Grantmakers › Wisconsin

Ascendium Education Solutions Inc

Madison, WI · EIN 39-1853833. Reported 848 grants totalling $403.8M to 413 organizations across tax years 2021-2024, on Form 990 Schedule I.

Does this grantmaker accept applications?

Its tax return does not say, and we will not guess. Private foundations file Form 990-PF, which asks outright whether they fund only organizations they select themselves -- 78% say yes, and that one answer is what lets the rest of this site tell you which foundations are worth approaching. Grantmaking charities like this one file a regular Form 990 instead, and the IRS never puts the question to them. Anyone claiming to know the answer from the filing is inventing it.

Three things in the filing do bear on it:

1. What kind of organization it is. For Ascendium Education Solutions Inc, the IRS classifies it under education rather than as a grantmaker (NTEE B82Z) -- it is an operating charity that also makes grants.
2. How spread out its giving is. 413 distinct organizations, with 29% of the dollars going to the largest single recipient. That is genuinely spread out -- the mark of a funder making many independent decisions rather than underwriting one institution.
3. How much its list changes. 69% of one year's grantees are funded again the next, across 3 year-to-year transitions. That is about the 57% median for grantmaking charities -- noticeably lower than the 67% private foundations manage. Organizations like this one rotate more of their list each year, which is where an opening for a newcomer tends to be.

How big are its grants?

The median reported grant is $75,000. Half of what it reported fell between $25,100 and $381,297; the smallest was $5,000 and the largest $66.1M. If you are asking for materially more than the top of that range, you are asking the wrong organization.

Every organization it funded

All 413 recipients appear in its filings; the 250 largest are listed here. Years funded is the number of separate tax years in which the organization received money -- the clearest signal of who this grantmaker actually has a relationship with.

225 of 413 (54%) received money in more than one year over the 4 years we hold. Remember the $5,000 floor: an organization funded every year at $3,000 shows up here as never funded at all.

What the money was for

Taken verbatim from the purpose column of its filings, largest first. This is the closest thing to a statement of what it funds, in its own words.

• Strada Education Network Inc $66.1M · 2021
  support their philanthropic efforts pursuant to the December 6, 2016 transfer of ownership of United Student Aid Funds and Northwest Education Loan Association from USA Funds (now Strada) to Ascendium.
• Merit America $7,560,000 · 2024
  Grant, Scaling IT Support and Data Analytics Certificate Programming for Learners from Low-Income Grant, Accelerating Workforce Training Pathways via Merit America's Opportunity Fund
• Mdrc $7,363,369 · 2024
  Grant, Strengthen and Scale Multiple Measures Assessment Implementation Grant, Examining Faculty Decision-Making in Course Equivalency and Transfer Grant, Learning Partner for Future Sectoral Training Evidence-Building Initiative Grant, Travel Grant - National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students Grant, Sectoral Training Evidence-Building Initiative Grant, Building & Applying Strong Evidence About Postsecondary Success & Economic Mobility
• Education Design Lab $4,476,200 · 2023
  Transformation of the Postsecondary Landscape Community College Growth Engine Fund Expansion Travel Grant Rural Summit 2023 Catalyzing Rural Community Colleges Through a Design Challenge
• Teachers College Columbia University $3,557,052 · 2024
  Grant, Paving the Way to Equitable, Adequate and Effective Community College Funding Grant, Expanding and Sharing the Evidence Base of Key Student Success Reforms Grant, Supporting National Reporting on Postsecondary Education and Workforce Training
• Achieving the Dream Inc $3,544,480 · 2023
  Actualizing Community Vibrancy Metrics Evaluating Digital Pathways Transformation Cohort of Rural Community Colleges From Opening Doors to Ushering In- Strategic Enrollment Management for Adult Learner Success Project Success 2023 Partner Grant Project Success Formative and Summative Assessment Redesigning Pathways for Adult College and Career Success travel DREAM 2023 Full Conference REGISTRATION FEE (15), February 14-17, 2023

What kind of organizations it funds

By each recipient's own IRS classification, for the 290 of 413 recipients we could match to a registered organization. These are assigned categories, not our guesses -- Schedule I reports the recipient's EIN, so this is a lookup rather than a name match.

Giving by year

Tax years, not calendar years, and the most recent year is usually incomplete -- Form 990 arrives about a year after the year it covers, so a low final year means late paperwork rather than a grantmaker winding down.

Where its money goes

30% of its giving went to organizations in Indiana. Community foundations and federated funds are usually the most geographically bounded funders there are -- being outside the footprint is normally disqualifying in a way that a weak programme fit is not.

Down to the city

Funders that support the same organizations

These grantmakers and private foundations gave to organizations this one also funded. Shared grantees are the strongest signal available that two funders have overlapping priorities -- and a funder already backing your peers is a far warmer prospect than one that merely lists your cause.

How to approach this grantmaker

1. Look for a published programme first. Unlike most private foundations, organizations of this kind often do run open, deadlined grant cycles with written guidelines. Its own website is the authority on that; this page is the authority on who it has actually paid.
2. Check you are its size. The median reported grant is $75,000 -- and because grants under $5,000 need not be reported, it very likely writes smaller cheques than this page can see.
3. Check you are in its geography. Its giving concentrates in Indiana.
4. Read the recipient list for organizations like yours. If nothing on it resembles your work, that is a real answer and a cheap one to get.

Related guides

Where these numbers come from

Everything above is taken from Ascendium Education Solutions Inc's own Form 990 Schedule I filings, which the IRS publishes in bulk. We used 4 returns (tax years 2021-2024). Nothing here is scraped, inferred or estimated.

On its most recent return it told the IRS it made grants to 258 section 501(c)(3) organizations and 29 other organizations. That is the filer's own count for one year; the totals above cover every year we hold.

Address of record on the latest return: 38 Buttonwood Court, Madison, WI, 53718.

EIN 39-1853833 · See the original filings on ProPublica · How we build this

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