Philanthropy and Postsecondary Attainment: Promising Practices for Partnership and Impact

While philanthropy has long supported college scholarships, many education funders have expanded their focus to support a broader range of postsecondary options to bolster student success. In this webinar, a notable group of higher education and philanthropy experts, convened by the Learning, Evaluation and Data (LEAD) Impact Group, will share their learning on a variety of foundation strategies for postsecondary attainment: outreach for rural communities, innovative partnerships, and new approaches to community engagement. The panelists recently published four papers in a special issue of The Foundation Review, which will form the foundation of the discussion. Register here.

Note: This program runs 1 hour, 15 minutes. While others are welcome to attend, this event is intended for members and education grantmakers. There is no cost to attend this Grantmakers for Education program.

Moderator: Edward Smith, Program Officer, The Kresge Foundation

Panelists:

• Eleanor Anderson, Assistant Professor of Research-Practice Partnerships, School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh
• Kimberly Hanauer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, UnlockED
• Ann Hendrick, Director, Get2College Program, Woodward Hines Education Foundation
• Tait Kellogg, Director of Research and Strategic Services, Higher Ed Insight
• Heather McCambly, PhD candidate in Human Development and Social Policy and Presidential Fellow, Northwestern University
• Jillian Rosen, Vice President for Community Investment, Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation
• Shelley Strickland, Vice President for Philanthropy, Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation

Articles:

• By Tait Kellogg and Ann Hendrick: Scaling Rural Access: One Foundation’s Partnership to Expand FAFSA Completion Across Mississippi
• By Heather McCambly and Eleanor Anderson: Moving the Needle or Spinning Our Wheels? A Framework for Long-Lasting, Equitable Change in Education
• By Kimberly Hanauer: Emergent Learning: Increasing the Impact of Foundation-Driven Strategies to Support College Enrollment and Completion
• By Shelley Strickland and Jillian Rosen: The AAACF Community Scholarship Program: A Strategic Approach to Building Community

Speaker Biographies:

Eleanor Anderson
Assistant Professor of Research-Practice Partnerships
School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh

Dr. Eleanor Anderson is an Assistant Professor of Research-Practice Partnerships in the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research draws together scholarship on policy, learning, and organizations to engage with the perennial problem of what makes things “stick.” Her work seeks to identify both small- and large-scale processes that currently serve to reproduce persistent injustices, while also working directly with educators and other stakeholders to disrupt these processes and co-design sustainable, equitable alternatives. Eleanor received her PhD in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University, where she also served as a postdoc with the National Center for Research in Policy and Practice.

Kimberly Hanauer
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
UnlockED

As the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of UnlockED, Kimberly Hanauer works with a broad set of districts and organizations to support leaders in taking a data-driven approach to college preparation, application, enrollment, and completion. She focuses on empowering client partners with insight into their student-level data by developing dashboards and other resources to proactively enable every student to achieve their postsecondary potential. Before she started UnlockED in 2018, Kimberly served as the Director of College Preparedness for DC Public Schools (DCPS), where she built and managed the multitude of supports within the College Preparedness portfolio, including college partnerships, dual enrollment/early college, SAT administration, SAT test prep, Naviance, FAFSA completion, and early college & career awareness. Kimberly also partnered closely with the DCPS Office of Data and Strategy to build a robust set of college preparedness metrics and systematically evaluate data on college enrollment, persistence, and completion. Prior to DCPS, Kimberly served as the Director of College & Career at the KIPP Foundation and oversaw young alumni and campus alumni engagement for her alma mater, Duke University, where she also earned her BA in Economics and MA in Liberal Studies. Her masters project was entitled “Examining the Role of Public-Private Partnerships in K-12 Career Readiness.” Kimberly resides in the District of Columbia.

Ann Hendrick
Director, Get2College Program
Woodward Hines Education Foundation

Ann Hendrick is director of the Get2College Program at the Woodward Hines Education Foundation. Ann manages three college access, Get2College centers in Jackson, Ocean Springs, and Southaven, Mississippi, and is a member of the WHEF management team. Current responsibilities include overseeing staff and budgets for: training programs for high school counselors, teachers, administrators, and other education stakeholders; outreach services to students and parents; GET2College centers providing individual counseling; partnerships including College Countdown Mississippi and the FAFSA completion project; and grant management including GEAR UP MS subaward and MS Department of Employment Security work with subgrantee, Skills Foundation of Mississippi.

Ann joined the WHEF in 2005, and has over thirty years of experience in college planning services, financial aid, and college admissions. She served on the board of WHEF, and on a college cabinet participating in strategic planning and a Master Campus Plan. Previously, Ann was the Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Millsaps College.

Ann’s education includes Theological Education by Extension (Education for Ministry) from the University of the South. She holds a Master of Science in college student personnel administration from Indiana University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Millsaps College.

Tait Kellogg
Director of Research and Strategic Services
Higher Ed Insight

Tait Kellogg, PhD, is the Director of Research and Strategic Services at Higher Ed Insight. She brings content knowledge in higher education as well as a broad set of methodological skills. Prior to her work as an external evaluator, she worked internally doing research and evaluation at Tulane University’s Center for Public Service. Tait’s aim is to provide useful, asset-based evaluation and facilitations. In a previous role as the data analyst at a college access non-profit, she learned firsthand the challenge of understanding an organization’s impact internally. Tait is passionate about helping universities, non-profits, and foundations conduct research and gain strategic tools that help them work towards their mission. Tait’s dissertation took an asset-based lens to unpack the experience of students from a large metropolitan public-school district as they pursued postsecondary goals while maintaining their ties as contributing members of their home communities. Tait earned her BA from Millsaps College, her MA from Teachers College, Columbia University in Higher and Postsecondary Education and her PhD from Tulane University in the interdisciplinary program City, Culture and Community – Sociology.

Heather McCambly
PhD candidate in Human Development and Social Policy and Presidential Fellow
Northwestern University

Heather McCambly is a PhD candidate in Human Development and Social Policy and a Presidential Fellow at Northwestern University. She also serves as a consultant at the Office of Community College Research and Leadership at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Heather’s research focuses on the role of grantmakers in processes of persistence and change in U.S. higher education. Prior to her time at Northwestern, Heather worked for nearly a decade working in education policy, including in state government and national nonprofits, where she focused on policies intended to reduce the institutionalized disadvantages affecting minoritized college students.

Jillian Rosen
Vice President for Community Investment
Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation

As the Vice President for Community Investment, Jillian oversees AAACF’s grantmaking programs, community initiatives, and partnerships. After earning her BA in anthropology from the University of Maryland, Jillian worked in the nonprofit sector where she had the opportunity to work on issues that she is passionate about: social justice, poverty alleviation and youth engagement in philanthropy. This initial experience in the nonprofit sector concretized her understanding of systemic injustice, which in turn fueled her desire to return to school at Brandeis University, where she received an MBA and a Masters in Professional Leadership. When her family determined to move to Ann Arbor, the Community Foundation seemed like a perfect fit given Jillian’s understanding of strategy, people, and what makes communities thrive. Jillian’s belief in an ethos of tikkun olam, or repairing the world, gives her a passionate desire to make the world a better place through philanthropy and community partnerships.

Edward Smith
Program Officer
The Kresge Foundation

Edward Smith is a program officer with The Kresge Foundation’s Education Program. He helps advance the team’s goals and functions by inviting and reviewing funding requests and making recommendations for investments in ongoing or emerging innovations. He also manages a portfolio of grants focused on promoting college opportunity and degree completion for marginalized student groups.

He joined Kresge in 2019 after 10 years in education policy research, working to understand how city leaders develop and advance education attainment initiatives rooted in a city’s assets and suited to the needs of its people. Previously, he held positions at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, NASPA’s Research and Policy Institute and the Institute for Higher Education Policy.

Ed has consulted for New Jersey’s Office of the Secretary of Higher Education, the Community College of Philadelphia and the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Education. He also taught courses at the high school, undergraduate and graduate levels. He has served as an instructor of record at the Davidson County Correctional Facility (Nashville, Tenn.), the Workshop School of West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania State University’s College of Education and the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education.

He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, as well as a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in education from Pennsylvania State University.

Shelley Strickland
Vice President for Philanthropy
Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation

With more than 20 years’ experience in the nonprofit sector in marketing communications, development, and fundraising research and instruction, Shelley is dedicated to helping other people discover the joy in philanthropy and community engagement. Having been recruited back to her native Michigan to create and deliver educational programs for development staff and undergraduates at U-M, including the Development Summer Internship Program (D-SIP) curriculum, Dr. Strickland and her family fell in love with the community and decided to make it home. As the Vice President for Philanthropy, Shelley works with professional advisors as well as both current and potential donors to find creative solutions to achieve giving goals and objectives that result in win-win-win outcomes. Shelley is also a 21/64 Certified Advisor in working with multigenerational families on their philanthropy.