The Advancing Workforce Mobility initiative is a collaborative effort led by Education Design Lab, in technical partnership with Credential Engine, and made possible by a foundational grant from Walmart.
Donor Name: Education Design Lab
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 02/20/2026
Size of the Grant: $500,000 to $1 million
Grant Duration: Grant Duration Not Mentioned
Details:
Education Design Lab (The Lab) invites you to join in transforming how workers’ skills are recognized, shared, and valued. This $3.5 million fund will support up to 12 innovative projects designed to help workers that are Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs: working adults who have developed valuable skills through pathways other than a bachelor’s degree, such as military service, community college, work experience, boot camps, or self-directed learning) connect their skills to quality jobs, advancing solutions that can contribute to systems-level change overtime.
Meeting this challenge requires collective action, and scalable infrastructures, tools, partnerships, and models that:
- Make credential and skills data more transparent, connected, and machine-readable (easily processed by digital systems and tools)
- Validate skills developed in real-world settings
- Demonstrate what “quality” looks like in non-degree credentials, in ways that are inclusive and meaningful to both workers and employers.
- Use AI to enhance skills assessment, validation, and credential transparency, and ensure these innovations follow responsible, equitable, and privacy-safe practices.
Funding Tracks
- Advance Credential Quality and Transparency
- Validate Skills Gained via Non-Traditional Learning Pathways.
Funding Tiers
The Lab will award a total of $3,500,000 across an anticipated portfolio of 7-12 grant awards.
- Explore – up to $250,000
- Demonstrate – up to $400,000
- Scale – up to $600,000.
Grant Period
Anticipated grant term: 18 months.
Eligibility Criteria
You are eligible if you are a U.S.-based organization that either:
- Is a 501(c) nonprofit organization, including 501(c)(3), 501(c)(4), 501(c)(5), or 501(c)(6), or
- Has a .gov domain, or
- Is a public entity
- You must also be able to:
- Receive and manage grant funds
- Center STARs in your project design
- Participate in the learning cohort and contribute to shared field insights.
- You must also be able to:
For more information, visit Education Design Lab.
