Open Letter of Inquiry

Overview

ECMC Foundation enables postsecondary success by investing in ideas, institutions, and innovations that help learners persist, complete their credentials, and move into meaningful careers. Through strategic grantmaking, mission-aligned investments, and a clear North Star goal that guides our work, we partner with organizations across the country to strengthen systems and support for learners furthest from opportunities.

Our North Star goal anchors all strategic decisions: By 2040 gaps in postsecondary completion are eliminated, so that underserved learners have greater opportunity for social and economic mobility.

The Challenge: Addressing Persistent Barriers to Postsecondary Completion and Success
Learners continue to encounter economic hardship, competing responsibilities, limited information, and unclear pathways. These challenges impede persistence and completion across postsecondary education. Our North Star goal calls for sustained, evidence-informed approaches that strengthen systems and improve outcomes at scale. Learn about the work we are doing with our grantees and investees 

Our Strategic Approach: How We Advance Our North Star
We advance our North Star goal through a focused, multi-pronged strategy that strengthens postsecondary systems that are no longer effectively serving students. Our work centers on identifying promising ideas, scaling effective implementation, and investing in solutions with potential to grow and sustain impact. Across all efforts, we prioritize evidence, collaboration, and continuous learning – ensuring that insights guide decisions and help strengthen the field over time. Explore our Funding Approach 

Our Funding Portfolios

• Strategically Responsive Portfolio The Strategically Responsive Portfolio keeps ECMC Foundation attentive to emerging needs and opportunities in postsecondary education. Through exploratory bodies of work, the Foundation listens to what practitioners identify as most urgent, tracks new trends, and supports timely solutions. This portfolio fuels innovative projects that address barriers to learner success and respond to evolving needs across postsecondary education. Learn More
• Initiatives Portfolio The Strategically Responsive Portfolio keeps ECMC Foundation attentive to emerging needs and opportunities in postsecondary education. Through exploratory bodies of work, the Foundation listens to what practitioners identify as most urgent, tracks new trends, and supports timely solutions. This portfolio fuels innovative projects that address barriers to learner success and respond to evolving needs across postsecondary education. Learn More
• Education Innovation Ventures (EIV) Education Innovation Ventures (EIV) provides catalytic capital to early-stage nonprofit and for-profit ventures that advance both social impact and financial sustainability. Through program-related investments (PRIs), EIV helps promising innovations grow, scale, and demonstrate measurable value for learners. This portfolio supports entrepreneurs and organizations bringing new technology, tools, and models to the postsecondary space. Learn More

Our Strategic Priorities: How We Focus Our Funding
While each portfolio operates with distinct purpose, all three are united by a shared set of strategic priorities. These priorities are the core of ECMC Foundation’s strategic framework and guide our grantmaking and investing efforts. They help ensure that our resources are directed toward the approaches most likely to strengthen postsecondary education, drive meaningful improvement, and advance our North Star goal.

Together, these priorities create a coherent, mission-driven structure for how we select, learn from, and support the work of partners across the nation.

1. Remove Barriers to Postsecondary Completion: We support solutions that help learners persist and complete postsecondary programs, particularly when obstacles stand in the way of progress. This includes efforts that strengthen academic and non-academic supports, and streamline pathways that lead to completion.
2. Build the Capacity of Institutions, Systems and Organizations: Strong institutions are essential to strong learner outcomes. We invest in efforts that enhance organizational effectiveness, strengthen leadership infrastructure, improve data use, and help systems better serve their students. These investments create the foundation for long-term improvement.
3. Transform the Postsecondary Ecosystem: Lasting progress requires rethinking how systems work together. We support innovations, partnerships, and policy-informed efforts that evolve the postsecondary ecosystem into one that is more adaptive, resilient, and responsive to learners. This priority aims to spur systematic change that affects the field at scale.

Grants Submission Process: ECMC Foundation accepts and reviews Letters of Inquiry (LOIs) via our online system on a rolling basis. All LOIs must demonstrate how the project-based concept fits within one of our three strategic priorities and advances the Foundation’s North Star goal. (For your convenience, you can preview the form template here.)

Award(s): ECMC Foundation makes grants and investments with durations ranging from one year to five years and amounts from $50,000 to over one million dollars. The grant period and funding amount varies based on the proposed request, however our average grant duration is two years and our average grant size is $500,000. 

See Sponsor FAQs