Better Careers Design Group Spotlight: Team Central Coast

The Better Careers Design Group is a multi-year project funded by The James Irvine Foundation focused on developing solutions to local workforce problems elevated through community engagement. The goal of the Design Group initiative is to equitably connect Californians to good jobs with family-sustaining wages and advancement opportunities. Twenty organizations participate in the Design Group, [...]

The Time for Performance-Based Contracting is Now!With a misdemeanor on her record, Michelle was struggling to maintain stable housing and a job while also raising her two children. She had previously worked in retail but had always had an interest in healthcare. With coaching, tuition assistance,  transportation stipends and milestone-based gift card incentives enabled by [...]

Centering Young Parents While having a child can undoubtedly be a positively life-changing experience, it can also bring a tremendous amount of responsibility and stress in making sure that child is cared for. This stress is amplified for young parents in the foster care system as they run the risk of having their children separated [...]

Meet a Young Woman we call Rose. Rose is a representative composite of the 4.6 million Americans between 16 and 24 who don’t have full-time employment and are not in school. Like many of her peers, Rose has been juggling several part-time minimum-wage jobs while also serving as the primary caregiver of Samuel, her 2—year-old son. [...]

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, college enrollment is down nationwide, with the National Student Clearinghouse reporting significant declines in both Fall 2020 and Spring 2021. Community colleges have been hit the hardest, with enrollment dropping 9.5% this spring. Black, Latinx, and Native American students have been hit the hardest, (notably reversing a promising [...]

Over the last two years, the Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE) and the Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE) have worked alongside Third Sector to develop projects that finance evidence-based services to improve student outcomes to and through college. Collectively, these efforts are known as the Partnerships to Achieve Student Success (PASS) initiative and have been philanthropically supported by the ECMC Foundation and the Kresge Foundation.

PASS aims to launch two pilot pay for success (PFS) projects that will forge direct funding relationships between public systems of higher education and