Carnegie Corporation of New York is committed to supporting effective partnerships between families and schools and to fostering innovation in the family engagement field. Under my leadership, the Communications team has played a vital role in advancing those objectives.

Since 2019, we have released three reports focused on family engagement, conducted a Gallup survey exploring family perspectives on postsecondary success, and published dozens of web stories on the topic. Family engagement was also a theme within the Spring 2021 education issue of the Carnegie Reporter magazine. This sustained focus has established the Corporation as leader on family engagement in the philanthropic sector. It has also enabled us to foster relationships with people in the field who see us as trusted experts in this area, so we can continually reengage and grow that audience as we host events or have new resources to share.

In 2021, there were nearly 80,000 unique page views for stories in the Family and Community Engagement topic on our website. The teaser story summarizing key findings from our June 2021 report, Embracing a New Normal: Toward a More Liberatory Approach to Family Engagement, alone drew more than 60,000 unique page views and generated more than 3,000 downloads for the paper in its first year since publication. The report has also been cited widely and uploaded to many state, district, and family-focused education association online resource libraries, a measure of field influence.  

In fall 2021, the communications team helped the Education program promote its first-ever Request for Proposals to select new family engagement grantees. Working hand-in-hand with the Education team and my communications colleagues, we developed a creative digital campaign to promote the opportunity and ensure an enthusiastic response. Based on the hypothesis that news of a grant opportunity is the kind of content that people would share widely, the communications team sent a designed mass email to current grantees, peers in the philanthropic sector, and attendees of our “Better Together” webinar, providing an easy-to-use communications toolkit with social media graphics. Paid social promotion also targeted individuals with an interest in family engagement, with specific attention to reaching regions and states typically underfunded by philanthropy.

Based on lessons learned from recent RFPs in other program areas, I encouraged the education team to design a selection process that would allow for efficient winnowing of the application pool and helped them develop that process. An initial eligibility survey quickly screened 956 applicants to identify 345 eligible organizations. Applicants were asked to provide a short, 200-word expression of interest, allowing the Education team to easily identify ideas best aligned with the RFP goals — 60 organizations were then invited to submit fuller concept papers. Of those organizations, 15 were invited to interviews and 10 were selected as finalists. The winning organizations are diverse, with tailored strategies to strengthen family-teacher partnerships based on the discrete needs of the communities they serve. Among the organizations selected, four are in states that are typically underfunded by national funders. Two of the finalists work with Native Americans and Indigenous peoples, and four were founded or are led by Hispanic or Black leaders. One organization supports grandparents raising their grandchildren; another supports parents of children with special needs.

In early 2023, we produced a six-part webinar series focused on family engagement in partnership with the U.S. Department of Education and Overdeck Family Foundation. We also released a new paper, Becoming an Ally: Partnering with Immigrant Families to Promote Student Success, that was launched at one of those webinars focused on the same topic. We anticipate a second RFP will seek family engagement grantees whose work is aligned with the report’s recommendations.

Looking ahead, we also have sponsored a partnership with Roadtrip Nation that will culminate in production of a 2023 family-engagement focused documentary that will air on PBS and in community screenings around the country. The documentary will feature many of our foundation’s family engagement grantees, including those selected via the RFP process, enabling us to share lessons from those organization’s experiences while elevating the conversation around the importance of family engagement to student success.