A pooled fund of $1.5 million launched by seven foundations to support out-of-school-time (OST) programs during the COVID-19 pandemic bolstered efforts to advocate for and increase federal relief funding for the field, a report from Grantmakers for Education finds.

Organized by Grantmakers for Education, the Afterschool and Summer Recovery and Opportunity Fund was supported by Susan Crown Exchange and the Wallace, Bezos Family, S.D. Bechtel, Jr., Charles Stewart Mott, New York Life, and Overdeck Family foundations to heighten awareness among policy makers and others of the importance of the sector, which includes afterschool, summer, and other beyond-the-school-bell programs. Recipients of grants from the fund, which included the Afterschool Alliance, National Urban League, the National Indian Education Association, and the Coalition for Community Schools, were awarded flexible funding to support projects with maximum impact, meet regularly to share information from the sector, and write reports that provided recommendations to funders.

Based on their experiences, the grantees wrote a report, Grantmaking Practices to Support Equity and Sustainability in Out-of-School Time (14 pages, PDF), with recommendations for OST funders, including providing nonprofits more flexibility in defining grant outcomes that meet their priorities, getting community output into foundation initiatives, and putting longer grant cycles into place. According to Wallace Foundation director of learning and enrichment Gigi Antoni, the foundation is rethinking its approach to OST grantmaking and recently released a broad call for first-round applicants to a forthcoming one-year venture in an effort to generate interest from more diverse applicants.

“To date, we believe about $5 billion in federal COVID dollars have been used to support afterschool and summer learning programs,” said Afterschool Alliance executive director Jodi Grant. “Normally, the federal budget is $1.3 billion for afterschool, so we’re talking about more than tripling that.”

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