AFT Innovation Fund

The Issue

 In 2009, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten announced the 1.4-million-member teachers' union would create an Innovation Fund to support its members' best ideas for school reform. Some reformers saw the new Innovation Fund-which is supported by both member contributions and grants from national foundations-as a potentially powerful idea for helping union, school district and community leaders to work together to improve student learning; others voiced concern that a union-led grantmaking effort would never identify or contribute to truly innovative ideas. Funders themselves wanted more clarity about what the Fund would accomplish.

In this high-stakes context and as a new grantmaker, the Innovation Fund sought help from Education First to create a clear business plan that spelled out grantmaking priorities and processes, how it would measure results and how it would function within AFT.

What We Did

Our goal was to inform the business plan and to clarify the unique niche that a union-led grantmaking effort could fill. To do that Education First examined the political and reform landscape the Fund was operating in and sought out and synthesized the advice and perspective of dozens of advocates, researchers, union and district leaders and funders about the role it could play in identifying meaningful, innovative, teacher-designed reforms. We helped Fund leaders agree on three types of education innovations to initially develop test and refine with local union affiliates:

  1. New systems and relationships that cultivate and measure effective teaching system-wide;
  2. Professional pathways and new compensation systems that enable educators to have different roles, responsibilities and rewards;
  3. High quality, scalable public school options that address the unique needs of struggling schools.

Next, we linked these priorities with a specific grantmaking strategy-for example, how many grantees, what amount of grant awards, what support to provide applicants, how the Fund's work would evolve over time-and developed a theory of change specifying the short- and long-term, measureable changes in classroom practices and student outcomes the Fund's investments would achieve. To complete the business plan, Education First advised AFT leaders on an evaluation design for the Fund, leadership and staffing needs and organization and required resources.

The Outcome

Since it began grantmaking, the AFT Innovation Fund has made 20 strategic grants in its defined priority areas, financing promising union-district collaborations intended to create model reforms for improving teacher effectiveness and new school designs. Grants include teacher-led charter schools, an institute for labor/management collaboration, and union-district partnerships to revamp teacher evaluations. Beginning in 2011 the Fund will also support teacher-led efforts to integrate the Common Core Standards into classrooms.  The Fund is now utilizing the expertise of some of the nation's most astute education experts-our teachers-to inform what changes can make the greatest difference for students.

Why It Matters

The AFT Innovation Fund is a unique, nonprofit venture fund that is engaging a major teachers' union and its members in co-creating and testing solutions to today's most pressing education problems. AFT has 1.5 million member teachers and other school personnel located primarily in large cities, giving the Fund an important vantage point. Its grantmaking priorities reflect real areas of work where new approaches for union, management/school district and community leaders to work together to improve student learning will be essential, where teamwork and strategic collective action can increase educator capacities, and where changes to union-district contracts may need to be identified and negotiated.