The Skillman Foundation

Strategies are the roadmaps that guide how we organize our efforts and resources to achieve our goals. For a philanthropic institution like The Skillman Foundation, it means defining how we will use our resources—grantmaking and otherwise– to partner with people to transform the education system and nurture the brilliance of Detroit youth. 

The Skillman Foundation believes that effective strategies should be rooted in data and evidence, tailored to fit the local context, shaped by the voices of those most impacted by the education system—especially young people, residents, and educators. This approach ensures that our work is responsive, informed, and positioned to drive meaningful change. 

This year, The Skillman Foundation launched a new strategy: People Powered Education. It builds on the work and lessons learned across our 65-year history of investing our resources—our dollars, social capital, and the time and effort of our team members—to meaningfully improve the lives of children. It draws from our Good Neighborhoods Initiative, where we embedded deeply in Detroit’s schools and neighborhoods, ensuring solutions were community grown and embraced; and from our Opportunity Agenda for Detroit Children, where we took a citywide approach to education systems change.  

Through those strategies, The Skillman Foundation learned a critical lesson: the challenges facing Detroit’s education system are complex, varied, and deeply rooted in the design of the system. For education change to be both meaningful and sustainable will take many people working together across sectors and roles to address the underlying causes of inequitable education outcomes, including public policy and practices, not just the symptoms. Our People Powered Education strategy is focused on connecting people and policy to transform our education system.  
 
More about People Powered Education below under “What’s the strategy in a nutshell?” and here. 

This blog provides an overview of how we co-designed our new strategy with many others and why we took this approach. 

Why have a strategy?  

First and foremost, it allows everyone we interact with and impact know what we’re up to. Having a strategy allows every team member to see how they can best contribute to shared goals through their work. It allows grant seekers to know what we invest in. It makes our objectives and activities transparent to the public.  

Having a strategy makes our thinking clear, visible, and testable. It enables deeper partnership and collaboration with others when we are clear about what we will contribute toward collective efforts and how our efforts are complementary to others. It allows the Foundation to invite others to challenge, contribute to, and improve our thinking about how change will unfold and the assumptions that guide it. It creates accountability for The Skillman Foundation, inviting inquiry about whether we’re doing what we said, in the ways we set out to. It allows us to learn with and from our grant partners and community members, and to share what we’re learning for the benefit of other changemakers. 

Who created this strategy? 

The Foundation used an iterative process and incorporated the voices and perspectives of Detroiters throughout. Key milestones included: 

• Defining our aims—what the Foundation should focus its efforts on—and the target populations for these aims. 

• Gaining a deeper understanding of the context we operate in, including data trends, system dynamics, and historical factors. 

• Prioritizing the most impactful areas for intervention. 

• Assessing the racial equity implications of the proposed strategy. 

• Planning how we will learn, adapt, and grow along the way. 

In 2022, The Skillman Foundation conducted a year-long listening tour to understand Detroit’s education challenges and opportunities directly from youth, grant partners, and residents. Some of the things we heard were:  

• The education system needs to be updated, upgraded, and equitable, geared toward today’s students and tomorrow’s world 

• Lean into public policy—this is a space philanthropy can be of great support to the communities it serves 

• Youth, educators, parents, and education advocates have the insights and ideas needed to transform the education through better policy; center their voices 

With the insights of hundreds of Detroit youth, community members, educators, and nonprofit leaders, we sketched out a strategic framework. Through these conversations with community, we heard a collective aspiration for an excellent and equitable education system in Detroit where all partner for student success, and this became the North Star that guided the design of our strategies. We hypothesized that this could best be achieved through community-informed policy. We proposed that if Michigan policy movers worked in partnership with Detroit youth, educators, and other community members who are closest to young people (like parents and guardians, afterschool program providers, and education organizers), together, we could transform the k-12 public education system to one that prepares all youth to achieve their highest aspirations.  

Next, we sat with an array of youth, community members, and other education system stakeholders to gather feedback and additional insights on this framework and “theory of change.” This input helped us to start building out what the Foundation would invest its dollars and efforts toward. 

How could we expand the power of ground builders (youth, educators, and community-based organizers) to influence education policy? How could we help ensure policymakers are responsive to Detroiters, designing education policies with their input and outcomes in mind? To develop specific strategies toward these ambitions, we engaged Detroiters and other stakeholders involved in public education and policymaking in a number of ways including: advisory groups, community design workshops and listening sessions, surveys, interviews, and landscape scans. 

These engagements are a way for people to better understand how the education ecosystem operates and what it would take to improve it, with youth, grant partners, and other members of the community. For example, our Community Design Workshops offered an analysis of how the education system currently functions—what works and what doesn’t—and asked participants to contribute and refine this understanding. Participants also identified leverage points—key factors that if shifted would unlock better outcomes in the education system.  

What questions did you ask?  

Phew, a lot! The core ones were…. 

• What is the core problem or challenge we seek to address? 

• What is the long-term vision for success and whose insights have informed it? 

• Where are we now according to the available data (quantitative, qualitative, and stories)? What’s driving those outcomes? 

• What are youth/community perceptions, demands, or proposals for solutions? 

• What are our specific objectives and hypotheses? 

• What are the opportunities and risks associated with this strategy? 

• Who will benefit the most from this strategy? Who might be left out? How will you know?   

• What adjustments to the strategy are needed based on this information? 

• How will we measure progress or know if an impact is happening? 

• How will we adapt and respond to changing conditions or learnings? 

How do you know when a strategy is ready?  

Strategy design is a continuous process of learning and adapting in real time, based on insights from our work and partners. A strategy is ready when it meets a few essential criteria. First, it needs a clear vision and specific, measurable goals that align with the foundation’s mission. Stakeholder alignment is key—everyone involved should understand the strategy and their role in it. The strategy should be rooted in evidence, shaped by data, research, and insights from those most affected by the issue. An actionable plan with clear activities, timelines, and responsibilities is crucial, along with an assessment of risks, opportunities, and assumptions. A solid measurement framework should track progress with clear success indicators. Finally, the strategy must be flexible, adaptable to new learnings, and supported by the necessary financial and human resources. When these elements are in place, a strategy is ready to move forward. 

Our strategies are laid out in short, mid, and long-term phases of how we anticipate the work will build on itself and evolve. At the same time, we know the context is always changing and that we must be ready to adapt along with it.  

We are committed to continuously improving our strategies with the input of Detroit youth and their advocates.  

How do you know a strategy is working? 

Systems change is messy and complex. Dynamic systems require quality information about the context in which we operate, the effectiveness of our strategies, and the outcomes they produce. Naming where the Foundation has control over actions, where we don’t, and how our actions link to outcomes allows us to focus our attention on areas where we can achieve substantial impact. 

These insights about accountability and information needs will shape the development of measurement systems and how we collect and use data for continuous improvement. The measurement system we establish will, like all pieces of our strategy, be informed by Detroiters. This will be drafted and shared in 2025.  

Systems are dynamic, with change and progress often unfolding in unexpected ways. This is why we explore, listen, and learn from those closest to the education system—young people, parents, educators, advocates, organizers, system leaders, and others. Each group brings a unique perspective and understanding of how the system responds to our individual and collective efforts. When we engage these voices, we gain deeper insights into what’s working, where challenges remain, and how we can adapt our strategies to drive meaningful, lasting impact. By incorporating their input, we ensure that our strategies remain responsive, inclusive, and effective in fostering real change. 

What’s the strategy in a nutshell? 

People Powered Education connects people and policy to design an exceptional and equitable education system. It is based on the belief that people who are impacted by policy decisions should have a hand in shaping them. It acknowledges that grassroots advocates and organizers and grasstops policymakers are all working hard to make change, but that stronger working relationships between the two are needed. 
 
Our People Powered Education strategy focuses on four aims. These are listed below along with what we expect to see as a result of our investments and our efforts to influence and engage others toward these ends.  

1. Expand education organizing power.  

Detroit youth, educators, and community members grow individual and collective power to define, design, and influence education policy and systems change. 

2. Elevate Detroiters’ perspectives in education policy.  

Policymaking is informed by and responsive to the needs and priorities defined by Detroit youth and their advocates. Policy implementation is supported to ensure equitable outcomes are realized.  

3. Build common ground for education systems change.  

Bridge people, perspectives, and ideas by developing connections and fostering aligned action toward a shared vision for equitable education.  

4. Be an accountable and racially equitable grantmaker.  

Design and promote grantmaking and philanthropic practices that build trust and invite accountability. 

What does an excellent and equitable education system look like?  

Through our community co-design activities, we have complied a working list to describe a shared vision for k-12 education:  

• Education policies and practices reflect youth, family, and community voice.  

• Schools and afterschool programs are robustly resourced.  

• Students who need more support receive it.  

• Educators are profoundly invested in through professional development and wages. 

• Not just teaching to a test but helping young people think critically, creatively, and collaboratively.  

• Students are supported to thrive holistically: academically, physically, and mentally.  

What questions do you have?

Leave a comment below and we’ll respond!