Who We Are
The Schott Foundation is a Black-led national public fund serving as a bridge between philanthropy and grassroots organizers to advance racial justice in public education. Schott directly funds BIPOC-led grassroots education justice coalitions across the country and strategically connects the education justice movement with other social justice efforts focused on providing an array of support children and families need to have a fair and substantive opportunity to learn and thrive. Schott resources the largest national network of grassroots BIPOC youth and parent education equity and justice organizers – The Opportunity to Learn Network – including four national alliances, 306 local organizations, in 32 states, 54 cities actively coordinating 120,000 people and impacting over 800,000.
In addition to making direct grants and leveraging funding from philanthropic partners, Schott provides partners with research, communications, and other forms of advocacy technical assistance to accelerate movement-building efforts. Schott fundamentally believes that grassroots movements for racial justice and education equity are central to creating systemic change to address disparities that criminalize and deny children of color and low-income children a fair and substantive opportunity to learn.
Overview
Nonprofit, philanthropic, and public sector institutions alike have for far too long identified and serviced one specific issue area, like education, housing, healthcare, and employment, and designed programs that seek to increase access to specific supports in an effort to improve those outcomes. While the intentions have been noble, this approach often fails to address the root cause of inequalities across all of these outcomes: systems of racism and massive gaps in income based on race. As a result, low income students and students of color continue to face systemic barriers to opportunity in their communities and in their educational systems.
In 2018, as hate and the impact of persistent racism dominated the national dialogue, the Schott Foundation introduced the Loving Cities Initiative, a multi-city effort that aims to reverse historical local policies and practices rooted in racism and bias and replace them with policies that create the types of cross-sector supports (education, health, transportation, etc.) indicative of loving systems and necessary for all children and families to succeed.
The Loving Cities Index provides a local and national language and framework for evaluating systems – beyond siloed issue areas or critiques of parents, teachers, and other system actors – to engage local and national stakeholders in the call to create more loving supports and systems in their cities. With 20 cities profiled to date with their own Loving Cities Index, Schott is ready to add 10 to 15 more cities over the next six to eight months.
The Loving Cities Index helps support local and state leaders in their efforts to actively petition state and local governments to secure comprehensive racial equity-centered funding to address community needs. Loving Cities helps community-based racial equity collaboratives influence budgeting and grant making processes in a way that results in increased, sustained, and comprehensive racial equity investments in underserved communities. The goal of the Initiative is to reduce disparities in low-income communities of color and build a permanent community-based leadership structure focused on promoting and achieving racial equity and prosperity.
There were twenty cities that were a part of the previous rounds of the Loving Cities Index. The ten cities from 2018 and ten from 2020, respectively, can be found here: https://lovingcities.schottfoundation.org/national-map/.
Request for Proposal
In 2018, the Schott Foundation developed the Loving Cities Index to address the need for a framework and a narrative-shift that centers the solutions for addressing inequality in education, health, and economic outcomes in strategies that dismantle systems of racism and hate narratives and replace them with loving systems. The Loving Cities Index measures opportunity gaps by “scoring” cities on 24 community and advocacy friendly indicators that reflect the resources and supports that all children need to succeed academically and beyond. These indicators are organized into four categories of support: Care, Stability, Commitment, and Capacity.
Additional Cities to be Added in 2025
The Schott Foundation is ready to begin the next round of evaluating 10-15 cities leading to the production of the next Loving Cities Index. We are actively seeking a consultant to:
- Collecting and analyzing data on the additional cities to devise a national report with insights reflecting data from a broad range of cities.
- Developing city-specific profiles for the new cities to provide community advocates, philanthropic partners and public officials with deeper dives on data that can be used by local stakeholders for action.
- Coordinate a series of meetings with local advocacy partners to compare qualitative and quantitative data.
The following fifteen cities have been shortlisted for the next Index.
- Birmingham, AL
- Boston, MA
- Houston, TX
- Las Vegas, NV
- Memphis, TN
- New Orleans, LA
- Pittsburgh, PA
- Phoenix, AZ
- Raleigh, NC
- Reno, NV
- Richmond, VA
- Sacramento, CA
- San Diego, CA
- Tulsa, OK
- Wilmington, DE
Timeline
Schott’s goal is to complete the review and selection process for this RFP based on the following timeline:
1. September 20, 2024: Deadline to receive proposals
2. October 4, 2024: Proposal review completion
3. October 11, 2024: Interview or further evaluation completion
4. October17, 2024: Notification of decision
5. April 1, 2025: Production of Report
Proposal Submission
Please submit proposals in a single PDF to Shawna Ellis, Executive Operations Manager, at se@schottfoundation.org. Documentation received on or before (date) will be reviewed and given priority consideration.