About
History demonstrates that people are capable of extraordinary things when they have the freedom and opportunity to learn, contribute, and succeed.
But too often, barriers of all kinds stand in the way of people realizing their potential. One clear barrier for many people are policy barriers that prevent students and families from accessing an education that prepares learners for lives full of meaning and purpose.
Stand Together Trust is continuing an open request for proposals from state and local policy leaders focused on transforming K-12 education for students. We are committed to partnering with those on the ground closest to the work and see a vision for the future.
Grant Info
Grant details
We are open to all ideas, but they will ideally fit into one of these four categories:
- Family-Directed Education Funding: Education dollars should be put in the hands of parents and students to fund unique educations. The more customizable, expansive, and universally accessible the policy, the better. This includes policies like ESAs, refundable tax credits, and similar programs that fund families to put towards education options of their choice. We are less likely to engage in smaller, targeted programs that only serve a portion of a state’s student population, or policies that are overburdened with rules and regulations that stifle innovation.
- Protecting Free Markets in Education: Educators should be empowered to be entrepreneurial and create new and unique learning environments that respond to the needs of families. Likewise, families should be in control and able to shape the education of children. Unfortunately, policy and bureaucratic barriers often stand in the way – including state and local regulations related to homeschooling, zoning, childcare, private school regulations, and much more. We support efforts to protect the freedom of educators and families to create unique learning environments.
- Ending Residential Assignment: When access to public school depends on where you live or who you know, the system is failing. Public schools should be available to every student in a state, regardless of home address, income, or other limiting factors. We support efforts to create robust open enrollment policies that give children equal access to public services, as well as enabling policies such as transportation or finance reform.
- Unbundling Education: Education is not only what happens within the walls of a single school. It’s time to break up the factory, big-box model of education to enable more customization. We support transformative policies that hold the most promise to completely reimagine traditional schooling, including but not limited to flexible and course-by-course enrollment options, awarding credit for outside learning opportunities, and ending seat time requirements.
Grant criteria
- Please submit a brief of no more than 3 pages that details the scope of the project. We are open to any type of project: papers, communications campaigns, conferences and convenings, school tours, and much more (we welcome creative ideas).
Funding
Funding levels are commensurate with the project and its potential to advance understanding and/or action of critical issues. We anticipate the typical project amount to be $25,000, with most falling below $100,000.
Review & Notification Process
Proposals will be accepted and evaluated on a rolling basis.