Raikes Foundation

📢 We’re hiring a Senior Program Officer to work alongside leaders driving real change in our public education system. We believe every young person deserves access to a fair, future-ready education that prepares them for economic opportunity, well-being, and civic leadership in a rapidly changing world. We’re looking for a strategic leader to help shape and execute our national education strategy with our Director of the National Education Strategy, Gini Pupo-Walker. The role requires a systems-oriented operator who can connect policy, practice, innovation, research, and field leadership into durable change. In this role, you'll co-develop a national portfolio of initiatives, convene cross-sector leaders, manage grants and partnerships driving policy and narrative change, and support learning grounded in real-world impact. Full-time, remote, with up to 40% travel. Greater Seattle area preferred. If this sounds like the next chapter you’ve been working toward, or someone in your network comes to mind, we’d love to hear from you. #philanthropyjobs #socialimpactjobs https://lnkd.in/g7-wZZSF

We’re proud to partner with Greg Gorder and Val Gorder to support Jamie Eymann’s Equal Justice Works fellowship with Legal Counsel for Youth and Children!  Jamie's work will expand holistic gender-based-violence related legal advocacy for young people experiencing housing instability in King County. Grateful for their leadership to reduce inequities in youth homelessness. 

Democracy is strongest when people have the voice, choice, and power to shape their own lives. Elections are one essential way that everyday people make their voices heard — and how they hold leaders accountable to the communities they serve. Whether elections actually work for regular people depends on the rules and practices surrounding them. When those systems and policies are unclear, inaccessible, or inconsistently applied, it's everyday people that lose. And right now, election policy is changing rapidly across the country, with real consequences for who can participate and how. We invest in the conditions that make democracy representative and responsive. That's why we partner with Voting Rights Lab. Their 50-state election policy tracker follows what's moving in legislatures across the country, so advocates, organizers, and everyday people can stay informed and get engaged.

Homelessness doesn’t always look the way people expect. Kai is one of the more than 12,000 young people experiencing housing instability in Washington state. His story highlights the challenges facing young people and the power of the support that meets them where they are.  Schultz Family Foundation partnered with Kalina Silverman to hear directly from young people like Kai. Take a minute to watch his story. Then share with us: what stuck with you from Kai’s story? 

Every child deserves an education that prepares them for meaningful work, for civic life, and for a future we can't yet fully see. That requires us to protect what works in our public schools and to transform what doesn't. To fight for fairness and fund it. To build learning environments where every student belongs and every student is ready for what comes next. Seventy-two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that every child in America has the right to a high-quality public education.  That promise has never been fully kept. And today, it’s under renewed pressure as budget cuts, tax incentives, and disinformation threaten to undermine public education. At the same time, the world our young people are inheriting is changing faster than our schools have been designed to keep up with. Honoring Brown v. Board today means more than protecting what exists right now. It means reimagining what's possible.  The promise at the heart of Brown—that every child deserves the chance to thrive—is still worth fighting for. #BrownvBoard #PublicEducation #EdMatters #FutureReady 

What does it take to create lasting change in a college classroom? The Student Experience Project (SEP) brings together university leaders and faculty around a shared belief: when students feel like they belong, they learn better.  By embedding evidence-based teaching practices across campuses, SEP helps transform how educators approach the classroom. The results have proven to be long-lasting. Belonging isn't just "nice to have." It's a core condition for student success. And when institutions commit to centering student experience, the benefits extend to faculty and campus culture too. Grateful to our partners PERTS, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), Equity Accelerator and others who continue leading this work. #HigherEducation #StudentExperience

The moment a young person ages out of foster care shouldn't be the moment their safety net disappears. Washington decided to do something about that. Between 2017 and 2021, homelessness among young people exiting foster care in the state dropped from 26 percent to 15 percent.  That progress was driven by deliberate choices: coordinating across state agencies and investing in transition support to help make sure young people weren't falling through cracks. The result is fewer young people relying on emergency systems and more with stable housing, better employment outcomes, and a smoother path forward. Recently, our team had the chance to visit Cocoon House to see some of this prevention work up close. We're grateful to them and to all of our partners across the field doing the daily work of making sure young people have somewhere safe to land. #FosterCareAwarenessMonth #YouthHomelessness

Youth homelessness rarely comes out of nowhere. It often starts with a moment—a missed rent payment, a family conflict, a job disruption—when the right support, at the right time, could have changed everything. Point Source Youth's Targeted Housing Assistance Program (THAP) is built on that insight. Rather than waiting for a challenge to turn into a crisis, THAP reaches young people on the verge of homelessness and gets flexible funds into their hands within 48 hours.  Whether it’s a security deposit on a new apartment or a car repair so they can make it to work, THAP gets young people the support they need to stay safely housed. New research from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health shows it works: 92% of participants didn't enter the homelessness system within six months. Solutions work best when they're shaped by the people closest to the problem. We’re proud to support partners who lead that way.

Student-centered teaching boosts success for every student.  Yet many colleges and universities don’t consistently support and elevate this essential skill with their faculty.  We’re proud to have partnered with field leaders to launch the Alliance for Better College Teaching, a national coalition of organizations committed to changing that. The Alliance will produce research briefs, develop approaches to measure teaching excellence, and pilot evidence-based teaching design across a network of colleges. Coordinated, field-wide efforts like this are exactly what's needed to strengthen higher education for students navigating a rapidly changing world. #TeachingExcellence #HigherEducation 

This Teacher Appreciation Week, we're grateful for every teacher doing the essential, often underappreciated work of preparing the next generation of leaders. And a special shout-out to the former teachers on our own team, now working to build an education system where every young person has the opportunity to thrive. 📸 #TeacherAppreciationWeek