Knowledgeworks Foundation

“Business relationships certain knowledgeworks foundation board members are also members of the boards of certain knowledgeworks foundation affiliates. These overlapping board memberships constitute a business relationship as defined by the form 990 instructions.”

“Knowledgeworks foundation contracted with nelnet to administer its student lending programs.”

“Significant changes to governing documents president and ceo changed from voting member of the board of directors to an ex-officio, non-voting member of the board of directors.”

“Process to review the form 990 after completion by the preparer, the draft form 990 is reviewed by the accounting director and the coo/vp of finance. The final draft of the form 990 is reviewed with the audit committee. After it receives the approval of the audit committee, the final form 990 is distributed to all members of the board of directors before it is filed.”

“Organization's practice for monitoring compliance on an annual basis a conflict of interest questionnaire is completed by directors, officers and key employees and reviewed by management. Items reported are discussed with legal counsel, who advises management and the board of any required actions. The conflict of interest policy is distributed with the annual questionnaire and is also accessible on the secure director's portion of the foundation's website.”

“COMPENSATION DETERMINATION The compensation of the CEO, other officers, and key employees are set by the Compensation Committee of the Board of Directors utilizing a compensation study performed by an independent compensation consulting firm comparing similar positions in similar organizations, including review of Form 990s for other organizations. Members of the Board of Directors have in the past received reasonable compensation for their services as members of the Board of Directors. A COMPENSATION STUDY WAS LAST PERFORMED IN MAY 2021 BY SMITHPILOT”

“Documents the consolidated financial statements of knowledgeworks foundation and its subsidiaries are available on the knowledgeworks foundation website. Knowledgeworks foundation's form 990 is also available on its own website. The governing documents and conflict of interest policy are available upon request.”

“Description of Organization Mission By delivering innovative education approaches and advancing aligned policies, KnowledgeWorks activates and develops the capacity of communities and educators to imagine, build and sustain vibrant learning ecosystems that allow each student to thrive.”

“PROGRAM SERVICE ACCOMPLISHMENTS - KNOWLEDGEWORKS IN SCHOOLS KnowledgeWorks has established partnerships with more than 80 school districts and state education agencies across 9 states on transforming their system from a traditional, factory model system to one that is personalized and competency-based. These districts span the country and are diverse in size, racial demographics and socioeconomic background. Additionally, KnowledgeWorks engages with state education agencies across the country to identify and remove policy barriers, enabling greater flexibility and smoother transitions for districts working to implement personalized, competency-based learning. In FY2021, KnowledgeWorks partnered with state education agencies in Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, and Utah to help stakeholders support the growth of personalized and competency-based education statewide. This includes partnerships with the Utah State Board of Education and Utah educators to support the development of competencies and rubrics aligned to the state's Portrait of a Graduate. In South Carolina, KnowledgeWorks has partnered with the Department of Education to support a statewide network of schools and districts implementing personalized, competency-based learning. This statewide partnership has led to 15 districts in FY2018, 40 districts in FY2019, 55 districts in FY2020, and 65 districts in FY2021 joining the growing community working to advance personalized, competency-based learning across the state. This represents a commitment from over 75 of South Carolina's districts. KnowledgeWorks began working with the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction through support of several districts as they developed portraits of a graduate and designed aligned competencies. This work has led to a growing network of districts committed to implementing personalized learning and the development of a statewide learning continuum that will provide students with a competency-based graduation pathway. KnowledgeWorks is also partnering with the Ohio Department of Education to build staff capacity to implement personalized, whole-child approaches aligned with the state's strategic plan. Having facilitated Nevada's Blue-Ribbon Commission for a Globally Prepared Nevada, KnowledgeWorks began providing support to the Nevada Department of Education staff as they launch a statewide personalized, competency-based learning network. In FY2021, KnowledgeWorks served 28 districts spanning from Anchorage, Alaska, south to Odessa, Texas, and east to Charleston, South Carolina. These 20 districts are as small as a few hundred students to as a large as 320,000 students, but all are committed to redesigning the learning infrastructure to being more equitable, inclusive, and personalized for each child and family they serve.”

“Program Service Accomplishments - Policy & Advocacy In fY2021, the Policy and Advocacy Team published 21 resources, including blog posts on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on K-12 education, resources related to the presidential election and new administration, responses to federal requests for language and recommendations, resources to advance personalized learning policies and some state-specific resources. Members of the team also facilitated workshops or learning experiences for partners and presented to policy audiences through state-specific presentations and more general audiences. The Policy and Advocacy Team also supported audiences in making tangible steps toward policy change in several states, including North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Nevada, Georgia, South Carolina and Arizona, in areas such as personalized learning, assessment, college in high school programs and whole child. Much of this work was funded through grants and fee-for-service contracts. Finally, notable examples of full adoption of our work and ideas occurred at the federal level through the U.S. Department of Education and in North Dakota, Arizona, and Nevada.”

“Program Service Accomplishments - Impact & Improvement In FY2021, the Impact and Improvement team continued formative data collection in North Dakota (including qualitative data from interviews, focus groups, and classroom walkthroughs as well as quantitative data from over 7,000 survey responses); shared interim findings, site visit memos, and made collective interpretations with our four district partners and the data fellow team; and began forming the plan for the summative data collection with partners. We gathered close to 3,000 baseline surveys in Arizona and launched a study of three early implementer districts in South Carolina. With a grant from new funder Leon Lowenstein Foundation, we launched a cross-state analysis of the personalized, competency-based systems transformation in four states (AZ, ND, NV, SC). We closed out the Student-Centered Learning Research Collaborative with the release and dissemination of reports and web resources from four research-practice projects and 10 youth researchers. We completed the process to develop a narrative for our Theory of Change and finished a first draft of the visual. We also developed and refined our approach to state impact assessments, reporting data dashboards, and continuous improvement supports to track and improve our impact for and with various audiences. The Impact and Improvement staff were invited speakers at the Leon Lowenstein Foundation's Personalized Learning Research grantee meeting and an Aurora Institute webinar, hosted a capstone event for the 10 youth researchers attended by over 70 people, and served on the advisory board of the Christensen Institute's Canopy Project. In partnership with CCSSO, we finished and released the equity-focused revision of the "Educator Competencies for Personalized, Learner-Centered Environments" which has comprised of over 13 of all web traffic to StudentsattheCenterHub.org. Including close to 4,500 visitors and 485 downloads of paper and toolkit. Collectively, the team published over 20 blogs on personalized, competency-based learning, research, and equity by staff and research partners; created 7 videos; gave 10 presentations; and was mentioned in the Hechinger Report and Aurora Institute's newsletters and research round-ups.”

“PROGRAM SERVICE ACCOMPLISHMENTS - Other Services Include Strategic Foresight, grantmaking and student loan programs. Strategic Foresight KnowledgeWorks continued to exercise national thought leadership around the future of learning through publications, partnerships and stakeholder engagements. It published Envisioning Human-Centered Learning Systems, which explored what would happen if education systems put a comprehensive view of human development at the center, and Education in the Balance: Tensions Affecting Education's Futures, which applied a strategic foresight perspective to issues arising from the COVID-19 pandemic and the current racial justice uprising. In addition, KnowledgeWorks partnered with Remake Learning to publish Remaking Tomorrow: Learning in a Post-Pandemic Future. KnowledgeWorks' strategic foresight team continued to give presentations and to design and facilitate workshops and webinars based on these and earlier publications. Conferences included the Council of State Science Supervisors Virtual Conference 2020, Grantmakers for Education's annual conference, NACEP Connect 2020 and Philanthropy Forward '20. In addition, KnowledgeWorks created engagements for Howard Community College, the Kansas Children's Cabinet, the Pennsylvania Statewide STEM Ecosystem, Transform SC, the Waters Center for Systems Thinking and an XPrize webinar on rapid reskilling and the future of work, among others. KnowledgeWorks also participated on CoSN's Driving K-12 Innovation Advisory Board and made multiple contributions to the Greater Pittsburgh region's Tomorrow campaign. KnowledgeWorks secured funding from The Grable Foundation to create several assets for the second year of that campaign and also renewed a partnership with Capita, a non-profit organization, to create content related to early childhood futures. In addition, KnowledgeWorks published a variety of articles related to education and early childhood futures on other organizations' platforms, with an emphasis on promoting ideas from its 2020 guidebook on applying systems thinking to education. Grant-making The Grant making program provided approximately $1.1 million in grants and contributions to 61 organizations. Student Lending Programs KnowledgeWorks served approximately 1,200 students during the fiscal year through its student lending programs.”

“Other changes in net assets unrealized loss on liability for student loan residual (145,653) amortization of discount on student loans 397,297 transfer from tax-exempt subsidiary - kwi 7,826,522 total to form 990, part xi, line 9 8,078,166”

“Description:business consultants total fees:54187”

“Description:marketing & communications total fees:107030”

“Description:payroll, comp & benefits total fees:104219”

“Description:hr, training & development total fees:135902”

“Description:technology total fees:26540”

“Description:policy & advocacy total fees:215388”

“Description:data, research & evaluation total fees:358783”

“Description:teaching & learning consult total fees:405869”

“Description:strategic foresight total fees:77075”