reimagine what education can be – returning to what existed for Black and Brown children before the pandemic is not an option. Looking ahead, we will focus on three buckets of work:

1. Building a pipeline of talent in the community to sustain change and provide stable leadership,

2. Evolving our grantmaking to include more participatory grantmaking and community-facing work, and

3. Removing barriers for innovative schools to exist, including district school redesign, facility solutions for new schools, and co-design processes with educators and community members. In addition, we’re looking at where we do this work and whether families, educators, school-level talent and district leaders welcome partnership in driving the conditions for every student, regardless of zip code, to have opportunity, well-being and self-determination. The city of Atlanta is changing — and growing. Needs are evolving. Education is intersecting with housing and displacement and more. Our aim is to honor the commitment we made to realizing an Atlanta where every student receives a great K-12 public education. Understanding where our families are going, among many other considerations,will help guide our way.

We are grateful for your support, and we hope you will stand with us as we explore the exciting opportunities in 2022 and beyond.