Assembly Grant Program

Overview

The demand for flexible, personalized learning options is on the rise. Whether families are looking for learning options to supplement or replace the traditional school experience, however, their access to those options too often depends on their financial means and the time and energy they can devote to identifying the options that work best for them. The scale of family demand and the increasing complexity of the learning ecosystem demand new scalable and sustainable solutions to the challenges of navigation. 

The Assembly Grant Program will provide grants of up to $100,000 to organizations designing or developing new solutions to help families furthest from opportunity access flexible, personalized learning options. Select grantees will be invited to apply for a second round of up to $300,000 in funding to support implementation in early 2024.

Grant Purpose 

Grant funding may be used to support a wide variety of activities, including user research or stakeholder engagement to identify unmet needs; the design of new tools, resources, or approaches to providing support to families; or the piloting of advancements in new technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence) or services and their refinement in response to feedback. What applications must do is propose a new solution that will improve how families access one or more of the following: 

• Funding: Streamline how families enroll in programs that provide public funding to defray the costs of learning options. 
• Information: Provide the information families value most in searching for and selecting available learning options. 
• Guidance: Support families in selecting learning options, including but not limited to the quality of options and how options align to students’ individual needs. 

Bellwether will give special consideration to applications that propose: 

• Partnerships between two or more eligible entities that enable coordinated solutions for families and students furthest from opportunity. 
• Solutions that have leveraged or will leverage user research, humancentered design, and/or stakeholder engagement to ensure solutions are responsive to the experiences, needs, and perspectives of families and students furthest from opportunity. 
• Solutions that facilitate participation in and satisfaction with publicly funded programs in which 

1. families have direct control over funding, 
2. families can use funding for a variety of learning options that either supplement or supplant a traditional school experience, and 
3. families can use funding for a variety of learning expenses that may include but are not limited to school tuition. 

Publicly funded programs include but are not limited to education savings account programs or microgrant programs.

An eligible entity may not be the lead on more than one application. The internal application is available on InfoReady.

Phase 1 Outcome Metrics: Phase 1 metrics should communicate ambitious, reasonable, and measurable goals for what the applicant intends to accomplish with up to $100,000 in funding over a period of approximately 3 months. 
Phase 1 metrics should: 

1. Define reasonable, measurable outputs of the applicants’ work. We imagine that this will often include the design of a deliverable or the achievement of an important milestone in the design or development of your solution. 
2. Describe how the applicant will provide evidence of the design or development of its solution by the end of Phase 1.

Phase 2 Outcome Metrics: 
Phase 2 metrics should communicate ambitious, reasonable, and measurable goals for outcomes the applicant intends to realize with up to $300,000 in funding over a period of approximately 6 months. Phase 2 metrics should: 

1. Define reasonable, measurable outcomes of the applicants’ work. The metrics should position the applicant to measure whether their solution is increasing access to flexible learning options. 
2. Describe how the applicant will provide evidence of the implementation of their solution by the end of Phase 2. 

Phase 1 grantees who are invited to apply for Phase 2 will have an opportunity to revise these metrics as part of the Phase 2 application process.