Innovation Fund Grant Reports

This is the story of a community schools initiative launched in Rome, N.Y., and expanded regionally with support from the AFT Innovation Fund. The case study focuses on the origins of the community schools initiative launched by the Rome Teachers Association, and scaled and sustained by a partnership that is now expanding across regions of New York to support students, parents, families and community members. (2021)

Since 2009, the AFT Innovation Fund has made more than 80 investments in grants to local union affiliates nationwide with the purpose of identifying, nurturing and promoting union-led innovations in public education. With the onset of the pandemic, the Innovation Fund quickly pivoted, temporarily, from long-term grantmaking to supporting smaller grants to meet local and state affiliates’ immediate needs, as they grappled with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. In fall 2020, the AFT Innovation Fund awarded a first round of smaller grants to 12 local affiliates, supporting them as they adapted to the new public health reality. This booklet highlights how these grantees leveraged their grant awards. (2021)

This report focuses on the priorities, activities and outcomes achieved in two communities: Pittsburgh, Pa., and Peoria, Ill. These two communities used three years of grant funding from the AFT Innovation Fund to the local teachers unions to launch, strengthen and build out two very different approaches to modernizing high school CTE efforts to support students from school to career. (2021)