Partnership for Education Advancement: Empowering HBCUs and Driving Socioeconomic Mobility

Introduction

The Partnership for Education Advancement (Ed Advancement) is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to bolstering Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) through sustainable strategies. These strategies transform enrollment, enhance institutional performance, and foster student success. Ed Advancement's mission is deeply rooted in advancing socioeconomic mobility for historically under-resourced students while preserving and expanding the crucial role of HBCUs as drivers of racial equity and social justice.

Core Principles and Mission

Ed Advancement operates on a set of guiding principles:

Alignment with Student Success: Resources and investments are strategically aligned with students' future success, ensuring evident and measurable outcomes.
Empowering Minority-Serving Institutions: Acknowledging and upholding the capacity of minority-serving institutions, including HBCUs, to lead equity efforts.
Sustainable Transformation: Prioritizing solutions that are sustainable, scalable, and broadly adoptable.
Collaborative and Comprehensive Approach: Employing a collaborative, in-depth, and comprehensive approach to evaluating current policies, practices, and infrastructure. This approach also involves developing detailed, tailored, and innovative strategies for each institution.

The organization's mission is to support social mobility by strengthening mission-focused colleges and universities that primarily serve low-income, first-generation, and under-resourced students and families. Ed Advancement is committed to ensuring more students of color, first-generation, and low-income students earn a college degree.

Strategic Solutions & Initiatives

Ed Advancement provides strategic, operational solutions that are immediately employable, financially sustainable, and logistically sustainable for its partners. The intention is for implemented solutions to drive growth (and/or reduce costs) ensuring institutions can maintain solutions within their operating budget over the long term. The organization identifies opportunities for and supports significant investments in the operational and technical framework of its partner institutions by funding infrastructure improvements that are often cost prohibitive due to historic and systemic underfunding.

Collaborative Partnerships for Collective Benefits

Partnership and collaboration are core to Ed Advancement's solution development. By developing deep partnerships with institutions and encouraging collaboration on shared services, they create a network effect where a single institution's success yields collective benefits for many.

Technology-Driven Solutions

Ed Advancement provides operations and technology-driven solutions to HBCUs to help them better serve their students. Understanding the importance of technology in today's educational landscape, Ed Advancement actively seeks opportunities to integrate innovative tools and platforms that enhance the student experience and improve institutional efficiency.

Front Porch Portal

Members of the Ed Advancement team supported installation of the Front Porch Portal at Benedict College. It serves as a virtual one-stop shop for students - a centralized hub that delivers key information, support services, and timely communications based on where students are in their lifecycle. The implementation process combines pre-work with on-campus sessions to significantly decrease work for partner institutions.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Following a thorough discovery process and series of conversations with HBCU leaders, Ed Advancement developed a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) specifically tailored to address gaps in operations, technology, and processes-from recruitment through alumni giving-that partner HBCUs identified as priorities.

Digital Engagement Platform (Raftr)

Ed Advancement offered partner institutions the opportunity to pilot a digital engagement platform designed to increase awareness of campus resources and foster a sense of belonging provided by Raftr. The campus-branded mobile platform simplifies message delivery to students and families in a way that is meaningful, collaborative, and social. Since launching the admitted student and parent/family solutions among seven pilot schools, the tool has seen high adoption rates and message exchange.

AI Chatbot and SMS Messaging Service (Mainstay)

With three partner HBCUs, Ed Advancement piloted a managed service AI chatbot and SMS messaging service, provided by Mainstay, which provides students 24/7 support, saving hundreds of staff hours and getting critical information to students faster, improving the enrollment process - and the overall student experience. In the first quarter of using Mainstay’s tool, the pilot institutions saved hundreds of hours and their bots handled tens of thousands of messages.

Mental Health Support

Understanding the importance of student well-being, Ed Advancement supports initiatives that address mental health needs. For example, at Virginia State University (VSU), Dr. ProtoCall, a digital tele-health platform, will provide stepped-care behavioral health options for VSU students that require mental health care, after hours and during business hours if no clinician is available.

Supporting Financial Aid Processes

Ed Advancement also provides consulting and staffing support to its institutional partners as they work to assemble and deliver financial aid packages through the new Better FAFSA. Through their FAFSA College Support Strategy, the Department of Education is providing support to under-resourced higher education institutions as they work to assemble student financial aid packages amid the delayed rollout of Better FAFSA. Ed Advancement is one of the nonprofit partners tapped to support this endeavor. The team's expertise in financial aid, higher ed operations, and enrollment management enables them to help prepare institutions to award aid on a compressed timeline. They provide training and surge support, including supporting institutions to make upgrades to optimize student information systems and streamline the import of FAFSA data while decreasing future risk.

Collaborative Network

Ed Advancement's network includes organizations that value the important role of colleges and universities, like HBCUs, in advancing socioeconomic mobility for historically underrepresented students. Partnership for Education Advancement and Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF) have launched a landmark collaboration to drive tangible, long-term progress across historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and impact the Black economy. These organizations are deeply committed to collaborative partnerships with colleges and universities, working hand in hand to advance the core missions of these institutions. Their approach involves crafting tailor-made, scalable, and enduring solutions designed to empower these academic institutions in fulfilling their commitment to students.

The Future of AI in Education

Broad-Access Institutions Could Lead Higher Ed’s AI Future. This work reflects our broader commitment to helping institutions use data and technology thoughtfully in service of student experience and institutional goals. Collaboration is central to how they adapt and innovate. With support and collaboration from technology companies and philanthropies, broad-access institutions can ensure that AI becomes a force for expanded access and mobility rather than a roadblock to student journeys. AI can close or widen existing divides. Just as important as technology is the implementation approach.

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