On March 26, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt and Arnold Ventures, the philanthropic vehicle of Laura and John Arnold, announced a partnership in which AV will match government investments dollar for dollar in the Be A Neighbor initiative, providing up to $10 million in support over the next four years for a total potential investment of up to $20 million.
According to AV, the initiative “will drive additional investment into the state to create more opportunities and better outcomes for Oklahoma’s children and youth” and initially focus on programs that “have a demonstrated record of unlocking student potential.” Potential programs include Saga Tutoring, which has been proven to increase students’ math achievement, and Wendy’s Wonderful Kids, which has boosted adoption rates by more than one-third over a period of several years.
Funders across the board want to deliver maximal impact, so the fact that AV supports programs backed by rigorous research isn’t a particularly novel takeaway. Rather, what’s intriguing about the Be A Neighbor initiative is how AV collaborates with policymakers to identify, fund and implement effective programs based on a state’s needs.
The Oklahoma initiative is part of AV’s Partnerships for Proven Programs, which aims “to scale and expand proven effective social programs in workforce training, education and crime prevention.” AV announced similar partnerships with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore last year and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis in March. These efforts are rolling out at a time when state governments on the receiving end of federal funding cuts — with more on the horizon — are grappling with ways to deliver programs as effectively as possible.
AV’s Partnerships for Proven Programs operates in “a translational space — I often describe it as the ‘connective tissue’ between research and the decision-maker,” said AV Executive Vice President of Evidence and Evaluation Justin Milner, who joined the grantmaker in 2023 after working at the Urban Institute, where he launched and led its Research to Action Lab. “It’s critically important for us to figure out how to make government drive better outcomes and improve lives for kids, families and communities.”
Arnold Ventures aims to identify and scale “evidence-based policy solutions”
John Arnold worked as a natural gas trader at Enron before starting his hedge fund, Centaurus Energy. Laura is a graduate of Harvard and earned a law degree from Yale University. She worked for several years in the energy industry before focusing on philanthropy with her husband.
Established in 2008, Arnold Ventures originally took the form of the Laura and John Arnold Foundation after the couple signed the Giving Pledge in 2010. In 2019, the Arnolds created Arnold Ventures, an LLC that oversees the grantmaking operations for the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Action Now, Inc. and the Arnolds’ donor-advised fund.
According to the Laura and John Arnold Foundation’s Form 990 for the fiscal year ending December 2023, it had $4.3 billion in end-of-year net assets and disbursed $163 million in charitable contributions. Forbes pegs John’s real-time worth at $2.9 billion.
Since its inception, the couple’s philanthropic North Star has been “improving the lives of all Americans through evidence-based policy solutions that maximize opportunity and minimize injustice.” This work extends to a wide range of fields, including criminal justice reform, healthcare, education and infrastructure.
During Milner’s tenure at AV, the funder has doubled down on its efforts to identify areas where governments could implement effective social programs and policies. “I see our role as building this evidence-based ‘so what?’” Milner said. “What are we going to do to make sure the insights from the research can be helpful for decision-makers around the world?”
How AV’s Partnerships for Proven Program interfaces with policymakers
During our conversation, Milner underscored how navigating a “translational space” between research and policymaking comes with multiple challenges.
At the most fundamental level, a specific issue area may be plagued by what he called “gaps in the knowledge base.” Assuming an entity can empirically attest to a program’s efficacy, that research may not get in front of policymakers. And even if it does, political calculations, cost and implementation concerts, and inertia — the idea that “what we’ve done in the past is likely to be what we’re going to do in the future,” Milner said — can ensure that the figurative binder of effective policies gathers dust on the shelf.
To break this logjam, AV stakeholders identified state leaders with whom they had pre-existing relationships, including governors with a track record of using data to drive their spending decisions. “The conversations with governors and their staff help to illuminate their priorities,” Milner said. “At the same time, we brought to the table a menu of programs that have demonstrated results and an interest in brokering investments with our dollars to scale them in new places.”
For example, AV has supported multiple studies to assess the effectiveness of the City University of New York’s Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) model, which demonstrably improves community college graduation rates, and its potential for replication at community colleges throughout the country. In February, AV announced it had awarded a grant of more than $35.6 million to support the North Carolina Community College System’s NC Community Colleges Boost, a new program based on the ASAP model that aims to move students into high-wage and in-demand careers. The grant was the largest ever received by the NCCCS.
The following month, Colorado Gov. Polis and AV announced that the multi-year, $20 million Colorado Partnership for Proven Initiatives would launch the ASAP initiative at two community colleges: Lamar Community College and Colorado Mountain College. “We didn’t know [going into the Colorado partnership] that community colleges were going to be a top priority,” Milner said. Rather, the decision to support the two ASAP initiatives emerged from AV’s collaboration with state officials.
It’s refreshing to see a major grantmaker provide consistent and substantial support to a community college field where long-standing funding disparities call to mind a “chicken or egg” conundrum.
Conventional wisdom tells us that data-driven funders don’t provide transformative support for community colleges because more than 70% of students fail to complete their degrees. Why, these funders reason, throw good money at bad? But the data also raises the question of whether these low rates are due, at least in part, to a lack of substantial philanthropic support to solve the problem in the first place. If AV-funded programs can improve students’ completion rates, perhaps more funders will give community colleges a second look.
Related Inside Philanthropy Resources:
For Subscribers Only
AV will measure how programs are being delivered in each state
As one would expect, AV will be measuring the efficacy of the partnership programs in each state. “There will be great attention to what we call ‘implementation fidelity,’” Milner said, “which is making sure that a program that has worked elsewhere is being delivered in the same way in these new places.”
That said, there will be things that AV won’t measure. “What’s unique about this,” Milner said, “is that because these partnerships are built on strong research findings, we are not planning, in most cases, to do another project evaluation by randomly assigning participants to one group or another to discern the impact.”
There will be some potential speed bumps along the way. While proven programs like ASAP and Saga Tutoring have strong implementation supports built into their models, states rolling out those programs still have to build them out and hire staff. “That implementation level is certainly a challenge,” Milner said.
Policymakers will also grapple with budgetary constraints that may be exacerbated by federal funding cuts. Looking further out, should AV-supported programs succeed in Maryland, Colorado and Oklahoma, appropriators may face the politically sensitive decision of whether to fortify them with funding reallocated from less-effective programs that nonetheless enjoy support among their constituents.
Milner and his team will cross those bridges when they come to them. Until then, the three participating states are rolling out programs on different timelines.
Last August, AV and Maryland announced $20 million in first-round grants through its Maryland Partnership for Proven Programs to Saga Tutoring and the ASSISTments online educational tool. The former program is serving approximately 500 kids in Baltimore City schools, with plans to expand into Prince George’s County in 2025.
The ASSISTments program is serving roughly 3,200 students across Baltimore, Charles County and Prince George’s County.
In Colorado, stakeholders are standing up the infrastructure to support the ASAP-modeled initiatives at Lamar Community College and Colorado Mountain College. In the fall, students will be recruited to participate in the program. As for the Oklahoma partnership that kicked off in late March, AV is working with state partners to identify funding opportunities. “We are hopeful that we will be able to identify specific opportunities in the coming months, although it may take longer to finalize and announce the awards,” Milner said.
This work has a personal dimension for Milner. A Colorado native, he’s familiar with the regions that are home to the partnership’s two community colleges. He was also a Teach for America kindergarten teacher before transitioning to philanthropy and navigating the “translational space” between policy research and implementation.
“We’re excited about this model’s potential to drive policy change and spark new funding for what works,” he said. “But at its heart, it’s all about outcomes — changing life trajectories for kids, families and communities for the better. That’s the kind of impact that drives us.”
