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WHO WE ARE

Grantmakers for Education is a membership organization for private and public philanthropies that support improved education outcomes for students from early childhood through higher education. GFE promotes dialogue, inquiry, and learning to strengthen practice within the field of education philanthropy, by enhancing grantmakers’ knowledge about effective education strategies and effective grantmaking strategies.

Founded in 1995, GFE is the only national organization representing the diversity of education philanthropy today. Our members include over 240 philanthropies throughout the country that bring broad and different strategies and approaches to their work.

GFE understands that grantmakers investing gifts of money, time or expertise to improve education face important challenges. Among them,

Too many children enter school without important skills, and too few leave school ready for college or the amplified demands of today’s workplace.
Deep achievement gaps divide children by race and income at all levels of the system.
Increasing public scrutiny, expectations and accountability for both educators and grantmakers are colliding with decreasing resources.

Yet, when approached wisely, we know that philanthropy--regardless of a grant's scope or size--can make a difference in improving the nation's education systems.

For additional information on our work, download GFE's:

Read more and register for GFE's 14th annual conference, The Fierce Urgency of Now: Fulfilling the Promise of Excellence and Equity. The conference is the nation's largest gathering of education grantmakers.

Read more and register for our web seminar, Making Education Matter: How Grantmakers are Building Public Will to Impact Education Policy.

Read our new report From Access to Success: A Funders' Guide to Ensuring More Americans Earn Postsecondary Degrees, which captures lessons from our recent member briefing.

Get the Buzz for the latest word in education grantmaking. Subscribe to the RSS feed, to be notified whenever a new item appears in Buzz.

Deepen your strategic grantmaking with Benchmarking 2009, GFE's annual report on trends in education philanthropy. Learn what Education Week says about the impact the report is having on the field of education reform.

Listen to Secretary Arne Duncan’s June 24th call with education grantmakers.

Access new GFE member benefits, including Philanthropy In/Sight, a dynamic mapping tool from the Foundation Center, and a discounted subscription to Foundation Review, the peer-reviewed quarterly from the Johnson Center for Philanthropy.

View GFE's web seminar: Expanded Learning Opportunities: A Key Lever to Turn Around Low-Performing Schools. 07/15/2010 (~ 1 hr)

presentation slides

streaming audio

Watch provocative suggestions from Secretary Arne Duncan, Professor Nichole Pinkard, Matt Miller, and Larry Keeley on how grantmakers can transform education, by transforming their own funding strategies.

Access resources from recent GFE programs. Stream audio, view slides, watch video and read presentations from GFE web seminars and our annual conference.

Peruse News to Use, GFE's members-only monthly newsletter, highlighting learning activities, new reports and critical developments in the field of education grantmaking.