THE NATION'S LARGEST GATHERING OF EDUCATION FUNDERS

Over 400 Education Grantmakers Honed Their Strategies, Strengthened Their Networks and Deepened Their Efforts to Improve Outcomes for All Learners

Funders from private and public philanthropies across the country convened October 26-29, 2010, in New Orleans, where five years after Hurricane Katrina, both the promise and the crisis of American education remain in sharp focus.

From early learning to postsecondary success . . . from out-of-school time to education policy . . . from site visits to case study seminars . . . from an urban town hall to a rural education tour—GFE’s 14th annual conference provided an exceptional range of opportunities for building knowledge and networks among education funders.

Even as we celebrated the resilience of the region and highlighted models of success from around the nation, grantmakers expressed a heightened sense of immediacy and a greater commitment to leveraging opportunities to ensure equity and excellence across America's education systems.
 
Highlights included:

• a TED-inspired plenary with provocative presentations by Norman Francis, president of Xavier University of Louisiana; Gary Knell, President of the Sesame Workshop; and Hilary Pennington, Director of Education, Postsecondary Success and Special Initiatives at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Stanford University's Linda Darling-Hammond and the American Enterprise Institute's Rick Hess debating competing visions for the future of American education
• a roundtable in which Kati Haycock and Delia Pompa challenged conference participants to examine our assumptions about how race and class affect education in America, highlighted gaps in our practice, and called on each of us to translate what we learned at the conference into bold and sustained action.

GFE, its members and our other conference participants now return to our work energized and motivated for the challenge of addressing the most daunting problems in American education. We look forward to sharing what we learned with colleagues across education philanthropy in the weeks and months ahead.
 

Join us October 3-5, 2011 in Los Angeles

Save the dates for our 15th annual conference. GFE members will receive the Call for Session Proposals in early 2011. Members also receive early registration discounts. To learn more about our Los Angeles conference, contact John Branam, john@edfunders.org or 503.595.2100.

To learn more about becoming a GFE member, contact Barbara Dibs, barbara@edfunders.org or 503.595.2100.