Recent Grants

Lumina Foundation believes that education provides the basis for individual opportunity, economic vitality and social stability. Lumina is committed to helping the nation redesign learning after high school to help an additional 6.9 million adults—beyond those who are already on track—earn the degrees, certificates, and industry certifications necessary to boost national attainment among working-age adults to 60 percent. They concentrate on ensuring that adults, especially people of color, have access to programs that lead to meaningful credentials, that they have financial and non-financial support along the way to ensure their success, and that the credentials they earn lead to good jobs, higher pay, and greater opportunity to learn and serve others.

Lumina has three objectives in their current Strategic Plan (https://www.luminafoundation.org/about/strategic-plan/):

• Short-Term Credentials: Lumina's work with community colleges and employers will help 2.6 million more U.S. adults earn quality, short-term credentials, including certificates and certifications, than would be awarded based on current estimates. Strategies will aim to improve affordability, add flexibility, and align with employment and occupational demands.
• Associate Degrees: Lumina's work with community colleges will help 3.3 million more adults earn associate degrees than would be awarded based on current estimates. Strategies will aim to increase completion rates among those who are already enrolled, expand access to increase enrollment, and develop employer partnerships that will increase the number and quality of pathways to associate degrees—especially those that recognize the increasing integration of work and learning.
• Bachelor's Degrees: Lumina's work with colleges and universities will help at least 1 million more adults earn bachelor's degrees than would be awarded based on current estimates. Strategies will aim to re-enroll students and scale efforts that lead to their success, ultimately eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in bachelor's degree attainment.

To accomplish this, the foundation has committed to supporting and expanding evidence-based practices that can meet the nation's pressing needs. They push hardest on equity-first strategies, those that are most likely to produce fairer results for people who are Black, Hispanic, and Native American. They have also adjusted—or phased-out—efforts that are not aimed squarely at accelerating learning gains within the next several years.

NOTE: Lumina Foundation's grantmaking is primarily proactive in nature. In other words, a large majority of its grants are awarded to partners solicited by the Foundation based on unique capacity or position to leverage large-scale systemic change. It has allocated a modest amount of grant monies for unsolicited inquiries to encourage innovative ideas that relate to its strategic portfolio. The foundation seldom funds unsolicited proposals not explicitly designed to yield systemic, large-scale, or nationwide impact. For example, programs bringing thousands of students to a quality credential in a city may be considered if there are explicit strategies for replication across multiple cities targeting systemic change.