Building the Economy of the Future

The Community Funding Accelerator exists at the intersection of education, workforce development, and economic mobility, with the understanding that challenges and outcomes in these sectors are deeply interconnected. By creating connections between education and other sectors we can drive meaningful education and economic mobility outcomes for communities across the U.S.

Real-world challenges:

In an era of deteriorating post-COVID education outcomes and challenges to American competitiveness, K-12 innovation has a central role to play. But if the last era of education reform happened too much in a silo, this next era must deeply integrate K-12 with other sectors to deliver on workforce and economic mobility outcomes. While there is an historic level of public and private funding available to make this linkage, many organisations and communities lack the capacity and resources to access this funding. The public funding landscape is also going through significant transition with states stepping forward as a new nexus of change and innovation.

The Community Funding Accelerator supports organisations and communities who center, elevate, and integrate K-12 in their workforce and economic mobility goals to navigate the highly complex world of public funding. The Community Funding Accelerator (CFA) provides direct technical assistance to these partners. In doing so, we will build their capacity to access public funding and use it to deliver education and mobility outcomes that build the workforce and economy of the future.

DA Approach

DA works with organizations, coalitions and government agencies across the US focused on economic mobility. With these partners we aim to:

• Raise awareness of public funding: Create and widely disseminate critical grant resources at no cost to the general public (Grants Tracker Tool, Grant Writers Guide)

• Mobilize coalitions to strengthen fundable ideas: Convene diverse local stakeholders and facilitate ideation workshops to harness the power of their ideas into fundable projects

• Develop competitive grant proposals: Co-write grant budgets, narratives, and metrics with communities to ensure they submit strong, comprehensive applications

• Ensure strong implementation of funds: Support winners with strategic planning, fundraising, and coaching expertise to kickstart their implementation

Implementation

Each community’s engagement with CFA is distinct and aligned to the community’s needs and the funding opportunity(ies) in question. Some examples of engagements include:

• CLSD implementation in Ohio, Massachusetts & Nebraska: CFA supported implementation of the Comprehensive Literacy State Development (CLSD) federal grant in three states during the critical pre-launch phase in 2025. Our scope included capacity reviews, implementation planning, and the development of progress monitoring systems tailored to each state's context.

• Recompete win & implementation in Birmingham: The EDA Distressed Area Recompete Pilot Program invests in distressed communities to create, and connect workers to good jobs. It has the potential to unlock $20 - $50 million for communities across the US. CFA partnered with the City of Birmingham to apply for and win $20.2M from the EDA and, subsequently, support implementation of their strategy to connect prime-age residents from four distressed communities to good jobs.

• Place based partnerships in Jacksonville, FL and Yakima Valley, WA: CFA is testing a new engagement model through which CFA works with a single community for a full year to improve their capacity to pursue public funds that align with their mobility priorities. In Jacksonville, FL CFA works with a coalition of workforce leaders led by Kids Hope Alliance to improve funding for workforce and education programming. In Yakima Valley, WA CFA partners with Yakima Valley Partners for Education to improve funding towards literacy, community belonging, post-secondary education, and other mobility efforts.

Impact  

• Detail the results accomplished through DA implementation and services. Use specific, quantifiable results to demonstrate the impact of the project. Example:

• CFA has worked with 47 unique communities to submit 17 winning applications totaling $279.23M (as of 9/2025)

• This represents a win rate of 39% on applications for competitive federal grants

• Winning communities collectively aim to positively impact almost 500,000 K12 students and create almost 12,000 jobs