Announcing our First Impact Team Investments

By Alex Hernandez

Charter School Growth Fund (“CSGF”) identifies the nation’s best charter schools and funds their expansion so they can serve more families. The 50+ school networks we support serve over 250,000 students this year and, in the next decade, they will serve over 1 million students.

We support amazing organizations. But to serve 1 million students in world-class schools, there is still a lot of investment and innovation that needs to happen.

Over the next five years, CSGF’s Impact Team is investing $15 million to support schools in our portfolio 1) to build the infrastructure they need to grow with quality, 2) develop new innovations; and 3) share best practices.

We are excited to announce our first three investments:

Infrastructure: KIPP LA Human Capital Transformation Project

We are supporting KIPP LA to redesign their talent systems as they grow their family to over 1,000 staff members. KIPP LA wants to be a national leader in staff satisfaction, growth and retention and the transformation project, if successful, will boost the organization’s standing as a destination for talented educators. CSGF believes scalable talent systems are critical to the continued success of high-performing charter school networks and many other CSGF portfolio members will learn from KIPP LA as they make similar journeys.

Innovation: Valor Collegiate’s Social Emotional Learning Program “Compass”

Valor Collegiate, a new charter school network, has developed a sophisticated social-emotional learning program, called Compass, that we believe is one of the most promising in the country. Our investment will help Valor design and codify their approach so they can share it with other charter school networks through a free set of online resources and a cohort-based training model.

Sharing: KIPP Wheatley Common Core-aligned K-8 Literacy Program

We are helping the KIPP Foundation share KIPP: Wheatley, a Common Core-aligned K-8 literacy curriculum, with interested CSGF portfolio members. Schools have limited options for high-quality English language arts materials and this partnership provides another option for schools in our portfolio. We believe its important to help schools make the instructional shifts necessary to meet the more rigorous Common Core standards.

Together these investments represent a first step in helping CSGF portfolio members accelerate their impact. To learn more about Impact Team investments, please contact your CSGF relationship manager or contact us directly here.

***

Additional Information for Those Seeking Impact Team Investments

We want to invest in charter school networks that are creating sector-leading solutions that other schools may be interested in adopting. Practically speaking, we are more likely to back a team with a prior history of success in an area and who is looking to take that work to the next level. We are unlikely to use Impact Team dollars to bolster an area of historical weakness for an organization. However, we do have the flexibility to back promising innovations created by A+ teams where there is a more limited track record.

Because of our familiarity with the needs of charter school operators, we can get excited by high-impact ideas that are not always on the radar of other grant-making foundations. For example, we are interested in how to use social media analytics to expand the pool of potential teachers during recruiting. Nothing is too wonky or esoteric for us if it can make a positive difference for students and teachers.

Our strategy is to “pull” the best ideas coming from high-performing charter school networks, not “push” a specific set of grant-making priorities.

Impact Team investments can range from $10k to $750k. Because we have limited capital, we will make 4–6 larger investments per year (>$250k) and a series of smaller investments. Here are few illustrative examples:

A $10k grant to pilot a new approach to increase college persistence or workforce preparation.

A $25–50k capacity-grant to explore new ways to improve teacher recruiting.

A $150k grant to further develop and codify sector-leading practices in student enrollment and retention.

A $500k infrastructure investment to deepen family engagement.

A $500+k grant to digitize a world-class curriculum for your teachers and open access to other networks.