Investors Often Ignore Entrepreneurs of Color. NewSchools Venture Fund Wants to Change That

This blog was originally published by EdWeek MarketBrief on May 28, 2021 and can be found on their website

A Major K-12 Funder Takes the Participatory Grantmaking Plunge

Participatory grantmaking: It isn’t a term that rolls off the tongue, and yet many people in the philanthropy world are talking about it these days. It describes the process of including community members in grantmaking decisions. As GrantCraft put it in a 2018 report, “participatory grantmaking cedes decision-making power about funding—including the strategy and criteria behind those decisions—to the very communities that funders aim to serve.”

NewSchools President Frances Messano Featured by Inside Philanthropy

In response to the events of 2020 and the growing outrage over racial injustice, many philanthropies are unveiling new racial equity and diversity programs. So the recent strategy rollout by the NewSchools Venture Fund has a familiar ring: The organization committed $100 million in diverse leaders and innovators working in K-12 education, while doubling down on racial equity work.

We Helped Two Schools Create Reopening Plans — Here Are Five Lessons

With school starting in most places in a few weeks, school and network leaders are under tremendous pressure to finalize their reopening plans. With those leaders in mind, Bellwether just released a new planning resource that includes all of the components of a reopening plan, offers questions school leaders should address …

What are the Big Questions for 2018?

Everyone likes to give their predictions at the start of a new year. And, while those prognostications are often fun and sometimes even accurate, our