OVERVIEW: The Ascendium Education Philanthropy aims to close the equity gap in postsecondary education and workforce training for underserved and marginalized students from low-income backgrounds.
IP TAKE: The Ascendium Education Philanthropy’s grants are “grounded in the belief that every individual has the potential to contribute meaningfully to their community and society.” Its grantees typically include postsecondary education and workforce training providers, intermediaries, researchers, and media organizations from across the U.S. that advance large-scale, systemic change.
Ascendium is not primarily a funder of conventional scholarship programs or stand-alone education services. Ascendium gravitates toward organizations that can develop, test, evaluate or scale approaches with implications beyond a single institution or community. Its grantees include colleges and universities, workforce training organizations, intermediaries, research groups, state and national associations, public agencies and nonprofit media organizations.
Ascendium’s national grantmaking is generally invitation-only, and it does not accept unsolicited LOIs or proposals. However, Ascendium explicitly welcomes introductory outreach from organizations whose projects appear closely aligned with its strategies, and its program pages identify relevant staff contacts. It also occasionally makes funding available through open RFPs or through intermediaries managing Ascendium-funded initiatives.
This is a funder to approach with a strong theory of change, evidence of effectiveness or a credible plan to build that evidence, and a compelling argument for how the work could influence institutions, systems, policy or practice at scale.
PROFILE: Ascendium Education Philanthropy is the national philanthropic program of the Ascendium Educational Group, a student loan guarantor and philanthropic organization formerly known as the Great Lakes Education Group. Based in Madison, Wisconsin, the organization seeks “to make education and training beyond high school a reality for learners from low- income backgrounds.” The funder substantially refreshed its strategy in 2025. Grantmaking is now organized around three interconnected strategies:
- Expand Opportunity: Increases access to postsecondary education and workforce training that can lead to good jobs and upward mobility.
- Support Learner Success: Strengthens academic, advising, basic-needs and other supports that help learners persist and complete education or training.
- Connect and Align Systems: Improves coordination among education, workforce, corrections and other systems so learners can move more smoothly toward credentials and careers.
Ascendium also supports Field Support and Development, including research, field infrastructure and media partnerships that strengthen its core grantmaking strategies.
Grants for Career Training, Economic Mobility, and Workforce Development
Ascendium’s Expand Opportunity wants learners from low-income backgrounds to have more high-quality education alternatives that lead to good jobs and long-term economic mobility. Its current priorities include sectoral workforce training, apprenticeships and postsecondary education in prison, along with emerging interest in strengthening noncredit community-college and public workforce training.
- Scale Effective Sectoral Workforce Training Programs:Ascendium backs sectoral training programs that prepare learners for jobs in industries with significant employer demand and opportunities for wage growth.
- Merit America received a $20 million grant to expand short-term, workforce-aligned training and develop new pathways in areas including human resources, semiconductor and advanced manufacturing, and supply-chain and logistics occupations.
- Ascendium awarded $4 million to Pursuit to launch an AI Jobs Institute combining technology training with registered apprenticeships for low-income New Yorkers.
- Other organizations supported in this general space include NPower, Per Scholas, MDRC, and Jobs for the Future.
- Accelerate the Implementation of High-Quality Apprenticeships: Ascendium seeks to increase both the number of learners completing high-quality apprenticeships and the number of industries using apprenticeship models.
Recent grants include nearly $6.9 million to the American Institutes for Research for the Upward Apprenticeship Initiative, which is building evidence around apprenticeship models and strengthening intermediaries and community colleges; $3.35 million to the Council of State Governments to expand public-sector apprenticeships, particularly in rural states; and $1.94 million to the National Center for Grow Your Own to expand registered teacher apprenticeships in Vermont, Wisconsin and Arizona.
Grants for College Access and Higher Education
Ascendium’s Support Learner Success strategy focuses less on simply getting people into college and more on whether learners enter worthwhile programs, receive the assistance they need and emerge with credentials that translate into economic opportunity.
- The funder supports redesigning postsecondary and workforce programs around learners’ needs, including guided pathways, academic and career advising, basic-needs assistance, accelerated or shortened courses, developmental-education reform, work-based learning and career preparation.
- Many of these grants go to community colleges, including the Aspen Institute’s Unlocking Opportunity initiative, which works with colleges to redesign programs around completion and post-college employment outcomes.
- It has also supported the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, including a $10 million applied research agenda on community-college reform and learner advancement.
- An August 2026 grant for $3 million to Jobs for the Future supports statewide adoption of evidence-based corequisite mathematics and English reforms through technical assistance, policy development and common metrics.
The Connect and Align Systems strategy addresses the disconnection learners experience moving between schools, colleges, training organizations, public agencies and employers.
- Ascendium supports work involving credit mobility and transfer, education-to-workforce data systems, dual enrollment, state policy alignment, corrections and reentry systems, employer coordination and regional talent development.
- Campaign for College Opportunity received about $1.37 million to support California’s Education Interagency Council.
- EdTrust-West received roughly $1.15 million for work connecting California’s Cradle-to-Career data infrastructure and dual-enrollment implementation.
Ascendium supports research on rural learners, rural community colleges, locally relevant career pathways, and strategies for aligning education with local labor markets.
- Empower Schools received $3 million in 2026 to expand rural collaboratives designed to improve postsecondary success.
- The Hunt Institute received $2.275 million to incorporate rural and justice-involved learners into policymaker fellowship programs.
Grants for Criminal Justice Reform and Postsecondary Education in Prison
Ascendium is one of the more significant national education funders supporting incarcerated and formerly incarcerated learners.
This funding cuts across all three Ascendium strategies:
- Expand Opportunity supports access to high-quality postsecondary education and training in prison.
- Support Learner Success addresses advising, academic supports and continuity during reentry.
- Connect and Align Systems brings colleges, corrections systems, workforce agencies and community organizations together so education received in prison connects to post-release education and employment.
The American Institutes for Research received a $10.34 million grant to strengthen national technical-assistance infrastructure for postsecondary education in prison programs. AIR also received an earlier $4.69 million award to expand and disseminate high-quality practices among prison-education providers.
The Alliance for Higher Education in Prison received about $3.4 million in 2026 to strengthen national field infrastructure, convenings and professional development.
Other recent recipients include Community College of Vermont, Massasoit Community College, Tennessee Higher Education Initiative, and University System of Maryland, to create coordinated resource hubs linking prison education with reentry services and post-release opportunities.
Grants for Journalism
Ascendium partners with media organizations to examine the complex challenges facing learners from low-income backgrounds and share the best ways to address those challenges. These partnerships draw attention to effective solutions, which extend their reach and allow them to be more widely adopted. The result is tangible, long-term change that improves postsecondary education and workforce training outcomes.
- The funder generally works with nonprofit media organizations or nonprofit entities supporting journalism and storytelling as tools for spreading information about barriers and evidence-backed solutions and for helping effective approaches gain traction with practitioners, policymakers and communities.
- Current and recent media partners include Associated Press, Education Writers Association, Open Campus, Work Shift, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Hechinger Report, Wisconsin Watch, Inside Higher Ed, Institute for Nonprofit News and others.
Other Grant Opportunities
Separate from its national philanthropy, the Ascendium Educational Group has a Community Giving grant program focused on the Madison, Wisconsin area. Initiatives in this program include:
- Strengthening Community Ties
- Removing Legal Barriers
- Supporting Wisconsin Learners
Important Grant Details
Ascendium awards multi-year grants to organizations across the U.S., with most grants ranging from $500,000 to over $10 million. Annually, it awards more than $150 million in grants, and it holds billions in assets.
- Ascendium has an invitation-only grant application process and does not accept unsolicited letters of inquiry or proposals.
- Invited applicants can submit LOIs and proposals via the Grants Portal.
- On limited occasions, Ascendium issues open requests for proposals on specific initiatives.
- Reach out with general inquiries or questions via the Contact page.
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