Here’s How a Community Foundation Works to Get Students “To and Through” College
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Recipients of funding from CCF’s Los Angeles Scholars Investment Fund. Photo courtesy of CCF.
While large institutional grantmakers and alumni donors provide the lion’s share of philanthropic support for higher ed institutions, community foundations have long played a critical role across the broader funding ecosystem.
This support frequently takes the form of scholarships. According to the National College Access Network’s (NCAN) Colette Hadley and Elizabeth Morgan, “the easiest and most effective way” for community foundations “to demonstrate measurable impact in their community and to attract donors is to transform their scholarship programs as a part of a strategic postsecondary attainment initiative.”
Scholarship funds at the Tulsa Community Foundation annually provide about $20 million in educational aid. The Greater Kansas City Community Foundation offers over 100 collegiate undergraduate and graduate scholarships for students in and around Kansas City. And in 2020, the Oregon Community Foundation awarded 3,600 scholarships totaling $11.5 million.
The pandemic, which forced countless high school seniors and working adults to alter their college enrollment plans, will make this support all the more critical in the months and years ahead.
None of this is news to the California Community Foundation (CCF), where, as of June 30, 2020, total assets stood at an all-time high of $1.91 billion. The CCF’s postsecondary priorities include “improving access and attainment for low-income, first-generation, and historically underrepresented students in L.A. County through targeted investments in advising and aid supports, affordability and basic needs, and institutional reforms,” said Senior Program Officer Kelly King.
Like all community foundations, the CCF advances these priorities by providing scholarships channeled through donor and corporate-advised funds. But even more importantly, the foundation engages in partnerships and administers discretionary funds that mix financial support with counseling and mentorship to ensure that students succeed.
Holistic support
The CCF’s flagship discretionary offering is the Los Angeles Scholars Investment Fund (LASIF). Launched in 2012 in partnership with the College Futures Foundation, LASIF supports community-based organizations that help low-income students prepare for and complete a degree.
LASIF’s holistic approach targets low-income Angeleno students with support programs and agencies that “increase college readiness, help students and families access all available public financial support and provide counseling, mentorship and other supports designed to get students to and through college,” King said. Over the past nine years, the CCF has granted more than $25 million under LASIF to 46 nonprofit partners, with over 38,000 students served by college access/success services and more than 7,000 scholarships awarded.
“Like many community foundations, historically, the foundation’s engagement had focused on scholarships for local students,” King told me. “Through LASIF, we have shifted much of our scholarship work from ‘merit-based’ selection to ‘needs-based,’ and aligned with supported services throughout high school and college.”
The CCF’s approach—a “needs-based” focus complemented with financial and non-financial support services—addresses some of the main drawbacks to community foundations’ traditional approach to boosting student access, according to the NCAN’s Hadley and Morgan.
“Many scholarships housed at community foundations and private funders are merit-based, in effect serving as a well-deserved reward for students who have excelled in high school—regardless of whether they have significant financial need,” the pair wrote. “Compounding the problem, in almost every case, scholarships are small dollar amounts, nonrenewable, and lack support services that many students need to stay on track to graduation. Unfortunately, fear of offending or driving away contributors makes many [foundation] CEOs unwilling to discuss these shortcomings.”
A focus on young men of color
Recognizing that young men of color are underserved and underrepresented in college preparation programs and at most local four-year colleges, LASIF launched a targeted two-year, $2 million initiative in 2017 to better help these students access college and succeed once they get there.
Two years later, LASIF rolled out an emergency aid vehicle called the Relief from Urgent Student Hardship Fund, which provides modest direct grants to Los Angeles county college students to address a specific crisis or personal need that may otherwise jeopardize their educational dreams.
King told me that the micro-grants, which range from $200–$2,000, “could be applied to a sudden car repair that is interfering with a student’s transportation to campus, to pay a library fine or unexpected fee that is delaying class registration or financial aid, or support a student to move to a safer or more sustainable housing situation.” Like all of LASIF’s work, “these financial resources are combined with additional services to support student success,” King said.
Mitigating and eliminating barriers
The CCF directly engages with higher education institutions. In 2018, the CCF partnered with the California College Promise Project (CCPP) at WestEd to launch the Los Angeles County Promises That Count initiative. The three-year initiative focused on supporting the development, implementation and continuous improvement of College Promise efforts, with the goal of ensuring stronger institutional support so that more students graduate in Los Angeles County.
King told me that the key to the College Promise program’s value is an “ability to mitigate or eliminate barriers through academic support; clear, simple, and consistent messaging to students and their families; improved assessment and placement measures; education and career guidance; cohort models, guided pathways,” and other support services.
The CCF also brings together cross-sector partners to support postsecondary access and success. In recent years, for example, the CCF has co-led, with L.A. Unified School District, the Closing the College Advisement Gap workgroup. Through regular meetings between the district and over 50 community-based organizations, the CCF shares best practices, identifies solutions and builds capacity to support students and school communities.
It’s often difficult for community foundations to try and generalize diverse individual donors’ giving priorities. But that didn’t stop me from asking King how these donors support higher ed through DAFs.
She told me the foundation’s individual donors, not surprisingly, tend to support institutions to which they have a personal connection. In addition, these donors “are active in supporting diverse research activities based in regional colleges and universities, and various efforts to ensure more students, especially students of color and those from low-income backgrounds, have greater access to postsecondary opportunities.”
