California Student Parent Pooled Fund 2025

The Michelson 20MM Foundation is seeking applications for its California Student Parent Pooled Fund

Donor Name: Michelson 20MM Foundation

State: California

County: All Counties

Type of Grant: Grant

Deadline: 08/24/2025

Size of the Grant: $10,000 to $100,000

Grant Duration: 2 Years

Details:

The initiative addresses the unique challenges student parents face and lays the groundwork for activities that connect advocates to prevent the fragmentation of student-parent work in California. The fund grounds its work in a multi-generational approach that supports the whole family unit in accessing new resources, solving problems, and sharpening existing skills.

The Student Parent Pooled Fund champions the needs of student parents. It lays the groundwork to connect student parent work across California while promoting equity and systemic change. The goal is to support the whole family unit by investing in multi-generational solutions that advance education, economic opportunity, and family well-being.

Funding Priorities

The Student Parent Pooled Fund will prioritize efforts in five key areas:

Research and Practice
- Research that informs improved data collection of student parents across California’s higher education systems.
- Research that analyzes progress made across California’s higher education systems in supporting student parents as well as the efficacy of supports including but not limited to housing, childcare, food and nutrition, and workforce programs.
- Efforts that advance/scale programmatic best practices and evidence-based models in support of student parents.
Movement Building
- Work that catalyzes and scales student parent learning communities, student parent communities of practice, student parent coalitions, student parent networks, student parent clubs, peer-to-peer support models.
Education, Awareness, and Narrative Change
- Efforts that provide statewide technical assistance to organizations and institutions focused on increasing their servingness of student parents.
- Statewide public awareness campaigns that uplift the needs of student parents, especially those from historically marginalized backgrounds, including but not limited to Black, Indigenous, people of color, women, low-income, older than 30, and first-generation college students.
- Efforts that convene student parents, student parent advocates, and practitioners from throughout California to learn and share best practices.
Policy Advocacy
- Efforts that inform institutional and legislative leaders about the needs of student parents with the end goal of affecting systemic change.
- Efforts that coalesce the student parent community in California to advance state-level change for student parents.
- Efforts that expand benefits access for both parent and child