Our Sponsors

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is the statistics, research, and evaluation arm of the U.S. Department of Education. We are independent and non-partisan. Our mission is to provide scientific evidence on which to ground education practice and policy and to share this information in formats that are useful and accessible to educators, parents, policymakers, researchers, and the public.

Strong Start to Finish (SSTF), an initiative of Education Commission of the States, is a national initiative aimed at significantly increasing the number and proportion of low-income students, students of color, and returning adults who succeed in college math and English. We are a network of like-minded individuals and organizations from the policy, research, and practice spaces who’ve come together for one reason — to help all students, not just the select few, find success in postsecondary education.

Strong Start to Finish was created to better the chances of these students, to create a fundamental shift in the outcome of their college journey. We have networked higher education leaders, policy entrepreneurs, institutions and technical assistance providers to drive towards an outcome where all students pass their first credit-bearing English and math courses during the first year of study.

The Joyce Foundation is a nonpartisan private foundation that invests in public policies and strategies to advance racial equity and economic mobility for the next generation in the Great Lakes region.

We support policy research, development, and advocacy in five areas: Education & Economic Mobility, Environment, Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform, Democracy, and Culture. Joyce focuses its grant making in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin, and partners with funders to explore promising policy solutions in other states or at the federal level.

Ascendium Education Group is the nation’s largest federal student loan guarantor, a leading postsecondary education philanthropy and a provider of student success services for postsecondary institutions. Ascendium, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, provides information, tools and counseling to help millions of borrowers nationwide avoid default and keep the door to re-enrollment open. Ascendium’s philanthropic mission is to elevate opportunities and outcomes for learners from low-income backgrounds so they can better achieve postsecondary educational and career success.