Engaging Grantee-Partners, The Work Will Build A Cohort of Five Nonprofit Organizations and One Collaborative to Deepen Strategic Evidence Planning in 2026

Boston, MA — January 14, 2026 — Project Evident has received a $1.15M grant from Ascendium Education Group to address strategic evidence planning in six nonprofit organizations. The grant builds on existing work to provide nonprofit organizations with support in their strategic evidence planning journeys, as well as to inform and improve the nonprofit sector as a whole. 

The grant aims to support the identified nonprofits and collaborative in driving equitable outcomes and sustainable impact, and is focused on key areas of: 

• Evidence-building approaches aligned to practitioners’ learning priorities and operational realities.
• Timely, equitable, actionable, and practitioner-driven research methods.
• Effective evidence usage for capacity building.

“We know from working across the nonprofit sector that too often nonprofit organizations face barriers to building and using evidence in ways that drive impact,” said Matt Hillard, Senior Director, Evidence for Outcomes at Project Evident. “The grant from Ascendium will help us accelerate evidence planning for the identified nonprofits in the cohort, supporting them in defining how they intend to use data, ensuring that evidence-building is driven by their internal priorities.”

Through one-to-one engagements and peer learning sessions, the cohort participants will work toward foundational long-term outcomes at the organizational, individual, and system level, including:

• Strengthened capacity for evidence-based decision making.
• Alignment between leadership, staff, and board.
• Increased confidence and commitment to using data. 

The cohort is made up of five nonprofits and one collaborative, including: Achieving the Dream; FreeWorld; Law for Learners; The Puttkammer Center for Educational Justice; Serve Learn Earn Collaborative; and WRTP | Big Step. The grant runs through the end of October 2026.

For more information, contact mbirnie@projectevident.org.

About Project Evident
Project Evident harnesses the power of data, evidence, and technology to achieve greater impact. We believe that by empowering practitioners to drive their own data and evidence building while also strengthening the surrounding ecosystem, we can increase the number of effective solutions in the social and education sectors and scale them faster, ultimately producing stronger, more meaningful, and more equitable outcomes for students and communities.

About Ascendium Education Group
Ascendium Education Group® is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization driven by the belief that learning after high school gives people the power to build better futures. Our national philanthropy focuses on increasing opportunities for learners from low-income backgrounds to achieve upward mobility through postsecondary education and workforce training. We partner with organizations whose objectives align with our core strategies to expand opportunity, support learner success, and connect and align systems. Our grantees include postsecondary education and workforce training providers, intermediaries, researchers, and media organizations from across the U.S. To learn more, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org.