Building stronger communities

For education after high school to be truly valuable, it must prepare students with the ability to confront an ever-evolving world. Higher education should help adults address complex societal issues by teaching them skills such as critical and creative thinking, problem solving, empathy, ethical reasoning, and collaborative communication. People and communities become stronger and more united by identifying common ground and working to address challenges. Today, our immediate risks include political divisions that get in the way of progress or even spark violence, a national economy that doesn’t work well for everyone, and the consequences of a rapidly warming planet.

We partner with individuals and organizations across the economic, political, and social spectrum to support our mission. Beyond education, this includes supporting public, nonprofit, and corporate organizations that build stronger communities through improving local news and information, addressing disparities across race, ethnicity, income, and geography, and advancing thoughtful responses to climate change—while working at the intersection of college education and workforce training.

This comprehensive approach informs Lumina’s broad vision for a learning system after high school that prepares us to work together toward a better future for all. Higher education has the power to help us build caring, flexible, and resilient communities that work for everyone—especially as the planet grows hotter, resources become limited, and the systems of government that support our freedoms face new pressures.

Lumina’s work includes:

Our approach

A Free Society

We support democratic renewal by improving how higher education can prepare students for more active citizenship. We partner with nonpartisan networks, researchers, and educators to scale innovative civic learning approaches, improve political and media literacy, create new student leadership opportunities, and ensure the freedom to learn. We are especially interested in this work at the state and regional levels. Our hope is that we can strengthen our democratic systems, build more trust between colleges and communities, and improve students’ sense of purpose in their higher education journeys.

Read more about higher ed’s role in democracy

Our approach

More Local News

We belong to a coalition of more than 110 national, regional, and local funders who have committed over $500 million to strengthening communities through more and better local news and information. We pledged $10 million over five years to support local news in Indiana and efforts by colleges and universities to address the erosion of fact-based journalism essential for our democracy. Journalism projects we support that involve higher education or college journalists include: The New School’s Journalism + Design Lab, the University of Evansville’s NewsLab, and The State University of New York’s Institute for Local News.

Human Work & AI

We focus on the impact of AI on learning and work, especially as large language models and physical AI rapidly advance in industry and society. We are exploring AI’s effects on public discourse and resource allocation, changes in learning and career pathways and skill development, and how we can capitalize on human work in the age of smart machines. We also consider how these tools might affect people differently based on age, geography, gender, income, race, and ethnicity. An example of our work with AI is our partnership with Wazoku, an AI-enabled Innovation Ecosystem Platform, to explore how we can better quantify the value of education after high school.

Climate-Friendly Initiatives

We explore the role colleges and universities can play in addressing climate change. We have supported research on opportunities and gaps related to green jobs, national and state strategies to link higher education and climate, and innovative teaching and learning approaches. For example, All We Can Save’s Climate Wayfinding program helps students and educators navigate their personal and professional roles in promoting a sustainable future. We emphasize the need to promote climate literacy for all students and to prepare people for green jobs, especially in places such as rural communities where green and clean energy investments are creating new economic opportunities.

Read more about our work with climate change

Our approach

College & Community

We work with colleges and universities that want to reimagine and strengthen their capacity to support thriving local communities, including people who never set foot on campus. We see potential in how colleges can recruit students, design durable financial models, fill local workforce needs, and promote individual and community wellbeing. Through this work, we will recognize and further develop institutions that provide valuable social infrastructure and services. Our hope is that they can serve as resources for democratic health and engage in collaborative local processes that define communities.

Read more about schools supporting communities

Our approach

Creating Fair Opportunity

We support efforts that address economic, geographic, racial, and ethnic disparities as essential to building education and workforce systems that serve everyone. Our work includes supporting policies and programs that address longstanding disparities in educational attainment among students from low-income families, Black, Hispanic, and Native American students, working adults, and people who are the first in their families to go to college. We work with partners who are reimagining how to address disparities in higher education, and we want to help them develop sustainable, community-oriented approaches that expand access to credentials with value leading to economic prosperity.

Investment with Impact

We invest in social enterprises that support today’s students, including projects that improve college access, expand childcare, address adult literacy rates, and provide home health support. We support initiatives that can build the infrastructure needed to help more people obtain degrees or other credentials of value. By investing in innovation in higher education and the workforce, we advance solutions that address relevant economic, political, and societal needs.

Read more about impact investing at Lumina