Advance Together: Our Program

Our Program

Advance Together™ is a learning lab and accelerator for regional cross-sector partnerships that are tackling workforce and education challenges in lower-income communities.

In two phases, Advance Together™ provides training, coaching and funding to help grantees increase their impact.

Design Phase (completed 2020)
Develop plan to accelerate progress
$15,000	9 grantees	6 months

Implementation Phase (2021–2023)
Put plan into action
$300,000	4 grantees	3 years

During the Design phase, grantees received $15,000 to use to assess their efforts and develop a plan to accelerate their progress. They then applied for the Implementation phase, which provides $300,000 over three years to put their plan into action.

We share lessons learned and best practices in both phases. This helps build robust networks in participating communities and across Texas to drive future collaboration and policy initiatives.

Core Principles

We help participants grow in key areas that drive program success and advance economic inclusion:

• Community
  • Engaging people who have often been left out
  • Promoting racial equity
• Learning
  • Continuous improvement toward shared outcomes
  • Data sharing and evaluation
• Collaboration
  • Bringing sectors together to lead change
  • Capacity building
• Opportunity
  • Changing systems to reduce barriers that limit economic mobility

Participant Selection

In 2019, Advance Together invited selected community partnerships in Texas to apply for our Design phase. We used the following considerations to help identify potential candidates:

• Recommendations from program partners and community leaders across Texas
• Focus on educational attainment and workforce development
• Established partnerships that were ready to accelerate their work
• Geographic diversity (no more than one partnership per community)

Our independent selection committee reviewed applications and selected nine Design grantees. Upon completing the Design phase, participating partnerships applied for the Implementation phase. After careful deliberations, the selection committee chose four of the nine teams to move ahead to Implementation.