Leveraging Innovation in Education: An Act-Now Opportunity for #GivingTuesday

Today is #GivingTuesday™ and with the holidays approaching, many donors may be starting to think about end-of-year giving. One way to think about increasing the impact of that giving is leverage: If your gift to an organization helps bring in additional funds from other sources, the impact of your own gift is extended. The federal Department of Education announced new winners in the i3 Investing in Innovation Fund competition. Several of these organizations have been profiled or mentioned in our past donor guidance, and several others are likely candidates for profiling in future. The winners are divided into two categories: “validation,” in which organizational models are based on moderate levels of evidence, and “development,” in which organizations present relatively untested ideas that nonetheless have a high potential for impact. This was a highly competitive selection process: the 20 top-rated winners were chosen from among 727 applications. Here’s the catch:  winners have less than two weeks—until December 7^th—to raise a percentage of matching funds (10% and 15% for validation and development grants, respectively) from other sources or they don’t get the money from the feds. So if you are a donor interested in education and likely to make some additional gifts before the end of the year, this is an opportunity for leverage you may want to think about. The list of winning organizations is below.