Stronger in Step – Annual Report 2025
A letter from our president:
I love the moment a marching band steps onto the field.
Before a single note is played, you can feel the energy shift. Students move with focus and pride. Families rise to their feet.
Every person has a role. Every section brings something different. The power comes from listening, preparation, and moving with a shared sense of purpose.
That spirit was with me throughout 2025. It was a year that tested many of the systems young people and families rely on. Federal actions created uncertainty around public education, civil rights, public services, and essential supports. In Michigan, economic pressures and budget delays created instability and insecurity for schools, nonprofits, and communities.
The ground kept shifting, and yet, Detroiters kept marching forward.
Young people spoke up. Parents organized. Educators showed up for students. Advocates pressed for better policies. Community organizations helped families navigate uncertainty while continuing to build toward something better.
We also saw meaningful signs of progress. Michigan made historic investments in public education, including record per-student funding and increased support for afterschool and summer programs. Detroit entered a period of leadership transition and renewed possibility. The City of Detroit and Detroit’s public school system have since shown greater willingness to coordinate around young people.
At The Skillman Foundation, 2025 pushed us to become even clearer about our role.
We are not the conductor of education change. We are more the equipment manager. Our role is to understand what the ensemble needs and then do everything we can using our grants, relationships, voice, and convening power in partnership with Detroit youth, community, and those working alongside them to ensure the band keeps marching on.
Four goals guide us: amplifying Detroiters’ power, advancing education policy and systems change, building common ground, and living our values. Like the sections of a marching band, each has a distinct purpose, but they are strongest when they move together.
Through this work, we hope to see Detroiters hold greater influence over education decisions, policies better reflect what students need and aspire to, and leaders work with greater trust and coordination toward excellent education for every young person.
In this annual report, you will see how these goals guide our work, how partners bring them to life, and how progress can be both challenging and joyful. As you explore this report, I hope you see yourself in this work. Whether you are a student, parent, educator, advocate, policymaker, or community member, your voice and your actions matter.
I believe deeply in Detroit’s young people – their brilliance, their resilience, their dreams that will not be dimmed. I believe in the wisdom of this community, shaped by generations who have struggled, built, and cared for one another.
And I believe in the extraordinary possibilities that unfold when each of us brings our purpose, courage, and hope to the work ahead.
Explore Our Goals
Explore Our Goals
At The Skillman Foundation, we work towards these four goals. Like sections of a marching band, the goals intersect, support each other, and move together.
Here are examples of how these goals show up in our day-to-day work and with our partners:
Explore This Goal
- See how Detroiters build collective power to improve public education
- Meet youth and neighbors organizing to influence education policy
- Explore how Detroit storytellers reshape narratives around students and schools
- Discover how youth insights transformed the Skillman Youth Council
Students chart their futures.
Parents and community members support and speak up for children. Teachers bring dedication and skill to their work. Lawmakers set policies and decide how resources are invested, shaping how public schools operate. For any system to work well, all its parts must work together.
When the voices of youth, families, and educators are left out of decisions, education suffers and everyone feels the effects.
We support efforts that help Detroit youth, parents, educators, and community members grow their individual and collective power to improve public education.
We fund nonprofits that help Detroiters identify challenges, advance proven solutions, and organize for change.
This includes advocating for education policies from school district to state levels, and working alongside other community organizers, education advocates, and policymakers.
Building power from the ground up
Through our Ground Building grants we invest in growing Detroiters’ power to influence education policy and systems change. Two of our grant partners, Detroit Area Youth Uniting Michigan and Urban Neighborhood Initiatives, share how they are building youth and neighborhood power in Detroit.
Through our Ground Building grants we invest in growing Detroiters’ power to influence education policy and systems change. Two of our grant partners, Detroit Area Youth Uniting Michigan and Urban Neighborhood Initiatives, share how they are building youth and neighborhood power in Detroit.
Who holds the history and writes the future of education in Detroit? The Skillman Foundation convened the Detroit Education Narrative (DEN) Collective, a group of skilled storytellers with deep connections to Detroit schools and students. The DEN Collective learned about the power of story in shaping public understanding and motivating change, formed a shared narrative–Genius Comes from Detroit, and created stories that bring all of this to life.
Investing in Detroit voices
Learning with and from Detroit youth
In 2025, our youth council went through a revamp! Through the insights of youth council alumni, our youth council program has evolved with a stronger emphasis on building relationships, youth-adult partnerships, and understanding of Detroit’s K-12 education system and the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors.
Explore This Goal
- See how policy change creates lasting improvements for students
- Meet policy partners bringing Detroit voices into statewide decisions
- Explore how afterschool funding led to stronger access implementation, and results
A strong education system delivers high-quality learning to every child, regardless of where they live. It works in partnership with parents and is supported by the broader community. It connects students to afterschool programs and pathways to college and careers. And it gives every student the support they need to succeed and build a positive future.
But in Michigan, decades of underfunding and inconsistent, patchwork policies have weakened our public schools, hurt academic outcomes, and left schools struggling to meet students’ needs. The problem is not a lack of effort. It is a system not built to work together.
Our education policy and systems work focuses on lasting, meaningful change that goes beyond short-term fixes to make real improvements for students.
The Skillman Foundation funds education advocacy organizations that understand how policies are developed, as well as coalitions that bring organizations and stakeholders together around a shared plan. We support groups that advance policy solutions grounded in research and informed by the experiences of students, families, and educators.
We help strengthen local and state systems so effective policies can be implemented successfully. And we fund ongoing community involvement throughout the lifecycle of a policy, helping ensure that Detroit students, families, and educators have a meaningful role not only in shaping policies, but also in assessing whether those policies are working.
Statewide work with a local approach
Statewide work with a local approach
Through our Policy & Systems grants, we fund education policy organizations and coalitions and support aligned action between these policy movers and Detroit youth, parents, educators, and community members. Two of our grant partners, Michigan’s Children and TeachPlus, share how they are creating platforms for Detroit resident, youth, and teacher perspectives to inform education policy.
Afterschool momentum from funding to implementation
In 2025, advocates, afterschool providers, capacity-building organizations, and partners across Michigan didn't just secure historic funding for afterschool programs, they made sure the new funds were put to good use. Our partners, Michigan Afterschool Partnership and Youth Development Resource Center, share how sustained collaboration turned a policy win into effective policy implementation and real results for kids and families.
Explore This Goal
- Hear how education leaders find common ground across different perspectives
- Explore how shared data can strengthen support for students with disabilities
- See how Michigan education changemakers turn connection into collective action
- Discover what lasting education change requires from people across Michigan
Michigan is a state of builders and innovators.
As a purple state, we also benefit from a wide range of perspectives. It is time to draw on these strengths and work together to retool our public education system.
While The Skillman Foundation is focused on Detroit youth, improving their educational opportunities requires statewide policy change and collaborative leadership. Ultimately, we want to see education transformed for all 1.2 million Michigan students across more than 800 public school districts. That will require the shared wisdom and sustained work of many people, even those who may not always agree.
Other states are demonstrating that transformational change is possible when people align around a strategic plan and remain committed to seeing it through. For example, Mississippi rose in the national rankings from 49th to 9th in third-grade reading scores between 2012 and 2024. That dramatic turnaround took more than a decade of focused effort.
The Skillman Foundation helps build a broad movement for change by supporting people and organizations to work toward shared solutions.
We do this by creating spaces for conversation and collaboration, including our annual Education Changemakers Summit. We help build a shared understanding of challenges and solutions by funding nonpartisan research and data, education journalism, and community storytelling. And we highlight people who are working across differences through projects such as the Our State of Education podcast and Skillman Visionary Awards.
Exploring differences and commonalities
Exploring differences and commonalities
In 2025, we awarded 10 education changemakers with the Skillman Visionary Award. This group of Visionaries comes to education from a variety of perspectives with leaders from both traditional and charter public schools, to foster youth advocates and parent organizers, to afterschool providers and college access advocates.
We asked them to talk about some of the most pressing topics in education in 2025. This conversation surfaced different approaches and ways of thinking as well as shared values and opportunities to work together.
“If we get ourselves bogged down in the politics of education, we’ll never make the systemic common sense changes that almost all educators know are issues.”
“Kids need to feel like a part of a community, they need to feel a sense of belonging, they need to be motivated.”
Building shared understanding through data
In 2025, with the support of one of our Data grants, Autism Alliance of Michigan released the state’s first benchmark report about the educational experiences and outcomes of students with disabilities. Before this report, special education data was scattered across state and federal systems.
Now, families have a clearer picture to navigate those systems, and advocates and policymakers have a shared foundation for what it will take to support students with disabilities statewide.
The Education Changemakers Summit is an annual gathering organized by The Skillman Foundation to unite people across the education ecosystem for shared learning, deeper connection, and coordinated action toward education systems change. 2025 marked our second annual Education Changemakers Summit centered on the theme of Bridging to Accelerate Education Policy Change.
From connection
to collaboration
Explore This Goal
- See how shared values guide the Foundation’s work and decisions
- Explore how those values hold up under real-world pressure
- Hear how grant partner feedback strengthens our work
At The Skillman Foundation, values drive our work, decision making, and how we show up in community each day. We are accountable to and living by these core values:
- Youth Driven
We are following the will of Detroit youth to dream and design new possibilities together.
- Racial Equity & Justice Focused
We enact racial equity within our practices and pursue the understanding and advancement of racial justice to change the odds for Detroit youth. We define racial equity as a level playing field for all people. We define racial justice as expanding power to those most negatively impacted by the way things currently are so that they may redesign systems and structures to benefit all.
- Accountable to Each Other
We love that there is no place like Detroit. We will show up every day in partnership with each other, internally and externally, creating our shared future. We are connected.
- Greater Than Grants
We extend all forms of capital—financial, reputational, and relational—thoughtfully, ethically, and equitably.
- Listeners & Learners
We are guided by the brilliance of Detroit youth and community. We learn from our successes and our failures to continually improve ourselves, our organization, and our communities.
The values test
In the face of sweeping federal policy changes in 2025, we asked ourselves: where do we acquiesce and where do we draw the line? In this true test of our values, our President & CEO Angelique Power shared her sensemaking of the moment and how The Skillman Foundation has prepared itself to make values-driven decisions.
In March and April 2025, the Center for Effective Philanthropy surveyed more than 200 organizations who had active grants with The Skillman Foundation in 2024 to assess the Foundation’s community impact, grantmaking processes, and funder-grant partner relationships. Our Vice President of Program, Sarida Scott, and Vice President of Learning & Impact, Laila Bell, shared what we heard from partners and how grant partner feedback informs how we work.
How grant partner feedback strengthens us
Our Grants Paid in 2025
Our grants paid
in 2025
$24,335,029 granted in 2025
446 grants total
See our grants awarded here, searchable by year.
Find detailed financial reporting here.
Band together for education
Stay connected with us!
- Tune in to our podcast, Our State of Education, and submit your questions about education for a chance for your commentary to be featured on the show.
- Follow us on social media
- Sign up for our newsletter for regular updates
How do I receive a grant from The Skillman Foundation?
The first step is to see if your organization’s work aligns with our People Powered Education strategy.
We fund organizations that:
- Support Detroit students, parents, community members, and/or educators to engage in education policy at the school district, city, or state level.
- Work on education policy advocacy at the state-level in Michigan, particularly for K-12 public education and out-of-school programs.
- Work toward shared solutions for K-12 education and out-of-school programs to build common ground. This includes general advocacy, data, research, and communications.
Grant partners must be:
- Nonprofit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations or government or public agencies (city, county, state, public school district)
- Publicly supported charities as defined in Section 509(a) of the Internal Revenue Code
- Offering opportunity and service to all, in policy and practice, regardless of age, race, creed, gender, religion, disability, sexual orientation, and ethnicity
We do not fund:
- Political campaigns, political activities, or lobbying for or against pieces of legislation
If your organization meets these criteria, reach out to us. Grant inquiries begin with conversations; we do not accept unsolicited grant proposals. This is not only because of our limited staff capacity, but also to respect the time and effort of grant seekers.
View our staff members to find the best fit for your inquiry here.
GOALS